About Me​​

A passion for teaching language and connecting across cultures

Laura moved from the US to Europe as a 7-year-old. Her first language-learning experiences occurred growing up in in Italy and later in France. As a child, she experienced full cultural and linguistic immersion in public schools, becoming fluent in first Italian, and then French. In high school in France she studied German, and Spanish and then also began formal study of Italian. In the United States for college, she earned a BA in Romance Languages and MA in Education. As an adult she took on the study of Chinese.

Her teaching has been inspired by many wonderful teachers who exposed her to an array of teaching styles over the years

She began her teaching career in community colleges, teaching English as a Second Language, then moved to elementary French and Spanish at San Domenico School in San Anselmo, CA. For the past 31 years she taught middle and high school French and Spanish at Head-Royce School in Oakland and has just recently “graduated” to private tutoring and teaching.

With an Italian mother and extensive family in Italy, as well as strong ties to friends from high school and throughout life in France she is very connected to her European background. She has traveled with students to France, Spain, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, as well as with family to many more countries in Latin America and around the world.

When not traveling or teaching, she can be found studying painting at her home in Berkeley, planting food and flowers, and hiking in the Berkeley hills with her partner and their dog, River.