Ms. Kim is from Los Angeles, California and studied at the University of Southern California, earning her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Elementary Education. For over 25 years, she has been teaching Elementary education as a classroom teacher in grades Pre-kindergarten through Grade 6. She also had the role of Literacy Coach and Literacy Support Teacher. She is passionate about Elementary education and believes students learn best through inquiry and play. She strives to honor student voice and empowerment while nurturing social-emotional development for students to feel safe and confident to take risks. This is Kim’s 6th year at St Paul American School. Previous to that, she spent 18 years teaching various roles in the Elementary school at the American School of The Hague in the Netherlands. She began her teaching career straight out of university teaching for 8 years in the Los Angeles Unified School district as a classroom teacher and Literacy Coach.
Joining her in her adventures in Vietnam are her husband, Gus (the High School College and Career Counselor and AP Coordinator at St. Paul) and three children, Oliver, Talia, and Indigo. She loves spending time and doing things as a family! She loves to ride bikes, read, travel, spend time at the beach, cook, practice yoga, and play with her family.
We really do nurture the whole child. We nurture their social emotional development. We nurture their academic growth. Children need love and they need to feel confident and safe in order to take academic risks…
…We want parents to know that we love their children. We want them to know that they’re safe and respected. We know that every child learns differently and grows at their own rate. Teachers have the autonomy to use whatever they need for the benefit of the students.
We work closely with our counseling team to ensure that students are prepared socially to make our the journey to middle school. We collect a lot of data on our students. We collect data from our standards from our social emotional development. It informs our instruction to shift to meet the needs of individual students.
We have a very close relationship with our parents and we believe that the partnership between parents and teachers is critical to students well-being. We know that parents are the first and true and best educators for their own children.
We are a small school and it allows us to be a family together. When kids are in small groups, they’re empowered to share more and the teacher really does understand their children’s specific needs and moves them forward. At our school, our children live our mission statement to be empowered, engaged, and educated global citizens.
