Meet Our Teacher Training Team
Thanks to the skill and dedication of our team of teacher trainers we have a very high success rate in our training courses.
Dave, Head of Teacher Training
Hi, I'm Dave, the new Head of Teacher Training at British Study Centres, Oxford. I have been involved in teacher training since the early nineties, when I became a CELTA tutor. I have experience of teaching both Primary and Secondary in Greece, Japan and the UK, and from 2005-2011 I was teaching refugee teenagers in Oxford. Over the years, I have designed bespoke training courses for a variety of nationalities and enjoy the challenge of meeting the needs of the individuals in the groups, whatever their teaching context. I am thrilled to be involved in an organisation which puts teacher development at a premium.
Simon, Senior Teacher Trainer
I started my teaching career in 1988 and for 10 years taught abroad in various European cities including Madrid, Toulouse and St Sebastian. I joined British Study Centres in 1997, completing my DELTA in 1999, becoming a CELTA trainer in 2002 and a CELTA assessor in 2005. In June 2007 I became a freelance tutor/trainer/teacher/assessor and worked in a number of exotic locations including Athens, Saudi Arabia, France, Greece and... Northampton. Since April 2009 I have been back in the thick of Teacher Training Developments at British Study Centres.
I really enjoy the 'buzz' that comes from taking a raw recruit and being partly responsible for their development into an autonomous teacher. I try to make trainees as confident as possible both in terms of individual performance and working within a group. The BSC Teacher Training department has a very forward-thinking approach and it's exciting to be part of such an innovative outfit.
Dita, Teacher Trainer
I started teaching English in the Czech Republic while I was doing my MA. In 2000 I passed my CELTA and I started working at BSC in the summer of 2008. After finishing my DELTA I trained to join the teacher training team and have since worked on a number of CELTA's and Teacher Refresher Courses.
I really enjoy sharing ideas and activities with my colleagues and becoming a teacher trainer has allowed me to do this on a professional level. It makes me happy to think that I have helped someone to become a teacher, and that they might go on to change their students' lives in the way that the people who taught me changed mine.
CELTA trainees often say that the way they learnt foreign languages at school was very different to the way that the CELTA course trains you to teach. The communicative approach and the focus on the learner is often something that they have never encountered before. Having learnt English in this way myself, I really believe that it is vital to show trainees how learning English can be an enjoyable experience, while at the same time introducing them to techniques that make for effective teaching and learning.
Mark, DELTA Course Tutor
My name's Mark Bartram, and I'm the Course Tutor for the DELTA course. I've been running DELTA courses since 1988, first in Italy, and then in Oxford. I'm also an assessor for the DELTA external examination. As a teacher, teacher trainer, examiner, and Director of Studies, I've worked in various countries, mainly Italy and the UK. I still regularly teach EFL, and I believe it's important that trainers don't lose touch with the classroom. I've published various EFL books, including Correction (LTP/Heinle) and Initiative (CUP), and I'm currently writing secondary materials for OUP.
Outside work I enjoy reading thrillers, cooking, gardening, playing tennis and squash, and ferrying my children to their various appointments around Oxford.
Chris, Teacher Trainer
I've been teaching for about 17 years, including eight with the British Council. Working as a teacher trainer offers different challenges every day. I enjoy watching trainees develop and find confidence in themselves from sometimes tentative beginnings. Good teachers need to engage with people first and foremost before worrying about the 'content' of what they're doing, so I tend to encourage this approach among my trainees.
The centre here in Oxford has a professional outlook and the atmosphere is supportive and friendly. The trainers are all very inclusive, approachable and willing to help out and we look forward to having you with us.