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    Mr. Jesse Encapera

              I am honored and excited for my second year as Assistant Principal and Special Education Designee for Trailside Middle School.  I was a member of the Pioneer Pack at Trailside during my first year in Loudoun County and helped open the school during the 2014 – 2015 school year.  I graduated from West Virginia University’s Five Year Benedum Collaborative, where I specialized in Secondary Mathematics.  After graduation, I spent nine years teaching at Millbrook High School in Winchester, Virginia.  My primary focus for my last seven years in the classroom was Geometry, but I also have experience teaching Algebra I, Algebra II, and Trigonometry.  I also earned a master’s degree from George Mason University in Education Leadership as a member of a cohort program that ended in the Summer of 2012.  I worked as the Sixth Grade Dean at Harper Park Middle School in Leesburg for the 2015 – 2016 school year and was an Assistant Principal at Farmwell Station Middle School from 2016 – June 2019.
              I am originally from California, Pennsylvania, which is a small town in Southwestern Pennsylvania.  I moved to Virginia after completing my studies at WVU, and my wife joined me after completing her studies the following December.  We have two wonderful children - Ava and Calogero.  We are all HUGE Steeler fans.  When I am not working, I enjoy spending time with my family, watching the Steelers and ANY college football game (especially Penn State, Auburn, and WVU!), and watching movies.  I was the Head Freshman Football Coach at Heritage High School (GO PRIDE!) for three seasons (2013 - 2015) and contributed on Friday nights by tracking the team's statistics and processing the team's game film until the end of the 2018 season.  I now enjoy taking my children to different games on Friday nights.
              I hope to make your children's experiences at Trailside Middle School beneficial and help them successfully progress through middle school.  I have experience implementing the Blended Learning model of instruction in my mathematics classrooms for my last three years in the classroom.  I have included links to my Algebra I and Geometry lesson videos as an additional resource for our students.  I am a big supporter of Personalized Learning, Project Based Learning, and Performance Based Assessments.  As a teacher, I wanted to help my students learn the content that I taught in as many ways possible, as they may be the most important for their future success in mathematics.  The problem-solving processes learned in Algebra I and Geometry will be vital for their future mathematics courses.  As an administrator, I hope to continue using my classroom experiences to help the students and teachers at Trailside continue to successfully incorporate the Personalized Learning teaching strategies into their lessons and classwork.  I hope to help make the students' time in the classroom full of positive and valuable learning experiences.