Jason Delgatto

Jason brings a unique blend of experiences that include classroom teaching, designing and implementing wide-scale teacher trainings, managing blended curriculum product development, and providing instructional leadership across urban school districts. As the Vice President, Curriculum & Research for The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), Jason oversees the programmatic vision, instructional framework, and evaluation strategy for an interdisciplinary, project-based curriculum used in an international network of almost 60,000 students and 1,000 teachers annually. An Illinois native, Jason earned his BS in Physics, Secondary Education, from Northern Illinois University and his MA from DePaul University with a focus on using dialogic communication in science education.

Jason’s unique career began by teaching physics in a Chicago public school. Working at a school within a rapidly re-gentrifying neighborhood, Jason concluded how much socio-economic variables influence the quality of education that a student is able to access. Teaching at-risk students who had absorbed the low expectations of their school, Jason transformed the learning into authentic, problem-based experiences through thematic units and design challenges for his students. Jason’s commitment and re-imagining of the curriculum were so well-received by the administration and other faculty that Jason decided to pursue instructional design opportunities further.

After working in more traditional curriculum and professional development settings, Jason was fortunate to discover NFTE. NFTE partners with schools in low-income areas and sets up interdisciplinary entrepreneurship courses during the school day to engage at-risk youth, while preparing them to pursue successful post-secondary college and career pathways. The course encourages students’ non-cognitive skill growth through the research, writing, and defense of a unique business plan. His recent successes at NFTE include the authoring and publication of NFTE 13th edition textbook edition as well as leading the launch of NFTE’s first completely online courses in the years since the pandemic.

Jason is extremely excited about working closely with the entire Purple Pen team! He believes that The Purple Pen’s mission of putting the control of learning in the hands of the teachers and students is an innovative solution to inequities across education. He hopes to lend his experience around training and coaching large-scale teacher networks on using instructional tools to help The Purple Pen determine the best approaches to supporting and growing Purple Pen teachers professionally.