Gianfranca Loi

Gianfranca is a UK-qualified primary teacher who specialises in teaching bilingual children. She was born and raised in Italy, while educated and trained in both the United States and the United Kingdom. She has over 20 years of teaching experience, including PYP. She holds a PGCE from the University of East Anglia and an MEd from the University of Birmingham. She is completing her PhD in Education (Culture, Curriculum, and Teacher Education) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she also gained experience working as a research assistant and teaching Comparative and international education courses. Her interest lies in the approaches toward language maintenance and second language acquisition and how these are facilitated by school educators and families.

Gianfranca will join Copperfield's Early Years team this Autumn as a classroom teacher, as well as delivering language lessons to students in secondary age groups.She speaks English and Italian, and loves teaching young children because she gets to be very creative while organizing activities inspired by their imagination. Throughout her career, she has learned that children love to be the protagonists of their own activities, so her aim in her lessons is to provide a lively and creative environment where they can feel safe, cared for, and free to learn and explore while respecting each other. 

 

She enjoys aerobics, dancing, and volleyball, and is passionate about comparative education, culturally responsive teaching, developmental science, and psychology. Gianfranca is also strongly interested in philosophy, literature, and human rights. She is an avid reader of children’s books, classics, and neo-realism literature. Other hobbies include painting and creating artistic projects, inspired by children’s imagination. She strongly supports Montessori, Reggio Emilia, and Waldorf pedagogical approaches. Her favourite quotes are "The child is both a hope and a promise for mankind"; "To have another language is to possess a second soul".