The button above links to a full instructional build- an ESL unit designed, tested, and documented.
I'm JediJill:
Jill W. Mucci - Learning Systems Builder & Educator
I turn complex STEM challenges into story-driven, standards-aligned learning that sticks. I build curriculum and instructional systems across STEM, robotics, AI, and project-based learning.
Key Strengths
I turn complex STEM challenges into story-driven, standards-aligned learning that sticks. I build curriculum and instructional systems across STEM, robotics, AI, and project-based learning.
Key Strengths
- Built and deployed multi-disciplinary STEM labs
- Led residential career & technical programs
- Designed cross-curricular units with measurable impact
- Building confident makers through developmentally appropriate design, creative problem-solving, and hands-on prototyping
- Designed and hosted community and industry engagement events with measurable impact
- Training staff to build confidence and fluency so STEAM is consistent and sustainable across year groups without adding strain
Students started calling me “JediJill” after deciding I “Jedi mind-tricked” them into learning.
In their words, they came to class for games, robots, and stories—and only later realised they had quietly learned complex science, mathematics, and communication skills. That blend of joy and rigour is the core of my teaching.
For School Leaders & Recruiters:
I’m currently pursuing Early Years–Primary classroom roles, including Design Technology, STEM, Robotics, Innovation, and age-appropriate AI-in-education integration, and I’m ready to relocate for the right school.
Currently, I’m the Program Coordinator at the Northwestern Alaska Career & Technical Center (NACTEC) in Nome, Alaska.
I oversee our residential secondary CTE/STEM programme. We’re a residential hub for remote Bering Sea villages, and our students fly in to train on multimillion-dollar heavy-equipment simulators, robotics, and career-tech programmes. My job is to take all that complex equipment, logistics, and diversity of learners and turn it into programmes where students feel like they’re in a game or a story, but they leave with real, industry-relevant skills.
I’m responsible for staff, schedules, behaviour systems, safeguarding, and ensuring that when students fly in from remote villages to live on campus, the experience is safe, structured, and worth the trip. We teach Culinary Arts, Driver's Ed., Heavy Equipment Operations, ATV and Snow Machine Repair, Aviation, Aviation Mechanics, Career Ed., and more in a residential setting.
On the side, I build combat robots with Team Kraken on the television programme, "BattleBots.
In addition to my work in elementary and middle school Design Technology classrooms, I am a robot fabricator for Team Kraken on the television programme BattleBots. Our builds use advanced industrial tools and processes, including CNC machining, water-jet cutting, plasma cutting, and professional-grade fabrication workflows.
In addition to modern fabrication tools, our team also uses traditional blacksmithing techniques, including a forge, to shape and harden steel components. Working across both old and new methods has given me a deep respect for materials science, process, and craftsmanship.
In my Design Technology classrooms, this translates into developmentally appropriate explorations of materials, force, and transformation using safe, accessible methods. Students learn that design and engineering are rooted in curiosity, experimentation, and respect for tools, whether those tools are centuries old or cutting-edge.
While young students never use industrial equipment, my hands-on experience with professional engineering tools deeply informs how I design age-appropriate studios. I translate real engineering practices into safe, developmentally appropriate design experiences using accessible materials, simple tools, and clear routines, helping even second-grade students understand how designers plan, test, iterate, and improve ideas.
My STEM work comes with real engineering constraints, real trade-offs, and real consequences when things fail spectacularly, which all kids and even adults love hearing about.
Flagship Experiences:
My whole-school STEAM Nights became a local legend. Nobody else was building events with performances featuring Doug Danger, 501st Legion stormtroopers, vortex cannons, a human-sized hamster-wheel snow-cone maker, combat robots, giant hoverboards, and student-built VR headset stations—all running smoothly because students from my lab were trained to run everything.
Fun in-lab activities also include:
- NACTEC Heavy-Equipment & STEM Integration: Students from remote Arctic villages train on multi-million-dollar heavy equipment simulators, coding robots and solving real engineering problems.
- JediJill’s Droid Lab: A grades K-12 robotics space where students design, build, solder, code, test, iterate, and present their learning using real robotics platforms.
- Design shelters based on our studies of local flora/fauna.
- Apply and use at least three of the six simple machines we’ve studied.
- Handle a medical emergency in their group and explain the illness or injury, the remedy, how it’s made, and what materials they used and learned about in our first aid units.
- Work in real math- time, distance, measurement, simple data- so it isn’t just “decorative numbers.”
- Produce outputs incorporating (robotics, coded and animated stories, or student-made flipbooks, films, video games, or performances).
- Decide at the end if they’re rescued…or trapped in time.
I teach my students to show what they learn:
Through S.T.E.A.M., robotics, iMovies, coded stories, games, plays, or visual art, students demonstrate mastery as long as it actually answers my questions or meets the rubric. Most of them have never really been taught how to code, plan a video, shoot a scene, or edit, so I teach the tools too: coding basics, how to storyboard, how to film and cut clips, add voiceover, titles, and turn it into something they’re proud to show.
Real-life "Miss Frizzle":
I’m the “science is magic that’s real” teacher. I build units where simple machines, prehistoric times, wilderness survival, first aid, flora and fauna, ELA, and maths all live inside one story and still make sense. The kids think they’re in a giant game; I know they’re quietly doing serious science, reading, writing, and problem-solving.
From the hallway, it looks busy; if you step inside, every student can tell you exactly what they’re working on and why.
I built Burns Science and Technology School’s first K–12 STEM lab and served as STEM Director at this project-based charter school in Florida for 13 years, where we earned the first Cognia (AdvancED) K-8 STEM accreditation in the state. My lab was where kids built their own robots, planned block-and-brick structures, ran a daily newscast, and worked on real-world problem- and place-based learning projects that didn’t neatly fit in a textbook.
Underneath all the robots and wild storylines, my job is simple:
Make school feel like an adventure, keep expectations crystal clear, and help kids walk away thinking, “I didn’t know I could do that.”
For my next adventure, I’m pursuing Early Years–Primary classroom roles and STEM/Design Technology/Robotics/Innovation positions, and I’m ready to relocate for the right school.
Full CV and references available upon request.
My Degrees:
Master of Arts in Elementary Education – University of Phoenix, 2008 (GPA 3.94)
Bachelor of Fine Arts, Digital Design & Visual Communication – American Intercontinental University, 2004, Summa Cum Laude (GPA 4.0)
Associate of Arts, Education (Minor: Computer Science) & Associate of Science, General Studies (Minor: Psychology) – Georgia Military College, 2003, Magna Cum Laude (GPA 3.9)
Master of Arts in Elementary Education – University of Phoenix, 2008 (GPA 3.94)
Bachelor of Fine Arts, Digital Design & Visual Communication – American Intercontinental University, 2004, Summa Cum Laude (GPA 4.0)
Associate of Arts, Education (Minor: Computer Science) & Associate of Science, General Studies (Minor: Psychology) – Georgia Military College, 2003, Magna Cum Laude (GPA 3.9)
Link to a WKMG-TV News 6 Report at our school:
My daughter Zoe Jane made these graphics for my Droid lab and I LOVE them!
The astronaut in the graphic is using the ASL sign for "machine"