Professional Team

Victoria Coronado Guardia, Director

Vicky has been in the field of education for over 30 years. She was an elementary teacher, at Lincoln School and a school principal at Country Day School in Costa Rica. For 15 years, she was an international consultant for a world-renowned publishing company, Houghton Mifflin Harcout. In that position she has done extensive teacher training in Latin America, Europe, Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the Middle East. She has presented at Tesol conferences in Latin America, ASOCOPI in Colombia and has been a Key Note speaker at several academic events as well. She is an advisor for an NGO in Costa Rica, which works in the public sector.

She holds a Licenciatura in Literature from the University of Costa Rica and a Master’s Degree in Education from San Diego State University.

Publications:

Coauthored an English program called Language Links for Steck Vaughn.

Coauthored a Reading Methods Textbook for the Universidad Nacional a Distancia (UNED) in Costa Rica called “Lenguaje en Construcción I y II”, published December 2011.

She is a member of the advisory council for “Libros para todos”, an initiative from Grupo Nación to provide inexpensive textbooks for poor schools in Costa Rica.

Karyn Solis Ulate

Karyn Solis has been an elementary teacher and a teacher of English as a Foreign Language for 20 years. She holds a B. A. in English and a Licenciatura in English from the University of Costa Rica. She graduated with an Honor’s thesis “An Approach to Translation Pedagogy.” Karyn also holds a Master’s degree in Education from the University of Framingham.

Karyn is a coauthor of the English program published by Steck Vaughn Publishers called “Language Links.” Karyn developed the language functions for each lesson from Kinder.

Mónica Berrocal

Mónica is a psychologist specializing in early childhood development and infant-parent mental health issues. She currently works as a consultant for several early childhood projects in Costa Rica.

Mónica has been in research projects dealing with ADHD in children and families, infant social cognition, parent-child interactions and language development. Mónica also has experience in a cross-cultural peace education program where she has worked with people from 50+ countries all over the world.

She holds a degree in Psychology (Universidad de Costa Rica), a Master's degree in Human Development and Psychology (Harvard Graduate School of Education) and recently completed a fellowship in infant-parent mental health (University of Massachusetts).

Anne Curran

Anne Curran was born, raised and educated in Massachusetts where she completed her bachelor´s degree in Elementary Education. Since 1980 she has lived and worked in Costa Rica at Lincoln School. She completed her master´s degree in Education from Lesley College in 1989.

As a young learner Anne struggled with the beginning stages of reading and writing. This struggle made her very sensitive to the needs of the children she has worked with and quite ironically is the area of her teaching that she is the most passionate about. She continues to read and learn about the acquisition of language and enjoys sharing her experience and knowledge with other teachers.

Being a very kinesthetic learner Anne is always trying out new ways to teach and can offer teachers practical advice on how to encourage children to love reading and writing. She enjoys speaking to parents and teachers to coach them on their role in the development of lifelong readers.

M.Sc. Melissa Arias Soto

As an honor graduate in the field of Psychology and Education, her background as a teacher in early childhood education has been the foundation to lead research in early stimulation and teacher performance in the classroom. She has worked as a university professor, as well as in the design of graduate program courses.

During the last 10 years, she has worked at ADA in the design of its methodology in collaboration with experts at Harvard University. In 2008, she participated in the Preschool Program revision for the El Salvador Ministry of Education with Save the Children. Recently, she published the book Lenguaje en construcción I y II as a coauthor, now used for teacher training in Central America.

Melissa has visited multiple classrooms in several countries such as Chile, El Salvador, and United States; acquiring valuable experiences and participating as an international speaker. One of her most recent works is the design of interactive guides for the elementary school collection of LibrosparaTodos from GrupoNación, distributed around the country. In 2012, Melissa was elected National Representative for Costa Rica at World Forum on Early Care and Education.

Isella Ibarra

Isella has been an Elementary teacher for over 16 years in different International Schools in Costa Rica, Central America and Colombia. She has been a grade level coordinator who has been actively involved in Strategic Planning programs for School Improvement plans .

One of her passions besides teaching young children is teaching and inspiring teachers to leave a mark in their students. Ms. Ibarra has been a professor at the Teacher Training Institute from Universidad Colombo Americana in Colombia and Universidad Hispanoamericana in Costa Rica. She is currently teaching 3rd grade at Marian Baker School.

Isella has given courses on Effective Assessment and Best Practices in Reading and Writing. She holds a Bachelors Degree in English from Universidad de Costa Rica, a Masters Degree in Education from Framingham State College, Massachusetts and a Post Baccalaureate Degree in Educational Leadership from Lehigh University, Pennsylvania.

Sonya Brown

Sonya Vargas has been an educator for more than forty years. She has worked in elementary sites with the Universidad Nacional's Project: “Plan Piloto de la Enseñanza del Inglés” in Elementary Public Schools in Costa Rica. She was coauthor in the creation of the grades 1-6 programs.

She has taught at the Universidad Nacional and the Universidad Latina in the Master Programs in Costa Rica. She was coordinator of the English Department in Escuela de Literatura y Ciencias del Lenguaje and Interim Director of the Masters Program at CIDE, Universidad Nacional.

Sonya was Director of Country Day School in Costa Rica for six years, and has served as a presenter in teacher training workshops and conferences in Costa Rica and throughout Central America. She holds a B.S. in Education degree from Northeast Missouri State Teachers College and a Master’s degree in Education from Lesley College.

Marcela Sobrado

Marcela Sobrado has been in the field of education for 12 years. She worked as a learning specialist at the Middle School and High School level, helping students with their individual academic needs.

She also supported teachers to differentiate instruction in order to accomodate students’ special needs. Marcela has worked with individual students from elementary through High School in private personalized sessions, helping them learn about their learning styles and giving them the tools to become independent learners.

Marcela is certified as an Adventure Based Counselor and served as a link teacher in school Adventure Clubs, based on the Experiential Learning programs. She holds a B.A. in Education with Emphasis in Special Education from the University of Costa Rica.

Ana Eugenia Coen

Ana has worked in international schools here in Costa Rica as well as in the United States for around 17 years. Actually she is a kinder teacher at Country Day School.

In 2002 she got her Master’s Degree in Arts of Teaching from Grand Canyon University, Phoenix, Arizona.

She was the English Language Learner Facilitator at Tom Williams Elementary School in Las Vegas Nevada from 1997 through 2002. To be able to have this position she needed to get certified as a Bilingual teacher, having to complete 12 credit hours of University courses specifically design to promote English language acquisition. During this year her job as Facilitator required that she trained teachers to use different strategies and techniques to help their language learner students in the classroom. This experience helps her to see how important and how much she enjoyed training adults.

When she returned to Costa Rica she worked in Universidad Latina teaching different courses in her Bilingual Preschool Education program, as well as to help supervise students that were working on her professional practice experience.

Khullood Daryanani

Khullood Daryanani began to travel at a very young age, and over the years she has lived and worked in Asia, Europe, the United States, the Caribbean and Central America. At Grinnell College in Iowa she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in French and Western European Studies. Later, her interest in education and development led to a Master of Science degree in International Development Education from the University of Florida. She has 15 years of teaching experience at international schools, where she has taught middle school social studies, math and English.

Khullood’s particular area of interest is critical thinking. As a consultant, she has enabled teachers to incorporate critical thinking into their methodology and philosophy, such that students become independent, questioning, reflective learners, with love for the pursuit of knowledge.

Victoria de Fierro

Victoria de Fierro has been on the faculty at Lincoln School since 1973, where she is the Elementary Instructional Coach. Mrs. Fierro’s career as a classroom teacher began more than thirty eight years ago as a middle school and elementary Science and Math teacher. She served as Elementary Curriculum Coordinator for eighteen years before taking her current position.

Victoria has been an international educational consultant, coauthored an English program for second language learners called Language Links and has led numerous workshops in Costa Rica and throughout Central America. She holds a M.S. in Education from Lesley College, Boston, and Massachusetts.

Genny Barquero

VGenny Barquero has a degree from the Universidad Estatal a Distancia as an elementary school teacher , a B.A. in teaching English and an M.A. in Educational Administration from Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico. For 24 years she has worked in as a teacher in the areas of science, English literature, writing in English, conversational English, business English, and training for TOEIC and TOEFL tests. She currently works at the Fundación del Instituto Tecnológico de Costa as a trainer. In recent years she has served in the program-MEP- CONARE providing training for English teachers in service.