Russell Jaffe

Russell Jaffe is the Assistant Director of English-Language Arts at Fusion Global Academy, coaching and supporting ELA teachers and developing learning materials and sequences centered around reading, writing, rhetoric, and good ol’ critical thinking. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing from Beloit College, an MFA in Poetry from Columbia College, and a special certificate in Designing Courses for Significant Learning from the University of Oklahoma. He’s taught since 2006 and was a full-time English teacher at Fusion Oak Brook from 2017-2018, but spent 2019 as the on-air Literature Instructor for Course Hero, making summary and analysis videos of classic books, most of which are free to watch on YouTube.

Russell loves writing poetry, reading (he tries to read 100 books a year), going to art galleries, cooking, adventures with his wife and their 6-year-old daughter, and watching pro wrestling and mixed martial arts. In 2013, a piece of art he created and sold in Iowa City was left in an “art share box” downtown during a large art festival. The box’s purpose was to take a piece and leave one in its place, a fun and free way to enjoy art. But it went terribly wrong, as his piece was a painted-on old portable TV. Someone saw the antenna poking out of the box, and that led to the bomb squad being called, the entire downtown Iowa City area going on lockdown, and the story making international news of the weird headlines and art infamy!