United States
US
Meet Our Trainers
Join a global community of over 200,000 TEFL teachers working throughout the world! Enrol me!
Timothy Knoespel
TEFL Trainer
Tim has worked in international education for over 12 years, 10 of which were spent teaching English abroad in Mongolia and Northern Iraq.
During his time abroad, he taught English in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms, in both private and public schools, and also taught adults at a private language institute. These experiences taught him the joys and challenges not only of teaching English abroad, but also navigating new cultures and places. Now returned to the US, he’s excited to share his passion of teaching, service, and culture with new ESL teachers.
Martin Bennett
TEFL Trainer
Martin is originally from the UK. About 7 years ago, he took time out from his successful management career to pursue his interests and lifelong dreams of travel and teaching English full time.
"I find teaching, tutoring and training a rewarding and fulfilling career. Watching someone’s journey from a beginner to an advanced level and interacting with them is an opportunity that few other jobs allow."
Since then he visited and taught in countless countries. During his time in Africa, he has worked with various charity organisations including helping with the Ghana rice feeding program and working with local and international organisations in the fight against diseases like Malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS. He is now based semi-permanently in South Africa.
He has thousands of hours face to face and online classroom teaching experience. As well as TEFL, He is able to teach IELTS, Cambridge Advanced, Cambridge First, Cambridge Key, CLIL and TEYL.
He has taught a wide array of students from young learners aged 4-5 at Level 1 (no exposure to English) all the way through to successful company directors with a solid grasp and understanding of English. He finds teaching, tutoring and training a rewarding and fulfilling career and feels watching someone’s journey from a beginner to an advanced level and interacting with them is an opportunity that few other jobs allow.
Simon Doherty
TEFL Trainer
Simon first began teaching English part-time whilst studying as an exchange student in Japan in 1994
"Something that often goes unmentioned is the wonderful community of fellow English teachers you become part of overseas. I’ve got to know so many truly exceptional and interesting people with amazing life experiences"
He started out teaching children and high school students before later working full-time teaching Business English at Japanese multinational corporations and colleges. After some 20 years in Thailand, Japan and the Philippines, Simon returned to the U.K. and has been teaching Academic English at universities since
Helen Shchur
TEFL Trainer
Helen started teaching EFL in 1992 after graduating with MA in English and German.
"I have been lucky to have great teachers and tutors since primary school. That’s why I decided to become a teacher."
Helen has worked in several countries teaching young learners, teenagers and adult learners in a wide range of contexts. While doing CELTA, Helen had fantastic tutors and decided to be like them in the future. After she finished DELTA and had some experience of training teachers, Helen qualified as a Cambridge CELTA trainer and have been delivering CELTA and other teacher training courses.
As an Academic manager of a private language school, Helen was in charge of training new and experienced native and non-native teachers and helped them to progress in their careers.
Helen loves training teachers and seeing how they develop, become more confident and enjoy teaching!
Mairead O'Connor
Academic Manager
Mairead is the Academic Director and IQA Manager for The TEFL Academy.
"I consider it a great privilege to share my knowledge and enthusiasm for teaching with trainees."
Accreditation & Quality Assurance
The TEFL Academy was the world’s first TEFL course provider to receive official recognition from government regulated awarding bodies in both the USA and UK. This means when you graduate you’ll hold a globally recognised Level 3 (120hr) Certificate or Level 5 (168hr) Diploma, meaning you can find work anywhere and apply for jobs immediately.
