Our Team
Hai-Anh Vu - Founder & Director ​
Hai-Anh Vu grew up in Hanoi, Vietnam, and received her Bachelor of Arts from Bowdoin College (Brunswick, ME), where she majored in Economics and French and minored in Gender Studies. A marketer by profession, she has lived, studied, and worked in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, New York City, Washington D.C., Toulouse, and Hong Kong, before landing on Whidbey Island in 2020 where she now lives with her husband and two school-age children on a farm in Greenbank.
A liberal arts college graduate and an avid educator at heart, Hai-Anh deeply believes in giving children a well-rounded education with global perspectives. Inspired by the many enrichment programs for children she saw in big cities, she wants to create similar opportunities for children like hers in Whidbey through Whidbey Island Language, Art & STEM Center. Hai-Anh now oversees all aspects of WILASC, though her most favorite parts are meeting parents and students and creating new class offerings.
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Justin MacDonald - Coding Instructor
Justin grew up in the Seattle area and has a PhD in Quantitative Psychology from Purdue University. He has been college faculty since 2007 and regularly teaches graduate coding classes. He has extensive experience with a number of programming languages, including Python and Matlab. Justin teaches coding for the afterschool and summer programs at WILASC, where he routinely engages students to code through creative, out-of-the-box coding exercises.
JiuYu Xiao, Art Instructor
Jiuyu is an Integrated Creative Art Instructor with backgrounds in various medium. Her art follows an integrated approach combining Body-based Arts, Buddhism, Taoism, Yoga, and Waldorf Education. A Chinese native born to a Buddhist family, Jiuyu spent her childhood and teenage years traveling and living around the globe, where she found her passion for nature and community building. In teaching art, Jiuyu uses elements of movement, storytelling, meditation, art-making, and weaves together multiple aspects of the creative being.
Jiuyu graduated from the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago. She has experience in teaching both young children and adults. She believes that for young children especially, art is one of their primary languages of communicating with the outside world. Through art, children can process emotions and soften their approach to the world. They build capacity for reverence,and learn to express love in a non-linear way.
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Jiuyu is teaching art classes for WILASC both at the South Whidbey Community Center and the Whidbey Island Waldorf School. She taught six summer camps in 2023 and will teach three camps in 2024.
Claudia Kiyama, Spanish Instructor
Claudia was born and raised in the surrealist magic that is Mexico City. After earning her BA in Architecture in Monterrey, Claudia returned to Mexico City to graduate from the Masters in Architecture program at Mexico’s National School of Preservation and Restoration. Claudia has worked as a preservation architect in Mesoamerican ruins, Colonial World Heritage sites, modern buildings and rural cultural landscapes.
Parallel to her career in architecture, Claudia has been involved in education most of her adult life. From private tutoring to homework support as community service, teaching assistant at her daughter’s preschool, and as Design and History of Architecture Professor at her alma mater. Claudia is teaching Latinamerican and Spanish culture at the Whidbey Island Waldorf School.
Ariel Starlight - STEAM Instructor
Ariel Starlight is a state-certified teacher with a Master of Arts in Teaching degree. She has endorsements in Health/Fitness, Art, and Middle Grades Mathematics, Middle Grades Humanities, and English Language Arts.
Ariel brings her unique skills and passion for teaching into any classroom. She aims to be flexible with shifting needs and continue to pursue additional endorsements and areas of expertise to be able to support students in many subject areas as needed and present an integrated interdisciplinary approach to any subject. Ariel also has a deep commitment to her students and brings rich, diverse life experiences to her teaching to relate to and inspire students. She has a love of hands-on and discussion-based learning that allows the students to be active participants in their education.
Barbara Dupuis, Chess Instructor
Barbara Dupuis is a retired teacher who has taught for over 30 years across elementary school grades. She has a passion for working with young children and has dedicated her career to helping children thrive. Barb experienced a love of chess by watching her own son compete at the national level. She has taught years of chess camps and after-school programs in large elementary schools and loves to bringing the gift of chess to the community with WILASC's STEM program.
Maria Ellis, Russian Language & Culture Instructor
Maria Ellis, PhD, comes from a family of educators. She holds advanced degrees in education from the University of Russian Academy of Education and Seattle Pacific University in geophysics. Born and raised in Russia, where she has traveled extensively, she has resided with her husband Arthur on Whidbey Island for the last 15 years.
As a program manager at the Northwest Language and Cultural Center to which she dedicated a decade of her life, Maria has designed, managed, and taught numerous and diverse language and cultural awareness programs for children and adults, which included language and culture summer camps, after school clubs, and Global Cultures Experience K-12 at local schools.
Maria believes that education should be active, engaging, project-based, developing teamwork skills, and reflective thinking habits. She strives to help her students to achieve all-round excellence in their lives and learning. Maria is fluent in Russian, English, Spanish, and French, and feels she has a calling to bridge cultures and contribute to peace and well-being for all on this planet.
Kimmer Morris - Music Instructor
Kimmer spent her childhood on Whidbey Island and enjoyed playing piano, then recorder, then settled on the violin through Island Strings with the Suzuki Method. She also was very involved with the High School band on Saxophone, Jazz Choir, and theater. After obtaining her Music Education degree fro Western Washington University in Bellingham, Kimmer taught K-7 music at South Whidbey School District for 31 years, teaching general music, recorders, ukulele, orchestra, choir, movement, P.E., Highly Capable program, Jr. Waste Warrior recycling program and helped start the very first Good Cheer School Garden. During this time she also earned her Masters in Creative Arts and Learning, was a founding member of Whidbey Island Marimba, and performed in numerous bands either playing the violin, viola, voice, saxophone, ukulele, or harmonium.
In 2017 Kimmer resigned from South Whidbey School District and became a Certified Hanna Somatic Educator and Fascia Release Instructor which she continues to do today, part-time.
Kimmer is the ukulele teacher for our afterschool program at the Whidbey Island Waldorf School.
Claudia Sámano-Losada, Spanish Instructor & Language Program Advisor
Claudia is an educational & cultural enrichment facilitator and an experienced Spanish instructor. She is the founder and former director of InMotion, a recreational movement inclusive studio in Oak Harbor, which she operated for over 11 years. A native Mexican, Claudia invented BILMP® (Bilingual Integrated Learning & Movement Program), an enriched program recognized by the state of Washington, focused on literacy, cultural awareness, socio-emotional learning, Comprehensive Input (CI), movement and music. Claudia is a certified Early Childhood Educator and serves as the US President and an Advisor Board Officer of the International Chamber of Language Teachers (ICLT).
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Claudia moved to Arizona in 2022 but keeps her connection with Whidbey strong. She is the Spanish & Cultural Awareness Instructor for Woodhaven High School, and now serves as an advisor and trainer for WILASC’s foreign language programs.
