From 2013-2017, in addition to her role as an Art and History teacher at Ipswich State High School, Jess fostered collegial collaborative curriculum planning teams that redesigned learning in both History and Art educational spaces through a full review and rewrite of the unit plans and assessment from Year 7 – 12. She led the ideation, design, and implementation of the ‘Art and Community’ Visual Art and ‘Social Conscience’ HASS elective units for Years 7 and 9 and orchestrated interstate learning experiences for staff and students including the school's first Visual Art camp in which students had the opportunity to participate in workshops with international artists.

Following the birth of her first daughter, Jess returned to teaching in Term 2, 2018 and secured a position as the Year 6 teacher at Hymba Yumba Independent School where she found teaching one cohort, across a multitude of disciplines, a challenging and invigorating experience that sparked a passion for interdisciplinary curriculum design. By the end of Term 3, Jess had instigated the collaborative creation of an upper primary intervention program, written its teaching and learning program, upskilled a team of Indigenous Education Workers (IEWs) in its facilitation, and achieved positive gains in literacy for their jarjums (students) taking important steps towards closing the gap between Indigenous and non-indigenous educational outcomes. This endeavour was so successful that the data obtained was utilised to gain approval for whole-school implementation. The experience highlighted for Jess the power of collegial collaboration to bring about significant, authentic and specific change for jarjums, teachers, and IEWs, and positively impact school policy, which has been a core aim of her teaching practice and leadership ever since.

In Term 3 2019, Jess returned from maternity leave and the birth of her second daughter to Hymba Yumba Independent School in a new role. As the sole Visual Art teacher from P-12 at HYIS, and a non-Indigenous person, it was immediately Jess’ priority to expand her knowledge of First Nations culture and to seek guidance from cultural and community representatives as to how she could forge connections through the Arts for their jarjums to a culture that is not hers to teach. Her answer was the Many People One Art initiative and artist-in-residency program; a series of workshops guided by Elders, facilitated by First Nation artists and led by Jess in which jarjums collaborated with each other, members of their community and cultural leaders to create artworks that empowered them to express their identities individually and collaboratively. The Many People One Art initiative included four key project across 2020 and 2021; the Rainbow Serpent project (2020), the Junior and Senior Tidda murals (2020), the Community and Unity workshop and public artwork (2020), and the TICASA Gallery and Store (2021). During the projects of this initiative, Jess was awestruck by her jarjums’ engagement, peer interactions and mentoring, and unprecedented willingness and fearlessness to try new skills and techniques. She was inspired by the power of their collaboration and their overwhelming response to an experience that authentically embedded their culture and offered them the freedom to lead their own learning. This was a pivotal point in Jess’ teaching. Having personally experienced, and now witnessed in her jarjums, the benefits of collaboration upon innovation and creativity; Jess has made it a central focus of her practice as an educator to continue fostering these skills in jarjums and colleagues as a mentor and facilitator of interdisciplinary team-taught project-based-learning.

In 2022, Jess brought her knowledge of storytelling, Arts and culture, and interdisciplinary learning to a newly created and innovative multi-arts role at St Augustine’s College Springfield. As a Lead Teacher and the Arts Specialist , Jess is excited to be part of a small team of educators being mentored by BCE Arts leadership in the delivery of innovative integrated (multi-arts) programming P-6 for ensuring that students experience all five art forms within a creative inquiry framework.