In the Spotlight – Our Academic Team

The Essential English Centre prides itself on the strength of our academic team.  With both owners starting the school as passionate educators, ensuring our students have an excellent academic experience has always been a core value.   This month, we would like to showcase recent achievements by our wonderful academic team, who do a fabulous job every day for our students. 

At the start of the month, our Director of Studies, Gary, led a webinar for fellow Quality English member schools on the subject of correcting students’ spoken language in the classroom.  70 of Gary’s academic peers signed up to the session, showing what an important topic this is for academic staff in the day-to-day student journey.   Gary is a firm believer in Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), and indeed his Masters dissertation centred on the subject of students’ spoken language improvement.  We are proud of Gary for showcasing his expertise, and we get to see first-hand how our students and teachers benefit from his in-depth knowledge. We look forward to hosting more academic webinars in the future and adding value to the ELT industry beyond our Manchester-based school.

Our Assistant Director of Studies Siena is a true asset to our team, and provides key skills in academic expertise, leadership, and student support.  This month, we were delighted for Siena to demonstrate her talents by taking part in a podcast with Kieran Williams (English Support Tutor, Elizabeth School of London).  They discussed all things English language, including tips for building confidence in English, favourite British phrases, and what it’s like studying in a new country.  Listen to Siena and Kieran’s podcast on YouTube here

Both Gary and Siena are currently undertaking the Scale Up Your Leadership course, delivered by the excellent organisation Lead5050.  As academic leaders in our school, both Gary and Siena were delighted to join this programme in order to further enhance their management and leadership competences.  This will be a professional boost not just to Gary and Siena personally, but also to our wider academic team, and of course our wonderful students.