Nick Jaffe

Nick Jaffe is a musician, literary and academic editor, author, teaching artist, recording engineer and former Chief Editor of the Teaching Artist Journal. In collaboration with his colleagues Becca Barniskis and Barbara Hackett-Cox Nick is the author of The Teaching Artist Handbook: Tools, Techniques and Ideas to Help any Artist Teach (University of Chicago Press). Nick has taught music, audio production and sound design in a wide variety of in-school and other contexts; as a teaching artist his focus has been on student-run recording studios in schools and experimental music pedagogy. Nick has done curriculum design and teaching artist professional development for many different organizations with a particular emphasis on helping teaching artists leverage their own specific expertise and interests as a basis for a powerful and satisfying teaching practice. Nick performs regularly as a guitarist with a wide variety of musical projects across many genres. One of his recent solo projects is an album that chronicles the history of the Sputnik I satellite. Nick has performed with Common, Dwele, Estelle and Syleena Johnson and has done music for film and advertising. Prior to becoming a teaching artist Nick worked for ten years as an aircraft mechanic and instructor for major airlines.