Camp Counselors
Nuvia Crisol Ruland is a multilingual scientist and artist who is passionate about professional learning and determined to transform education into spaces buzzing with curiosity and creativity.
As a designer and facilitator of professional development, she brings her unique personal and professional experience to support learners in designing their own PBL projects. During her decade as an 11th grade science teacher at High Tech High Chula Vista, Nuvia utilized her background as a research scientist at Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and a visual storyteller of her bicultural Mexican-American upbringing.
The projects that Nuvia and her teaching partners designed were infused with community partnerships that provided young people with opportunities to see themselves as creators, advocates, and activists. Facilitating learning experiences for adults is no different. Her workshops are labs where teachers learn alongside movers and shakers from the community, including students.
As a faculty member of the HTH Teacher Center, Nuvia applies her passion for neuroscience and education in her course, Brain Health and Social Emotional Development to first-year teachers. When she isn’t at HTH schools you will find her exploring museums, testing vegan recipes, and dreaming up new projects with her talented husband, family and friends.
Kali is an educator and consistently questioning. She has 16 years of high school and middle school teaching experience. 11 of these years as a PBL curriculum designer at HTH. She is inspired by the question that students often pose “Why do we need to do this? Why do we need to learn this? Why do we need to know this?” She enthusiastically designs projects that elevate student agency in the local and global community.
Rosemarie has taught elementary school for 20 years. She spent 10 of those years teaching and learning alongside Kindergartners at High Tech Elementary Chula Vista. She is most inspired by the unparalleled imagination of young children. Rosemarie is passionate about co-designing projects centered on children’s wonderings, stories, and play.
Ady Sukkar Kayrouz is a lifelong career educator who is comprehensively committed to serving education, humanity and equity. Her work is rooted in designing innovative frameworks that cultivate transformative educational practices focused on deeper learning and student engagement. Ady designs and facilitates professional development that is centered in fostering organizational culture and grounding foundations for systemic change and sustainable impact. As a young immigrant, Ady was positioned to understand the importance of prioritizing the value of the human experience in learning which defined the core principle of her professional journey in education. Ady served as a secondary English teacher, curriculum designer, instructional coach, instructional team leader and professional development designer for almost two decades before joining the High Tech High organization in 2015. She describes her initial experience in PBL practice and design as “coming home to education and learning.”
Ady served as a Humanities Teacher at HTH Media Arts before serving in leadership as the Dean of Students where she focused on creating human centric programs and designing systems to cultivate a culture of equity, inclusion, multiculturalism and access to fully support student agency and PBL practices. Ady also held the position of Program Coordinator for the M.Ed. in Educational Leadership, M.Ed. in Teaching and Learning, and New School Creation programs at the HTH Graduate School of Education. Currently, as a Professional Learning Designer at the HTH GSE, Ady works with teachers, practitioners, specialists, administrators, leadership and policy makers around the world to provide high quality design and facilitation of standing HTH GSE PBL adult learning offerings and customized professional development experiences. Ady speaks English, French, Arabic and Spanish.
