Special Groups and Overseas Workshops - Pilgrims Course Outline

Mandy Briggs, UK

Mandy Briggs is the Workshops Coordinator at Pilgrims, UK.
E-mail: mandy@pilgrims co.uk

As I write this we have a group of Danish teachers with us here in Canterbury, UK, working with Simon Marshall, a frequent contributor to HLT, to sniff out and analyse the funny way Brits feel think, react and organize their lives. They have come on a “Culture of UK” course .

During the year we have a number of special groups like this who come on tailor-made courses. Further examples would be Dutch Primary school teachers (from European Platform) and secondary teachers who come to learn more methodology (from Lower Austria.) I took over this job six years ago and these folk have been coming from well before my time with Pilgrims. In Summer 2007 we welcomed a marvellous group of leading teachers and teacher trainers from China’s Hubei Province. The trainers were thrilled to work with them… I saw people like Chaz Pugliese and Mario Rinvolucri wandering around in a happy-looking trance-like state! Quite hard to talk to them!

I realise that it is often much easier and more cost effective for us to come to you and do the workshop you want at your convenience, at the time you want and with the group size that makes most sense to you and with the trainer you choose.

Not only can we offer you a large number of workshops (to see a selection please go to www.pilgrims.co.uk and click on teacher training and then on conferences and workshops) but we can offer you a choice of workshop leaders with their own range of specialisms. Just this afternoon I have sent off the detailed CV’s of four of my colleagues to the training manager in British Council, Cairo.

You may already know the names of some of our trainers:

Bonnie Tsai ( NLP and English through Art and Music)
Hanna Kryszewska ( Primary and Expert Teacher)
Sheelagh Deller ( CLIL, TTT)
Judy Baker ( NLP)
Paul Davis ( 5 books to his name)
Adrian Underhill ( leadership work)
Chaz Pugliese ( Creativity and MI)
Mario Rinvolucri ( jack of several trades)
Mark Almond ( Drama )
Christine Frank ( Creative Writing )

• Over the past couple of years we have done workshops varying in length from half a day to two weeks for the Ministries of Education in Luxemburg, Greenland, Spain (Castilla y Leon) and Denmark.
• For the last five years we have done a four day October workshop for a dedicated group of teachers in the small town of Cuneo in the Italian North West (Piedmont).
• Over the past ten years we have worked with the British Schools, a group of private schools, up and down the length of Italy. In Slovakia we have done intensive workshops for the leading private school in Trnava. In Poland we have had a fruitful cooperation with the DOS Association.
• In Turkey our main workshop partner has been Pearson Longman, especially in the primary school and University sector.
• In Vietnam, Libya and Jordan the British Council has been our main workshop host.

I could go on and on ( some people say I do!) but the above examples give you some idea of our work.

PS: look out for us at your national ELT conference…….we send trainers to a lot of these.