Joanna Polikaitis was born and raised in Japan as a missionary and pastor’s daughter.  She moved to a dormitory to study at Stony Brook High School in New York and attended Eastern Nazarene College in Massachusetts where she received her bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education.
 
Joanna also studied at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago for a year and then moved to Southern California to start her teaching career in public schools.  At that time, she obtained her master’s degree in teaching at Azusa Pacific University.  She has taught elementary school for many years in California and has returned to Japan two times in her life to teach in an English Immersion Program at a Japanese private school with her husband, daughter, and son.
 
 Coming to Northern California has been a wonderful adventure and she is enjoying teaching at LACS and getting to know the students.  Her hobbies are traveling, reading and walking and she has found many new trails to explore throughout the Bay area.