Misty Paterson, M.A; PhD Student in Arts Education

Misty is a trusted leader in responsive teaching practices and a lifelong learner herself. As a teacher, parent, seasoned facilitator, and certified Concept-Based consultant with over 20 years of teaching experience, Misty founded Pop-Up Studio and authored the best-selling Pop-Up Studio book, to champion a creative approach to education. Misty empowers teachers of all kinds to integrate concepts, inquiry and play into multimodal studio spaces at their kitchen table, around a microscope, under a tree, across a classroom desk– or anywhere really! Spanning dozens of countries and thousands of learners, Misty’s research and practice supports a global movement to ‘pop-up’ curriculum with hands-on experiences that inspire meaningful, memorable, and merry learning for all.

Follow Misty on Twitter @PatersonMisty and Instagram @popupstudioed.

Renato Zaragoza lives and works in Southern California at Summit High School. He is entering his 8th year of Special Education as an Education Specialist. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology, a
Masters degree in Psychology with a focus on Human Behavior, and a Master’s degree in Special Education.
His experience centers around working with emotionally disturbed students and has specialized in Vital and Integral Skills Training for Adolescents (VISTA). He has a passion for understanding learning differences in all
students and diversifying teaching strategies to meet their socio-emotional, cognitive, and behavioral needs of all students. He is a firm believer that all students with their differences can be successful in their learning process.

Merav Segal is a psychotherapist who practices in New York City and specializes in emotionally focused, attachment-based therapy. She helps people to reach under the surface into underlying issues and longings in order to help them understand and empathize with themselves and others, thus healing through safety and connection.
Merav received her graduate degree in Clinical Social Work from New York University, and her LLB in Law from Tel Aviv University. She brings a combination of compassion and no-nonsense intellect into her work and uses the wisdom of the body to help people heal. She is experienced in working with cross-cultural issues, parenting issues and the LGBTQ community. She is an IB Graduate and, as such, possesses the skills and understanding to help schools to devise systems to support students to maximize their potential.

Loredana is a certified teacher trainer and certified ESL/EFL teacher with over twenty-five years of experience. She started teaching British, American, and World literature, composition, and grammar in international schools in Panama City, Costa Rica, and the United States twenty-five years ago. She spent a year at Ramapo College, NJ where she taught Spanish and Italian as Foreign Languages.

Since 2014, Loredana has been teaching in Beijing, China. She has taught IB MYP Language & Literature and Language Acquisition. Loredana has also been the Service as Action and Service Learning Coordinator, and the creator of the Service as Action Assistants program (SAA).

Loredana has been presented at TESOL conferences, and led a range of service-oriented workshops in China, and has devised innovative ways to engage teachers in reflection of approaches to writing, grammar, modern poetry and other language aspects. She speaks four languages: her mother tongue, Italian, English, Spanish, French and has basic knowledge of several others including Russian.

Ceci is a collaborator, co-teacher and coach who empowers educators to create learning opportunities to suit all language learners’ needs. She has been the leader of an ELL support program based on support practices within a sheltered immersion philosophy and the use of differentiation strategies. She is an innovator, Apple Distinguished Educator and COETAIL graduate who effectively integrates eLearning tools and contemporary practice to enhance learning across all divisions for ELLs and all students.

Carlos began in education back in the late 90's when his mother convinced him to become an English teacher in Guatemala. Since then his career has taken him to Italy, China and now Vietnam as he found a passion for Physical Education later in life. Throughout his career, he's been able to learn from amazing colleagues and has been able to explore and try new things as an educator. Carlos is a Google Educator and became a Google Certified Innovator in 2016 through his work with passion projects. A self-proclaimed “moonshot thinker”, Carlos likes to challenge the idea that we should always think bigger and aim higher when planning our students’ futures.

Highly influenced by the works of her fellow countrymen Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of Hope & Pedagogy of the Oppressed), Dr Glau Serralvo is a passionate and caring educator, who strives to design learning environments of excellence with a humane approach. While her academic research has focused on language development in the content areas and its articulation through K-12 curriculum, her personal interests have allowed her to contribute to the consolidation of rigorous and impactful learning models that place students at the centre of the process. She is a believer of the power of collaboration, self-actualization and the conception of learning models that help to improve holistic learning. Her work focuses on educational leadership, language access, and differentiation.

Diego Zaragoza Tejas is the Head of Lower School and Interim Director of Academic Affairs (K-12) at The American School Foundation in Mexico City. He grew up in California where he obtained his B.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. He then obtained his M.Ed. in Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a leadership certificate for international schools from the Principal’s Training Center. Diego has held teaching positions in the early years, elementary and high school. For the past 8 years he has worked as an education consultant for schools in the United States, Africa and Latin America and has also been an IB Educator holding the roles of teacher trainer, consultant, school evaluator and service developer. His areas of focus are in leadership, curriculum development and alignment, elementary education and leading through strategic vision. He is fluent in English, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.