Paula Kendell

Paula Kendell brings more than twenty years of teaching to her work with Search Associates Australia and New Zealand, which she joined in 2011. Having lived and taught internationally herself, she knows both the appeal and the difficulty of that first move abroad, and she is drawn particularly to working with teachers new to international education.

Her international career began in Hong Kong, where she held a range of teaching roles at Hong Kong International School, most recently teaching Physical Education to children from Reception to Year 2. That work with young learners led to an invitation to coordinate a four-year-old programme at a British kindergarten in Repulse Bay. After starting a family, she designed and ran her own private play school in Hong Kong for children aged eighteen months to three years, building it from nothing.

Back in Australia, Paula taught in Tasmania as an Early Childhood teacher and music specialist at a school working within the Reggio Emilia philosophy. She later returned to international education in Cairo, spending three years teaching Reception at a British international school and helping develop an Early Childhood literacy strategy.

After twenty years in Tasmania, Paula now lives in Melbourne and works alongside her husband, Nick, supporting educators and schools across Australia and New Zealand. Her range, from international schools and early childhood programmes to running her own educational business, gives her a practical read on what life overseas actually involves, and she is straightforward with educators about what she learned the hard way on her own international journey.