Meet our Trainers
Hanna (Hania) Kryszewska
Hanna is a teacher, senior lecturer, teacher trainer, trainer of trainers. She is co-author of resource books: Learner Based Teaching, OUP, Towards Teaching, Heinemann, The Standby Book, CUP, Language Activities for Teenagers, CUP, The Company Words Keep, DELTA Publishing, and a secondary course book series: ForMat, Macmillan, a video-based TT course: Observing English Lessons, and online courses for Orient Black Swan: 21st Century Skills and Teaching the whole person: Humanising language teaching. She is a Pilgrims trainer, OTA trainer for University of Oxford, and editor of HLT Magazine. Her interests include: CLIL, Spoken Grammar, Teaching Lexis, Mediation, Teacher Training, Teaching Advanced Learners, Creativity, 21st Century Skills, Sustainability, exam classes, and EMI.
https://www.hltmag.co.uk/feb19/native-vs-non-native-debate
https://www.hltmag.co.uk/apr21/creativity-through-constraints
http://old.hltmag.co.uk/dec13/mart02.htm
http://old.hltmag.co.uk/aug11/cse02.htm
Magda Zamorska
Magda has been a teacher trainer for Pilgrims for over two decades. She is based in Poland where she works as a senior lecturer at the University of Wroclaw. She is an experienced language teacher (from primary to EAP courses) as well as a seasoned teacher trainer and language coach. She has worked with teachers in various educational institutions in Poland, the UK, Austria, Italy, Greenland, Spain and many more. Her professional interests include working on creativity and motivation, teacher and learner wellbeing (ways of preventing and fighting professional burnout, teaching through music, art, drama and literature.
Stefania Ballotto
Stefania is a teacher, teacher trainer, and a trainer of trainers and has been in the profession for over four decades. She lectures at the University of Udine, Italy where she is also an M.A thesis supervisor for students graduating in the teaching profession.
She presents at conferences and delivers workshops and courses worldwide. Her main areas of interest are in teaching strategies in second language acquisitions mainly for young learners, implementing CLIL - Content and Language Integrated Learning and introducing Global Skills to young learners.
Another area she does extensive research in and has designed and delivered courses is teaching English through the Five Minds for the Future ,the theory of Multiple Intelligence.
She is a South-African born Italian and holds a M.A. degree in Applied Linguistics from the University of Cambridge -U.K.-.
Phil Dexter
Phil edits and manages The Pilgrims Teacher Trainer Journal https://pilgrimsttj.com , has worked as a teacher trainer for Pilgrims since 1997 and is now a freelance educational consultant. Phil worked for the British Council for over 30 years in English and education projects in teacher development and inclusive education. Phil’s most recent consultancy advice in inclusive education involves working with governments across the world in a variety of contexts in the UK, Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America – supporting applying approaches to inclusive teaching and learning. Phil has also worked with Cambridge University Press, supporting ways of adapting coursebooks to be more inclusive. Phil’s research interests are in good practice approaches to teaching and learning and evidence-informed approaches based on current developments in neuroscience, with a specific interest in understanding neurodiversity. Phil has been the lead trainer on the Pilgrims supporting learners with special educational needs. Phil has contributed to the following publications :
https://www.ukfiet.org/author/phil-dexter/
Peter Dyer
Peter has a background in theatre, television, radio and film. He has also directed plays and trained actors in Australia and in Europe. He has run drama and improvisation courses for teachers and young people at Pilgrims for 30 years and gives workshops for teachers around Europe.
Read Peter’s interview (he didn’t choose the name, or the photo):
https://tdsig.org/2012/07/an-interview-with-peter-dyer/
https://www.hltmag.co.uk/jun21/writing-based-on-an-improvisiation
https://www.hltmag.co.uk/dec21/pilgrims-training-course-in-oradea
Lived and taught in 5 different countries. Has written a book and will be publishing it, keep an eye out.
Mercedes Pérez Berbain
Mercedes is an educational consultant and teacher educator at ESSARP, INFoD Argentina, and Pilgrims, UK. She holds an MA in Education with distinction from Oxford Brookes University, UK. She has written educational materials and courses for Pearson, Orient BlackSwan and OUP, and has co-edited a volume on Diversity in ELT for Palgrave. She has also published and is a reviewer for several educational journals. Her research interests include teacher education, leadership, inclusion, and young learners.
Humanising English language learning (2023)
Interactive Storytelling in ELT – Why and How? (2022)
Introduction to Diversity in ELT (2021)
Marta Bujakowska
Marta is a freelance teacher and teacher trainer from Poland with a strong intercultural focus and special interest in creative methodology, CLIL, reflective teaching, learner autonomy and flipped classroom. She has trained teachers in Poland and also internationally in England, Ireland, Spain, Austria and Moldova. Nowadays she trains teachers and also works with teenagers and adult learners of English. Marta has volunteered for IATEFL POLAND since 1994. She believes that teachers should feel their self-development is insatiable.
Judit Fehér
Judit is a freelance teacher, teacher trainer and materials writer. As a teacher trainer, Judit has worked for many organisations internationally, most notably for Pilgrims, British Study Centres and Europass Teachers Academy, running courses mainly in the UK and Hungary, and also giving talks and workshops at international conferences. Her main professional interests are humanism in language teaching, CLIL, global education, materials writing, creativity and the arts.
Most of the teaching materials Judit has written target secondary students. Her other publications include Creative Resources with Bonnie Tsai (IAL, Atlanta), a chapter in Creativity in the English language classroom (British Council) and some articles on the British Council Learn English website as well as in professional magazines, such as the English Teaching Professional, Modern English Teacher, Humanising Language Teaching and The Teacher Trainer.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/judit-feh%C3%A9r-37151b19/
http://old.hltmag.co.uk/jun17/less02.htm
Linda Yael
Linda has been a teacher trainer at Pilgrims Teacher Training since 2005, and has given teacher development courses and seminars both in the UK and in other countries. She has been a Cambridge English Examiner for many years, and an IELTS examiner. She was lecturer in English for nearly thirty years at the Balseiro Institute, National University of Cuyo, Argentina. She was for many years a trainer at Lenguas Vivas Bariloche Teacher Training College (1997-2010), and previously worked for the British Council, Madrid, as a teacher and examiner. She is a regular presenter at conferences in Argentina and the UK, and is the current president of Apizals, the regional association for English Language Teachers in Northern Patagonia, where she is based. Linda’s main professional interests include creativity in the classroom, teaching language through literature, increasing students’ motivation, especially for reading, and humanising assessment.