Last week, over 1000 Georgian English language teachers have gathered on a conference held in four cities (Batumi, Kutais, Telavi and Tbilisi) to discuss different topics and share English language teaching practices.

The conference was organized by The English Book in Georgia with the great support of Macmillan. We were honored to have Jim Scrivener (a freelance writer, consultant, teacher, trainer and conference speaker), Maura O’Brien (teacher trainer), Philip Kerr (lecturer, teacher trainer and materials writer), Teresa Doğuelli (teacher trainer) and Nick Goode (Regional Manager, Central Europe for Macmillan Education) as the guest-speakers of the conference.

“It is my honor to attend this conference. We learned about many new methods and activities, very helpful to reach our goals, the goals of National Curriculum. We will bring these methods to our students and will involve them in the activities. This all will help the students learn to speak English more freely”, says one of the participants Ms.MakaBerishvili, Rustavi PS N14.

English Book in Georgia is amazed by the motivation, interest, commitment and dedication the participants have showed during those four days. The representative of the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia, Ms. Natia Jokhadze has also mentioned this during her speech, saying that the number of attendants in Tbilisi was significantly bigger than any other similar events organized before. She thanked the participants, in the name of Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia, for their commitment and dedication.

The participants were engaged and actively involved in the discussions. As one of the teachers, Ms. Ana Panchulidze, IB Mtiebi, mentioned, “what we can learn from this conference, is the new approach to teaching processes and this is why, it is essential that this kind of events are organized often. On this conference we have the chance to meet world’s leading experts in the field”

The conference consisted of two parts – each speaker lead one plenary session and there were several workshops offered, running simultaneously in two sessions for smaller groups. This way each participant had a chance to attend two different workshops of their choice. The workshops covered different interesting topics, such as Classroom Management, Vocabulary Practices, Emotional Intelligence, Teamwork as well as Student Engagement.

“As a company, MacMillan Education what we try and do is to focus on the learners and focus on the teachers. And one way of increasing thelevel of English in any given situation, whether it is a particular classroom or if you think about a country like Georgia, isthat to educate the teachers as much as possible. Because by educating teachers it means that they can spread the techniques through to their students and therefore, students can have a better understanding of English and increase their level of English. And conferences like this are a great way to gather as many teachers together at one place as possible and that has many different benefits.”, says Nick Goode, Regional Manager (Central Europe for Macmillan Education). 

This was one of the biggest English Language Teachers Conferences organized in Georgia having over 1, 000 participants, both public and partner private school teachers.

The conference in Tbilisi took place in the new office of English Book in Georgia. Right now, the room used for the conference is empty and ready for other interesting events. Our new office andour staff members are all set and ready for newchallenges, new events and new ways to stand by the teachers and overall, stand by the Education System in Georgia. We can only show our admiration to the teachers and again thank them for their interest, motivation and dedication and look forward to future opportunities of cooperation!