18 May IH Bucharest’s Teacher Training Centre: Where Any English Teacher Eager to Develop Will Want to Check in

Author: Ilinca Stroe

This year, while International House (IH) Bucharest has reached 20 years of existence in Romania, its Teacher Training Centre is turning 3. Its activity during this time highlights the striking features that best describe it: tremendously bold and ambitious, very energetic, fast-growing and cleverly planned. Above all, the Centre has managed to become a real “ecosystem” for teachers of English as a foreign language, offering as it does 1) free regular training seminars, 2) the major Cambridge teaching qualification courses, and, as of late, 3) international conferences for language teachers – all in all, an impressive and comprehensive package of teacher training and development services.

1) Coffee@IH Bucharest

“It was a truly inspiring session with lots of great ideas on how to make online learning more enjoyable and effective! Thank you so much, Julie! Thank you, IH Bucharest, for organising these webinars! Very grateful.” (Georgeta D., participant)

This seminar series started off with some rather informal gatherings of Bucharest-based English teachers and an IH trainer as a host, who approached together various teaching-related interests (from pronunciation to motivating teens) in a relaxed manner over a cup of coffee at IH Bucharest’s central office or a partner location such as the Cărturești Verona bookshop in Romania’s capital city.

In time, Coffee@IH Bucharest grew into a series of international online training events featuring top-class trainers like Scott Thornbury (the co-founder of the highly influential Dogme ELT approach), Adrian Underhill (arguably the world’s best-known expert in English pronunciation) and Hugh Dellar (the very popular co-founder of the Lexical Lab) – besides star trainers from across the IH network, such as Alastair Grant, Robert Martínez, Glenn Standish or Lucie Cotterill.

Totalling now around 30 onsite and online sessions and more than 1,500 participants, Coffee@IH Bucharest keeps being appealing to language teachers from everywhere thanks to the comprehensive range of teaching-related topics it has been covering.

2) Cambridge teaching qualification courses

“Albeit stressful, the tutors and content were superb! I learned many aspects of teaching English that I didn’t even know existed. Fantastic experience overall.” (Shaun R., CELTA course graduate)

There are three teaching qualifications an (aspiring) English teacher can attain by enrolling on a course either moderated or supervised by Cambridge at IH Bucharest’s Teacher Training Centre:

• CELTA – we have run more than 10 CELTA courses since May 2019, both intensive and part-time, face to face and online, and we boast a professional network of over 100 alumni from several countries
• IHCYLT – the Centre is the only one authorised to run in Romania this course for teachers of English to young learners (YLs) which is the IH equivalent of Cambridge University’s CELTYL
• DELTA – we are the only centre accredited to run in Romania all the three DELTA modules, with exceptional results for our latest Module 2, where all our candidates obtained Pass and Pass with Merit

3) Conferences for Language Teachers

“I enjoyed the experience! It was fantastic! The sessions, the speakers and the organisers did their best! Congratulations!” (IH Bucharest “Perfect 20” Conference attendee)

On 8-9 April 2022 we organised our very first international online conference aimed at teachers of English and other modern languages from all over the world. The event addressed four themes (Cambridge teaching qualifications, Business English, Teaching YLs, and Modern Languages), included four plenary sessions and 16 workshops, and featured prominent trainers and experts from several IH schools, as well as from Macmillan’s Educational Team and from Cambridge Assessment English.

For a debut world-scale event, the feedback was great: 80% of the respondents were tremendously happy with the event, 90% thought it was really well organised, 95% found it useful and very useful, another 95% considered the platform it ran on to have been easy and very easy to use, for 100% the enrolment process was smooth and clear, for 100% the event was communicated efficiently. There were very few suggestions of improvement, but one that came up repeatedly was this: we should organise it every year.

So our Teacher Training Centre, aged 3, is already inspiring trust and appreciation to the teachers or trainers who have been involved in its events and courses, and is definitely looking forward to making its propitious training “ecosystem” further available to all the interested teaching professionals out there!  

International House Bucharest runs regular CELTA, DELTA and IHCYLT courses for teachers of English at its Teacher Training Centre, as well as training events online, onsite or at partner locations. To sign up for a course or event, contact celta@ih.ro. Also, check out our upcoming conference for language teachers around the world.