Gardner English Tweeting

Gardner English is now on Twitter. You can follow our username – @Gardner_English, or simply visit our profile at http://twitter.com/#!/Gardner_English.

Gardner English on Facebook

Gardner English now has a new Facebook page, containing interesting information for both students and teachers. We hope you find it useful.

An Introduction

Before I get started on this entry, allow me to introduce myself. My name is David Bevis, I came to Mexico from the UK about ten years ago, and I've been working at Gardner English for nine of them. As you can imagine, I've experienced quite a lot as a teacher in those years. In addition to teaching, I'm also responsible for our website, blogs and internal communications media. By writing in this blog, I hope to share some of my experiences of teaching in Mexico City and explain what we do in a little more detail.

What do we do? Basically, we teach students at all levels in companies throughout Mexico City, and our teachers go to the student's place of work to give their classes. This makes it easier for students to study English without having to spend time in traffic to get to classes. We assess all our students before we begin teaching them, so materials and courses are targeted at the right level when we start. Classes are a mixture of one-to-ones and groups, although groups are small enough that everyone gets the level of tuition they need.

As regards my own projects, I've recently become involved in setting up our new company calendar. This happened because of new regulations which meant that many public holidays have been moved to Mondays to avoid people bridging their days off. For those who are interested in such things, I've found the Mexican Banking Association's website to be extremely useful.

Having sorted out exactly when our teachers wouldn't be able to give classes, I started looking for other events which might be of interest to them. Cambridge ESOL in Mexico provides Saturday seminars for teachers, and the Mexico City Chapter of MEXTESOL gives bimonthly Saturday workshops as well. There will also be a Foreign Language Teachers' Conference hosted by CELE in June, which will deal with Educational Practice in the Teaching of Foreign Languages in Mexico. All of these events are now on our calendar, along with the relevant details.

So, that's what I've been up to so far. I hope that what you've read here has been useful. As we say in Mexico, ¡Hasta pronto!

Teacher Interviewed

David Bevis, one of our school's teachers, has just been interviewed by the website Expat Interviews, which brings together articles about people who are living outside their native countries. In his interview, David talks about his experiences of being in Mexico, how it was when he arrived, how it is now, and shares his photos of Mexico.

You can also find many other people's biographies on this site, which reveals stories about people in countries all over the world. As this site is in English, it also represents an opportunity for any English student who wishes to practise what they've learned.

Gardner English and Google Apps

Gardner English is now backed by Google when it comes to communication. Our school's teachers will have email accounts provided by Google Apps, which will also be linked to online calendars and documents. We expect this step to make the school more responsive in its relationships with clients and students.

Eleven Years of Gardner English

Gardner English is celebrating its eleventh anniversary this week, as it was founded on the 26th of August, 1996. We have seen many changes in that many years, and hope to see many more in those to come.

In just the last two weeks, we have set up new ways of communicating with our clients and students. This week, we will be providing new tools to the teachers at Gardner English.