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Building Cultural Competency: Essential Skills ...
Building Cultural Competency: Essential Skills for a Complex World
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Middle Schoolers Design Clients' Dream Homes

Middle school students met with clients (many of whom were international and based in China), scheduled their own meetings, and consulted with clients to build their dream sustainable homes. Students then executed these plans by designing and building models of these dream homes - all while learning more about sustainable housing design. This project exemplifies how students learn through authentic interdisciplinary bilingual projects.

Middle Schoolers Design Clients' Dream Homes

Head of School

Chris Livaccari Named 2025 Global Educator of the Year

Salomon Prize Announcement, Global Educators Conference, Miami, FL, April 2025

PKS Head of School, Chris Livaccari, has been awarded the Salomon Prize for the 2025 Global Educator of the Year by the Institute for Global Learning. The Prize recognizes educators who demonstrate both innovation in global education at their school, as well as contribution to the field of global education at large.

This consortium of over 400 schools in 23 countries is dedicated to advancing international partnership and global exchange, and to building their students' global and intercultural competencies. 

The announcement was made at the organization's annual Global Educators Conference in Miami, with Chris in attendance.

(Full announcement below.)

The Institute for Global Learning (formerly the Global Education Benchmark Group) is pleased to share that the Salomon Prize for the 2025 Global Educator of the Year is awarded to Chris Livaccari, Head of School at Presidio Knolls School in San Francisco, California for his continued commitment to innovation in both multilingual education and educational partnerships between the US and China. Chris was recognized for his accomplishments at the 12th annual Global Educators Conference in Miami, Florida. 

Over the past 25 years, Chris has built a remarkable career dedicated to fostering multilingual, globally engaged citizens. Beginning as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, he transitioned into education, working with the Asia Society where he created a global partnership network linking schools across the U.S. and China. He later took on leadership roles at Silicon Valley International School and, since 2018, has served as Head of School at Presidio Knolls School (PKS), a bilingual Mandarin immersion school in San Francisco.

Under his leadership, PKS has grown from a startup into a thriving model of inquiry-based, multilingual education. Despite current U.S.-China tensions, Chris has strengthened the school's engagement with the Chinese-speaking world utilizing his skills in both innovative education and diplomacy. Through his work in schools and his writing, including New Ways of Seeing, Chris's contributions to language learning and global education have inspired educators and students alike to embrace linguistic and cultural fluency.

“Under his leadership, PKS has grown from a startup into a thriving model of inquiry-based, multilingual education. ”
— Institute for Global Learning

Building the Future of Bilingual Education

Almost ten years ago, I wrote an article titled "Academic Rigor and Student Engagement: A Perfect Match." While many feared that they would need to sacrifice student engagement in the service of academic rigor, I argued strongly that academic rigor could ONLY genuinely come together with student engagement, and that truly rigorous learning at its core needed to be about exploration, discovery, creativity, inquiry, and pattern recognition.

Message from Incoming Head Chris Livaccari

I am absolutely thrilled at the prospect of becoming your next Head of School in July 2018.  I would like to thank all of the students, teachers, staff, parents and board members that took the time to meet with me during my visit to school and with whom I have interacted over the last few weeks.  I especially appreciated the time I spent in Chinese answering the most challenging questions of all – from the PKS third graders!

Exciting Head of School News

Chris Livaccari, a distinguished language immersion educator, Mandarin scholar, Mandarin speaker, and author, has been named our next Head of School by unanimous vote of the Board of Trustees. Among the highly talented candidates who visited the school in recent months, Chris stood out for his commitment to educational excellence and his deep knowledge of and involvement in Mandarin language learning on an international scale. Chris’s bright vision for PKS’s future and his inquisitive, warm, down-to-earth style made him the ideal match for our school.