We come to you: Pilgrims Overseas Workshops

As I write this in late May 2007, the Pilgrims teacher training team is readying itself to welcome some 850 participants at our July-August Institute, the largest number of "summer swallows" we have yet trained. Last year some 700+ people came on our July and August courses.
It is thrilling when you realise that each colleague who comes to us will be teaching some 200 students a year...so we will indirectly be working with more than one hundred and fifty thousand students across Europe. The ripple effect of this work we do on our Canterbury Hilltop with be even greater than this, as our participants will share what they learn to their colleagues and friends.

This is an appropriate place to thank the EU authorities who will be funding more than half of our course participants.

"But I can't leave my family for two weeks to rush off to UK" I can hear some readers objecting. The cast iron reality of these constraints is what makes our overseas workshops so useful and attractive.
We come to you and work with you for the length of time that you feel is useful. This solution brings you training to your own doorstep and it is of course much cheaper to get one trainer to where you are than to get 30 of you to Canterbury.

Let me tell you some of the great places our trainers have been over the past few months:

Chaz Pugliese to a State Teacher's group in Giarre, near Catania in Sicily

Sheelagh Deller (new book on CLIL, OUP) to work with secondary school teachers in Catalunya,

Bonnie Tsai to the Cultura Inglesa in Recife and Natal, Brazil. Private sector teachers.

Magda Zamorska to a big teachers' Conference in Turkey

Penelope Williams did a fortnight's language improvement with State primary teachers in Castilla Leon in Spain

Mario Rinvolucri worked for ESOL teachers, in Lambeth College S London, UK

In the autumn of 2007 Pilgrims trainers will be working in

CEL Befort, in France
Fatih Schools, Turkey
Rotterdam ( Netherlands)( Kindergarten Inset training)
Inersaavik, Greenland
Samara, Russia
Bridges, Mexico
Etc.....

Dear HLT Reader, if you are a section head why not invite a Pilgrims trainer to work with your colleagues sometime over the coming Northern Hemisphere academic year 2007-2008. In the Southern Hemisphere you will be thinking of 2007, second semester.

If you are an ordinary teacher then why not ask your boss to do all this work for you and invite a Pilgrims trainer to work with the group you belong to.

The person to contact is MANDY BRIGGS: mandy@pilgrims.co.uk

You will find a list of our workshop topics by clicking on www.pilgrims.co.uk and then clicking on teacher training and choosing Conference and Workshops from the left hand menu. Click here

Mario (Rinvolucri) May 2007