Primary Source

Julia de la Torre brings an extensive background in domestic and international education to Primary Source. A former French language teacher in Colorado, Julia has also taught English in Morocco and Moldova, where she served as a Peace Corps volunteer from 2003-2005. A 2006 graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Julia studied international education policy with a particular interest in education in countries undergoing major transition or conflict. During her graduate studies, Julia conducted fieldwork at WorldTeach in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she developed their first-ever standardized training curriculum.

Committed to global education in public schools, Julia also served as the Global Studies Coordinator for the International School of the Americas (ISA) in San Antonio, Texas. With a long history of integrating global studies into the high school curriculum, ISA is an anchor school for the Asia Society's International Studies Schools Network. Julia led a team of teachers from across the country to develop performance standards and assessment rubrics for world language classrooms in the Asia Society network. This experience brought together her love of language and her commitment to quality assessment and systematic thinking in global education.

Since 2006, Julia has served as a Program Director for Primary Source, developing courses and leading study tours for educators. In response to popular demand from area teachers, Julia helped build Primary Source's Latin America program, which is now thriving. In addition to co-leading study tours to Ghana and China, Julia developed and led the organization's first study tour to Latin America (Dominican Republic), with a focus on service-learning in context. Julia has a personal interest in educational technology and global education, which she has expertly combined in a variety of workshops that address the concept of globalizing our schools and classrooms. Her passion for 21st century learning tools fueled her work on Primary Source's first-ever online courses and curriculum modules.

The daughter of an Argentinean and a German, Julia was exposed to foreign languages at an early age and studied French throughout elementary and secondary school in Houston, Texas. A Haverford College graduate, Julia is fluent in French and Romanian and is proficient in Spanish and American Sign Language.