In 2017 Ibarcena joined GFA and is now a Global Studies Teacher. From the beginning, she was drawn to the interdisciplinary nature of the school’s curriculum. In many ways, it reflected her own educational journey: when she started down one path, she discovered that it intersected with another, and another, and so on, until she realized that each path related to the ones that came before and after.
Faculty spotlights
Faculty spotlight
In sixth grade, Joe Steiner realized he loved math. It wasn’t that he hated the subject before — he had always been an enthusiastic student — but this was the first time that a teacher enabled him to connect with the subject in a completely new and meaningful way.
Visual Arts Teaching Fellow Sahar Al-Sawaf has an incredible story to tell. It’s so important to her that as a filmmaker and animator she is inspired to tell it again and again in different ways. But it wasn’t always a story she felt comfortable telling.
Lower School Spanish teacher Eva Verduzco has made it her mission to approach her work differently. While she continues to teach the fundamentals, she infuses them with a heavy dose of organic culture.
Originally from Riberalta, a small Bolivian town along an Amazon tributary, Dr. Llanque left home at age 16 to attend an international school in Norway. With some 200 students representing more than 100 countries, the school provided him with an eye-opening experience.
“It made me realize very quickly how complicated the world was and how important it was to recognize that people have very different experiences, but we also face shared challenges,” he explained.