Lauren’s path into education is anything but typical. Before becoming a teacher 13 years ago, she trained and practiced as a criminal barrister, representing clients in court and witnessing firsthand the social and systemic issues that shape people’s life trajectories. Over time, she found herself drawn not just to the legal outcomes but to the underlying question: How might early education, opportunity, and support have changed these stories long before they reached a courtroom?
This realization reshaped her career. Lauren moved from reacting to problems to helping prevent them, choosing teaching as a place where she could make a long-term, human impact.
“Teaching still feels like justice,” she says, “but now it’s preventative, empowering, and deeply human.”
Advocating Dwight’s Global Vision Through Global Politics
Lauren inspires students to live Dwight School Hanoi’s Global Vision by helping them understand how global systems, power structures, and human experiences are interconnected. In her Global Politics classes, students move beyond national viewpoints, gaining the tools to analyze conflict, development, and human rights as shared responsibilities.
For example, students studied the role of the United Nations and non-state actors in crises such as Gaza and Sudan. Through actor mapping, source analysis, and UN-style simulations, they explored how realist, liberal, and postcolonial perspectives shape global decision-making.
Students learn to evaluate competing arguments, interrogate bias, and understand their own capacity to influence global issues, skills that empower them both academically and ethically.
A Globally-Shaped Teaching Philosophy
Teaching across Chile, China, Thailand, South Korea, and Vietnam has shaped Lauren’s educational philosophy in meaningful ways: Across every country, Lauren has developed a style that blends high expectations with empathy, global awareness with cultural sensitivity, and rigor with creativity. She believes teaching is not just about delivering content, but about helping students think critically, act ethically, and view the world through multiple perspectives.
Personalized Learning in Action
Lauren believes in the Dwight School Hanoi pillar of Personalized Learning, and one of her strongest examples is a unit, co-taught with Ms Sharma in English. Students combined Cold War ideology from Global Politics with persuasive writing and media analysis to create their own ideological manifestos.
All students engaged with the same content, but personalization came through how they interpreted, expressed, and defended their beliefs, some championed liberal democracy, others critiqued capitalism, and others explored feminist or non-aligned perspectives. Co-teaching enabled targeted support: Ms Sharma focused on tone, voice, and rhetorical style, while Lauren supported argumentation, historical accuracy, and ideological depth.
The result was rich, confident, authentic student work, Lauren’s vision of true personalized learning: meaningful choice grounded in shared, challenging inquiry.
Why Students and Families Appreciate Her
Lauren brings the analytical rigor of a lawyer, the cultural awareness of an international educator, and the empathy of a mentor who sees students’ potential long before they see it in themselves. She empowers students to think critically, understand the world with nuance, and use their voices to shape fairer, more compassionate societies.
