Las Terrenas International School            

Preschool - Victoria Harbison has lived in the DR for last 4 years originally from the USA
Kindergarten/Preprimary - Carmen Alvarez Irigoyen - joining us from London, originally from Spain
1st grade or 1st/2nd combined and/or tutoring/academic support - Viviana Correa Ronderos (Lead Teacher/teaching the Spanish section) - joining us from Bilbao, Spain
2nd grade or 2nd/3rd combined - Morgan Owen - joining from Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
3rd/4th combined and Drama - Kate Murphy (returning) - from Ireland via Spain.
5th/6th combined - Holly Sancomb (Language Arts, Spanish) and Mathew Sancomb (Science and Math) joining us from Portland, Oregon USA
7th/8th combined - Mathew Sancomb (Science and Math) and Holly Sancomb (Language Arts, Spanish) joining us from Portland, Oregon USA.

Valerie Gantou, French.

Scott Mashek, retired teacher, storytelling.

Olga Solapova, Russian.

Kyura Yi, Korean volunteer, ukulele, guitar, band.

Stephanie, assistant teacher preschool.

Baldwin and Mindy North, visiting artis and art teachers from Lost Planet, North Carolina.

Deirdre Humphrey, retired volunteer teacher.

Puran McFadden, retired volunteer teacher.

John Choi, Korean volunteer, information technology.

Jesenia Hernández, student from the University of the Basque Country, volunteer in social education and academic tutoring.

Marta Luja, student from the University of the Basque Country, volunteer in social education and academic tutoring.

Javi Javier, volunteer to teach circus and percussion.

Robert, math tutoring.

 

Annette Marie Snyder

Principal

Annette is the co-founder of LTIS.  She feels strongly that children should be motivated to become creative entities, self-discipline and independent thinkers.  Born in Hillsboro, Oregon, she lives in Las Terrenas with her spouse, Jose, and her kids Kiran and Ana Evelyn.  Snyder has a masters in education and 20 years of working experience in a variety of settings.  He created Mariposa Azul American School, the predecessor of LTIS and since the beginning of Fundacion Mahatma Gandhi in 2005 he was director of library services at Biblioteca Anacaona.  She loves the outdoors, is an avid reader and enjoys travelling and ethnic foods.  She's travelled over 45 countries in six continents, biked across the U.S. from West Coast to East Coast and in Europe.  She enjoys camping and jogging, is an excellent swimmer, and while in college participated competitively in cross-country sports.

 

 

Holly Sancomb 

Holly has been a Language Arts, Spanish, and ESL teacher at Estacada High School in the small town of Estacada, Oregon for the last 12 years. She enjoys incorporating art, creativity, and cultural explorations into her lesson planning. During her tenure in Estacada, she took a two-year leave of absence to teach Language Arts to eighth and ninth grade students at the American School of Tampico in Tampico, Mexico. She loved living on the beach and experiencing the vibrant Mexican culture with her students there. 
Outside the classroom, Holly enjoys running, dancing, skiing, reading, and generally spending time outdoors with her two young children.  Holly holds a Masters of Teaching from Portland State University and a B.A. in English from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA. She studied Spanish in Costa Rica where she lived and worked as an English teacher. She continued her Spanish studies at language schools in Guatemala and Mexico and has traveled throughout Central America. She holds a middle level endorsement as a bilingual ESL educator and a high school endorsement in Spanish and Language Arts.

 

Morgan Owen 

Morgan graduated from Drake University with a degree in secondary education and endorsements in all social sciences and Spanish and joins us with a wide variety of teaching experiences. Morgan has taught high school and middle school Spanish and Kindergarten English Language Development. She also has taught English in South Korea and Costa Rica. Athletic coaching and curriculum development are other experiences that she's excited to share with us.  Relationship building and meaningful, authentic learning are at the heart of Morgan's teaching philosophy. Other than education, her passions include travel and culture, human rights, the environment, sports, and delicious food. 

 

Carmen Alvarez Irigoyen

"I am a  Spanish educator also fluent in English and Portuguese. I also hold TEFL certificate.  Having spent the last 4 years in London, where I have been teaching children from 0-6 years old , the last 2 of these years in a multicultural Public School.  I have experience with different teaching methodologies , specially Montessori although I found really positive to learn about different educational styles.

I am always motivated to acquiring new skills, to continue creating free and stimulating spaces, where with respect for their different levels and interests, children can develop to be a happy, unique, creative and independent person in community.

One of my passions is travelling and learning about other cultures and ethnicities. This and the love of working with children are the reasons why I have volunteered in training position in India, USA and Europe.

In my spare time I love being outdoors, camping and enjoying all types of water sports"

 

Matthew Sancomb

Matthew spent the first 7 years of his career as a vagabond educator and youth trip leader. During that time he served in Americorps, taught English, and worked as an outdoor educator. Eventually, Matthew found that he truly enjoyed working with middle school students and science education. He joined Portland Public Schools in Oregon (USA) as a science and math teacher in 2002 and has been happily helping Portland kids explore and discover the wonders of the world around them ever since.  Matthew has also served a variety of leadership roles while working for PPS including instructional facilitator, grant coordinator, and team leader.  Matthew did take a leave of absence from 2006-8 and taught in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico.  He loved the culture, landscape, people, and language of Mexico and looks forward to exploring and learning more about La Republica Dominicana. 

Matthew strives to make his classroom a wonderful place for students to follow their curiosity and find inspiration in places they never expected.  He values projects that blend art, writing, media, technology, and math.  He believes that good instruction blends clear goals, flexibility, and inspiration from the students.

When he is not teaching, Matthew enjoys running, riding his bike, and playing soccer.  He also loves the water and hopes to swim, paddle, and sail around Las Terrenas any chance he can get.  While living in Las Terrenas, he also hopes to further his appreciation for baseball and spend time lots of time playing on the beach with his children, Henry and Lucia. 

He holds a Master of Arts in Teaching from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon and a B.A. in English from the George Washington University in Washington, DC (USA). He holds middle level (ML) and high school (HS) endorsements in Integrated Science and English, as well as ML endorsements in math and social studies. 

 

Victoria Harbison

Victoria is currently teaching preschool and training preschool teachers near San Pedro de Macoris. She also has over six years of experience passionately working as a youth advocate both in the US and the DR at all grade levels.  She has facilitated teacher trainings here in the DR on a variety of early childhood development stages, age-appropriate game and activity planning, behavioral management strategies, and attachment theory with an emphasis on encouraging mindfulness practice in early childhood education settings.  She graduated from the University of Iowa with a bachelor’s degree in International studies and Women’s studies in 2009, before moving to the Dominican Republic from Georgia in 2010 as a Peace Corps volunteer.  She served for three years in an old sugar production town near San Pedro de Macoris where her main projects targeted adolescent life skills development, HIV prevention, and improved parenting skills.  Her personal interests include reading, developing empathy, exploring all things cultural, and community service.  

 

Kate Murphy

Kate is a bilingual English/Spanish educator from Ireland. Having spent the last 5 years living in Madrid, Spain, where she was teaching infant, primary and secondary school, she is now teaching drama and languages at LTIS. For the first two years in Spain she taught children from 2-18 years of age, with most of them between 2 and 8 years of age. She also taught in a language academy that used only ludic methods, as well as rhythm, song and movement, to teach English. She became very interested in creative methodologies and started a Masters in Education, specialising in Drama in Education. 

 

In 2011, I began teaching in Colegio Base known for its progressive ideology. There, she was the main drama teacher, as well as a tutora, Science and English teacher in 2nd-5th grade of primary. She implemented the skills learned in her Master´s programme and developed drama resources for English and Science learning.

 

After completing her Master´s in Education she returned to Ireland to spend some time at home while looking for an exciting opportunity. Las Terrenas School was particularly interesting to her for several reasons. The creative, learner-centred approach to education is very much in line with everything she had been learning about and implementing in her own work over the last 5 years. From research and personal experience shes known that playful environments are incredibly conducive to learning. As a Science teacher, she strongly believes in hands-on learning and the discovery of knowledge by the learner, rather than purely didactic methods.

 

Sabine Smičiklas

Sabine graduated from the IST-Studieninstitut GmbH with a certification in sports and health and has worked in her field for over 12 years.  Born in Germany, she ran her own kindergarted for holistic sports and tennis, receiving honors and recognition for his success in fostering higher concentration and emotional stability, as well as greater academic focus among her students.  Sabine was also a competitive swimmer and member of the olimpic team for that discipline.  Besides teaching tennis, she has also participated in the tennis world tour (WTA). 

Sports, mindful body movements and exercise for all levels.

She lives in Las Terrenas with her husband and their three daughters, teaching tennis, body awareness, swimming and individualized physical training. 

 

José R. Bourget Tactuk, Ph.D.

President, Fundación Mahatma Gandhi

José has more than 30 years of professional experience, most of them dedicated to educational administration in international, intercultural and multicultural programs.  He's managed services for international students, for study abroad programs and fostering multicultural mindset and action.  He's also worked in professional, personal and organizational development, assisting groups and organizations with systems thinking and systems-driven organizational change.  José has travelled, worked or lived in over 45 countries in Africa, Europe, Central Asia, the Pacific and the Americas, often conducting professional development workshops for local and multicultural teams.  With his spouse, Annette, founded Fundacion Mahatma Gandhi at the end of 2005, a small community organization dedicated to community development in Las Terrenas, the birth place of LTIS.  He's currently a professor in the Humanites Department at University of Maryland University College, where he teaches online the class of myths in the world, introduction to the humanities and culture and technology.   He was born in Santo Domingo and has lived with his family in Las Terrenas since early 2003.  He considers LTIS to be the most transcendental contribution of Fundacion Mahatma Gandhi to the community because of its eventual impact, helping create a generation of citizens that are multilingual, multicultural, self-disciplined, well-schooled, avid readers and devoted to community service.   José is an avid reader who enjoys the outdoors and has a profound interest in protecting the environment and in community service.  He's a writer, poet and blogger.