About
The team behind Little Learners Big Connections.
A small team working across Foundations, Formation, and Families. Bringing the same research base and the same care to every classroom, community, and home we partner with.
Founder and Principal Consultant
Renée Evelyn Fuller
M.Ed — Educational Leadership
D.EdMin Candidate — Educational Leadership
I've spent two decades on multiple continents as a teacher, coach, mentor, and director; watching, from every seat, which programs actually reached young learners and which ones just looked good on paper. I've watched it play out in classrooms at home and abroad, in congregations that didn't share my language, and in my own living room with my son. The programs that actually changed children's lives were never the ones with the most materials or the biggest budgets. They were the ones where an adult had learned to be genuinely present.
I didn't arrive at this belief through a syllabus. I arrived at it slowly, watching faith and childhood development sit closer together than most curricula are willing to admit; that a child's sense of self, their dignity, isn't something we build through acquisition or achievement. It's something we recognize, and then protect.
Little Learners Big Connections exists to make that presence teachable. To turn a felt sense of connection into a design discipline that schools, communities, and families can actually build on, term after term, year after year.
This isn't a philosophy layered on top of what we do. It's the whole reason we do it.
Our Team
Gladys Alvarez
Early Childhood / EAL Specialist Consultant
Gladys is an American Early Years specialist and EAL consultant, originally from Venezuela and a native Spanish speaker, whose practice is shaped by Reggio Emilia, the IB Primary Years Programme, and a deep commitment to multilingual learning. Her own bicultural background gives her a first-hand understanding of language acquisition and cultural transition, which she brings directly into her work with young multilingual learners.
She specializes in curriculum design rooted in the Reggio approach; crafting provocations as learning engagements that invite children into inquiry, and using documentation panels to make young children's thinking and learning visible to families and educators alike.
Her career spans international schools across three continents, including the American International School of Guangzhou, Jakarta Intercultural School, Escuela Campo Alegre, and most recently Yokohama International School, where she served as Early Years EAL Teacher and Team Leader. She now brings that expertise to Zurich International School as Upper Elementary EAL Specialist. Gladys holds a Master's in Interdisciplinary Studies and a Leadership Certificate.
Her work centers on inquiry, play, language-rich environments and on empowering educators to design learning experiences that are responsive, inclusive, and rooted in the strengths every multilingual learner brings into the classroom.
The Rev. Deacon Kate Wisz
Theological Consultant
The Rev. Deacon Kate is an ordained Vocational Deacon in The Episcopal Church and a Doctor of Ministry candidate at Virginia Theological Seminary. An attorney by education and profession, she is recently retired as a federal judge, and is committed to striving for justice and peace among all people, and to respecting the dignity of every human being.
Part of that journey has meant learning and growing in her own understanding of spirituality through multiple lenses, with particular attention to Christianity. Understanding that worship of and connection to the divine can take place in many locations, she facilitates labyrinth walks, yoga, and prayer practices that engage multiple senses. Committed to seeing those who go unseen or are pushed to the margins, Deacon Kate also serves as a postpartum doula and spiritual director.
We also partner with experts in the field as needed: occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, pediatricians, early childhood development specialists, and early childhood psychologists.