Meet Our Trainers

With her EFL certificate she was able to fulfil a lifelong ambition to live and work abroad.  First, she lived in Budapest, Hungary and was employed as an EFL teacher of children and adults. She gained her DELTA and after 2 years she moved to another post in Prague, Czech republic, teaching adults and children and also editing the monthly British Council Czech newsletter.  After 4 years she was employed as Young Learner Co-Ordinator in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam where she worked for 2 years, helping to set up courses for young learners as well as teaching adults.

Ruth returned to England in 2006 and worked in Newcastle for 2 years as an ESL teacher for adults.  From 2008 to 2018 she combined her skills teaching children with her language teaching experience and worked as an EAL (English as an Additional Language) teacher in primary schools.  She also gained a diploma in Bilingualism in Education from Birmingham University.  Since September 2018 she has worked as an ESOL teacher in Further Education as well as delivering teacher training for The TEFL Academy.

He is a Cambridge speaking examiner and has written his own ESL coursebook called ‘Common Mistakes in English Made by Spanish Speakers’. Richard has a keen interest in exam preparation, teaching business and medical English and teacher training and brings a wealth of experience and down-to-earth advice to the weekend course.

Her career started in Spain in 1991, where her first teaching job was in a small primary school teaching English to children. With no knowledge of the business it was trial and error; however, she loved the job, after returning to England, became TEFL qualified. Over the years she has built up substantial experience teaching in all areas of TEFL and ESOL, including classroom-based teaching, 1:1, asylum seekers and working abroad in language and secondary schools, sharing expertise with colleagues in schools in the UK, Europe and the Caribbean. Liz is our busiest tutor, teaching 5 courses a month with us and is known for her great sense of humour.

Bridgid started teaching ESL in 2015 on a part-time basis whilst holding a very demanding full time corporate client relations consultant position as well as studying an honors bachelor degree in Organisational Psychology. Her passion for coaching and helping others grow inspired her to pursue ESL. “I couldn’t help myself” she says: “I just love seeing students receive guidance to grow into their future.” She started teaching everyday basic English and slowly developed her skills in teaching specialised courses such as Business English Conversations to Professional Adults, Business English Writing, News English, Teen Talk small group classes, Reading, Conversation practice classes to groups of nine students using breakout rooms, Juniors aged 4 to 18 English practice and Free Talk courses to ESL learners. She has taught over 5500 ESL learners from across Europe, the Middle East, East Asia and South America, on various ESL teaching platforms. She loves the challenge of personal mastery, so much so she self-published a book, which is a practical guide to being the best version of you; you can be. She finds teaching ESL and working in the ESL field very fulfilling and heart-warming. The students are amazing and they teach us so much.

Bridgid loves travelling, and has visited Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Borneo, Sabah to visit the orangutans, London and Germany several times. When not teaching or travelling, Bridgid loves volunteering at orphan and youth care centers providing wellness complementary therapy services to the caregivers, and has a passion for walking on the beach and feeling the sand between her toes.

Her next stop was Shanghai where she taught all levels and ages of students from toddlers  to adults, from private institutions and universities to local government schools. Her next move was to Thailand where she continued her love of teaching and worked in both private and government universities and local schools. Her teaching has enabled her to travel, experience culture and embrace the lives of all those she has taught; teaching ESL is an eye into other cultures and she has not only taught but gained much cultural understanding from her travels and students.  Since returning to the UK in 2017 she has worked in secondary schools in England and is one of our TEFL trainers based in Essex. Her advice is to be patient, intuitive, plan well and understand your students’ needs and goals.

Back in 2010 she was awarded her initial qualification with distinction. She has never looked back nor ever been without employment since. At the beginning she worked for various camps and language schools predominantly in the UK and Spain. With her heart set on relocating to Brazil, she then furthered her studies successfully completing her MA TESOL and Applied Linguistics, and was able to obtain a work visa in the run up to Brazil hosting the Olympics and World Cup. Her experience covers all ages and abilities from young learners to university students, and many motivations for learning English, from business to pleasure to exams. She has loved every minute of her career and training new teachers became the next logical development, along with wanting to spread and share her enthusiasm and passion for the industry.

She has spent most of her life in Canada, by living in Calgary, Edmonton, and Toronto. However, she has also lived and worked in Austria and Hungary. She earned her master’s degree in TESL from the University of Alberta. She finds the teaching profession truly rewarding and especially enjoys interacting with students from a variety of backgrounds and meeting their needs. Since each class is a bit different, she always customizes her class to fit the level of the students. Her specialty is CALL (computer-assisted language learning). In her free time, she enjoys orienteering (cross-country) running and reading. She is known for her great sense of humour and passion for teaching.

Her students seated in front of her, she found she relished the feeling of helping others learn. Granted, her students were stuffed animals at the time and her class was in her home, but Rentia discovered her love of teaching early in life. Her first “real” teaching job took her to Scotland in 2006, where she taught at a summer school to students from Italy and Spain. Returning to South Africa she continued her teaching career by joining the University of the Free State as a lecturer in Communication Science. She focused her teaching on access programmes, creating curriculums that incorporated support for ESL students. Alongside this teaching, she travelled to Dubai, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Belgium as an EFL teacher, building strong connections with EFL programmes in Singapore. In her free time she is entertained by her two Scottish terriers, actively involved in talking nonsense at book club and dabbles in art.

Whilst in China she even appeared on a TV show and was the English voice on some English language course recordings. She began teaching EFL as she was keen to return to Italy after spending time there. After qualifying she found a position in the south of Italy and with experience gained there, she was able to secure employment in China. She then returned to Italy and has now settled in England. She loves visiting new places, the Italian language and culture.

After graduating, she taught in Tokyo for a year. It was a huge culture shock but she had a completely amazing year as she got to teach a wide range of levels, ages and abilities, with my oldest student being in her eighties. She returned to the UK with her sights set on staying for a month or two before moving on again, but that month turned into 7 years. She says she would love to travel again and teach in some other countries such as South America and China and would also love to go back to Hong Kong, where she was born. Her advice for future teachers would be to not take things too seriously. Things go wrong, planned activities don’t quite work, computers stop working, but if you approach things with a smile, things tend to work out in the end.