Paola Gagliardo

Paola’s passion is to ignite student curiosity in students through inquiry, language, and culture and has taught across all grades from kindergarten to high school. She currently teaches at the International School of Portland, a language immersion school in Portland, Oregon. In 2004, she co-founded one of the first language immersion schools in the region: The Language Academy. Paola also taught Spanish as a Second Language in several Catholic and private schools. In 2022, Paola translated Kimberly’s book Experience Inquiry into Spanish so that Spanish speaking teachers could have an easy-to-read manual and practical tools to bring inquiry into their classrooms. Last year, she presented the Inquiry Five Strategies at the IB World Conference in San Diego and at the Crafting Inquiry Conference through the Spear Center in Portland, Oregon.

Paola was born and raised in Quito, Ecuador and graduated in 2000 with a B.S. in Chemical and Industrial Engineering and a Minor in Psychology from Universidad San Francisco de Quito. Paola completed her Masters in Neuropsychology and Education in 2020.