By Andy Keedwell, Academic Advisor, British Council

23 March 2018 - 08:28

Group of teachers

Through February and March 2018, our intrepid team of Country Trainers have been working with teachers in nine different locations across Romania to deliver the five-day Teaching for Success course through the English for the Community project.

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Our project, a partnership between the British Council and the Romanian-American Foundation, is working with English language teachers in primary, secondary and high schools to help them develop the skills of their students and so eventually help young people’s employability. I’ve had the chance to drop into training sessions in four locations. Probably the most interesting was in February 2018 in Făgăraș where we were lucky enough to be able to hold the course inside the fortress – in the throne room, no less!

Teachers’ response to the course has been fantastic. They relished the activities and techniques the course introduced and felt they would be able to apply them in their own classrooms. ‘A breath of fresh air’ said one participant in Sighișoara, and other comments included:

"I think this course was life-changing!"

"This course helped me to rethink my activities in class, make changes to the way I structure my activities."

"We participated in all kinds of discussions and solved problems and it was very interactive. I will always remember the activities and I will try to apply them in my own class."

Classroom activity

In March, I also had the opportunity to visit classrooms in Maramureș and see classes given by teachers who had participated on the course. We saw some great lessons – children fully engaged in an activity where they were asked to guess that kinds of food they were tasting, a vocabulary word-game with lots of involvement and an ingenious reported speech activity based around songs.

We’re delighted the course had so much impact and we’re now looking forward to the next project stage – establishing Teacher Activity Groups in each location.

About the author

Academic Advisor Andy Keedwell

Andy Keedwell

Academic Advisor, British Council

Andy Keedwell has been working as the English for the Community Academic Advisor from October 2017 to April 2018. He’s been involved with education for thirty years as a teacher, trainer and manager. He’s worked in fourteen different countries of which Romania is certainly one of the most beautiful. He’s interested in helping teachers to develop their skills, supporting others to train in English for the world of work.