The Optional Afternoon and Evening Programme: Pilgrims Summer TT Courses

Mario Rinvolucri, UK

Pilgrims is Nirvanah for people who want to really stretch themselves and work all the hours that God sends. When you come on one of our summer teacher training courses you sign up for your core course and work on this with one tutor from 9.00 am to 3.30 pm. This is the bit you have to choose in advance.

However, on six of the ten days of your fortnight’s course you can also go to workshops and seminars of your choice from 4.00pm to 5.30 and from 8.00 pm to 9.30pm. In other words you can extend your learning time in the fortnight you are with us from the core 45 clock hours of your main course to 63 clock hours, increasing your learning time by 18 hours.

Our optional programme is a distinct competitive advantage we have over most other teacher training places in UK who offer summer programmes.

My impression is that, for a few participants, the mercurial ones, the post-tea-time programme may be more exciting and fulfilling than their core programme, partly because they have free and massive choice of area, topic and presenter.

If you work in primary or pre-school you might want to choose between some of these workshops*:

Potato printing

Learn to move and move to learn

Dynamic Drawing (Steiner)

Stories and guided journeys for confidence and fluency

Brain gym

You might want to spend 90 minutes with Alan Maley in a seminar on:

Where do ideas come from

Voice

You might want to spend 90 minutes with Adrian Underhill in a session on:

The story of your teaching and learning

Making pronunciation physical

You might want to spend 90 minutes with Bonnie Tsai on:

NLP for students and teachers

Life Coaching for students

Sometimes, come the evenings of Week 2 people get tired and need to go to more relaxing activities like:

Salsa

Haiga ( Japanese painting and haiku writing)

Yoga

A blues evening

I would bore you were I to catalogue all the topics on offer over the ten weeks of our Summer Institute. If you come in July you will be offered six to eight choices each afternoon and evening.

The French have a phrase for this: embarras du choix. Some people end up bitching about what they have missed rather than rubbing their hands over what they’ve been to. There’s nowt as strange as folks.

*not all the workshops listed above run each week of the summer.

Haiga classes with Noriko Yoshida

Please check the Fun, Laughter and Learning course at Pilgrims website.