Taught in the classroom. Lived in England.
Karina is the person behind the Saint Mary method. A University Professor of English with two master's degrees from the United Kingdom, she founded the school in 2000 and has led every class, every immersion and every academic decision ever since.
Her method starts from one conviction: English isn't learned by studying it, it's learned by living it. That's why she teaches 100% in English in the classroom and takes her students to live it in the United Kingdom every year. The Churchill House and Hilderstone College endorsements are the consequence of that way of teaching, not its starting point.
They don't study it. They learn it.
When I started teaching in 1998, English academies in Argentina taught grammar. Verb lists, translation, mechanical exams. I didn't learn English that way. I learned it living it in Kent, in London, in pubs and libraries. That's why when I founded Saint Mary in 2000, I decided we would teach the only way I know works: through immersion.
The Saint Mary method is not a new methodology. It's the natural methodology: how an English child learns to speak English. They get inside the language, listen, try, make mistakes, correct themselves. And they learn it. They don't study it. They learn it.
Since 2000 I have seen hundreds of students pass through Hurlingham. Some today live in London, others are parents who send their children to the school. That continuity is the proof that the method works: it's not a promise, it's a result.
Now we open Madrid and Kent. It's not expansion for expansion's sake: it's because the method is already tested and we want more people to be able to live it. In Madrid we take the method to European Spanish speakers. In Kent we return to the place where I learned it, now on the other side of the classroom.
Graduates from the University of Buenos Aires with a University Professor of English degree. She begins teaching at bilingual schools in western Greater Buenos Aires.
Opens the school at Malaspina 1560, Hurlingham. Begins with three students. From day one she establishes the five principles of the method: 100% English classes, authentic materials, teachers with real UK experience.
She completes her first master's at Churchill House School of English in Ramsgate. Here she discovers the immersion pedagogy that would later become the Saint Mary method.
Second master's at Bloomsbury International (London). She deepens her knowledge in classical and contemporary British literature, a focus she transmits to her advanced students.
Saint Mary obtains the accreditation of Churchill House (Ramsgate), the school's British endorsement. That same year Karina takes the first group of students to Ramsgate, starting the immersion tradition that continues to this day.
Completes the Diploma in Bilingual Pedagogy at the Universidad Católica Argentina (UCA), formalizing the theoretical basis of the Saint Mary method.
Adds corporate English training for Argentine companies —Mercado Libre, Globant, IRSA— to her teaching role, and earns the British Council specialization that certifies the methodology.
Karina signs with Angharad Sanders, principal of Hilderstone College, the official representation for Argentina. Saint Mary becomes the first Argentine school endorsed by the most prestigious college in Kent.
Saint Mary crosses to Europe. A location at Tte. Gral. José de Querol, 3, with online classes for Adults, Mastery modules and conversation workshops on European time.
Back to where it started: a location in Kent, where Karina learned the method and where she has taken her students since 2012.
Churchill House and Hilderstone College are not two separate badges: they are the two schools in Kent where Saint Mary runs its immersions. Karina studied at one of them herself.
School of English · Ramsgate, Kent
Where Karina took her first master's degree, and where she discovered the immersion pedagogy that later became the Saint Mary method.
Broadstairs, Kent · founded in 1976
Karina signs the official representation for Argentina with the college's management. Saint Mary becomes the first Argentine school endorsed by Hilderstone.
Classrooms, trips, training, leadership. The routine of someone who runs a school and still teaches every week.
One-to-one meetings for parents, advanced students and companies. Direct calendar, no middlemen.
