Work Experience Highlights

Colegio Anglo Colombiano https://anglocolombiano.edu.co/ (Bogota, Colombia)

A 1900-student strong K-12 international school.

MYP Design & DP Computer Science Teacher.    (Commenced July 2024 --> Present)

• I teach MYP Design (30%), an in-house Coding curriculum (40%) and DP Computer Science (30%)

• Teach ±26 hours a week.

• I am a homeroom teacher with pastoral duties.

Westminster International School in Tashkent https://wistedu.com/ (Tashkent, Uzbekistan)

A 600-student strong K-12 international school.

Computer Science Teacher.    (Commenced August 2022 --> July 2024)

• I taught KS3 Computing, iGCSE Computer Science, iGCSE ICT, iA-level IT.

• Teach ±26 hours a week.

• I was a homeroom teacher and I ran an after school activity.

Reason for leaving: To join Colegio Anglo Colombiano.

Abdullah Gul University www.agu.edu.tr (The President's University; Kayseri, Turkey)

A 1150-student strong preparatory programme and growing.  A high-profile, prestigious third-generation university named after the former President of Turkey.  We teach some of the best and brightest young students in Turkey and students need to be in the top percentile nationwide to be accepted into the university.  Our programme demands that we push our students to succeed through a unique and intensive learning model.  To do this, we utilise both a flipped classroom and a blended learning approach to get learners to take responsibility for their learning and we use this in conjunction with a tech-heavy classroom and a textbook-light environment.

AGU uses a skills-based programme where each skill is given its own time for teaching and assessment and the exit criteria to faculty is based on internally created assessments aimed at high B2.  Our credit accumulation system gives students many routes out of the programme.  A key item which distinguishes AGU from other prep. programmes is that we aim to create 100% of our own material and 100% of our own tests.

The faculties offered at the university are:  Business, Engineering (Mechanical; Electrical, Civil, Industrial, Computer), Architecture and Life Sciences.  The intake is approximately 70% male, 30% female.  Kayseri is one of the most conservative Muslim cities in Turkey.

 EAP Teaching Fellow of English Preparatory Studies.    (Commenced August 2013 --> August 2021)

• Created and ran two elective courses:  "English for IT" and "An introduction to databases using SQL".  Details of the latter can be found here and here.

• Develop a range of in-house materials from authentic sources found online. (See samples in the 'Classroom Work' section here)

• Teach ±16 hours a week myself.

• Highly organised and punctual.

• An expert user of I.T. as illustrated here, here and here (“password”).

• Maintained my IELTS examiner status until mid 2017 (last test date: December 2016) with IDP (TR021 & TR100).  Monitoring reports available on request.

• Expert user of Macs, Office; intermediate user of Final Cut Pro, Motion, Audacity.

• Primary coursebooks used: Lecture Ready 1, 2 and 3.  Contemporary Topics Intro, 1, 2 and 3.

Reason for leaving: To go to the UK to train as a secondary Computer Science teacher.

Eastern International University www.eiu.edu.vn (near Saigon, Vietnam)

A preparatory programme at a privately run university.  Annual intake of ±600 students.  Almost all were A1 when starting.  Exit criteria was IELTS 6.0.  Anna and I joined the university in October 2012 which was the university's second year of teaching.  The faculties offered were: Business, Nursing.  The intake was approximately 50/50 male/female.

Job Title: EAP Teaching Fellow of English Preparatory Studies.  (Commenced Oct. 2012 – August 2013.  Duration: 1 academic year.)

Oscillated between the Academic English Foundation programme (teaching ±B1 business students) and the Academic IELTS exam preparation programme, based on student numbers.

As part of a team of two other IELTS examiners, we were responsible for the on-going maturing of a coherent and comprehensive 10-week exam preparation course for the university.  This programme was available to learners after they'd completed the Academic English programme.  An IELTS 6.0 was required to go to their faculty.

• I taught approximately 15 hours a week face-to-face.

• Became a proficient user of Edmodo - our LMS.

• I presented at teacher development sessions giving sessions on (i) Genre analysis in writing and (ii) A multi-skill first-class warmer demo.

• Coursebooks used: Ready for IELTS; Cutting Edge (3rd Edition)

• Maintained my IELTS examiner status with British Council (VN004).  Monitoring reports available on request.

• I took no sick days during my contract.

Reason for leaving: End of contract.  To go to AGU, Turkey.

Study Inn (Astana, Kazakhstan)

A privately run language school.

Job Title: Assistant Director of Studies.  (Commenced Sept. 2011 – August 2012. Duration: 12 months)

I led a team of approximately 18 teachers over two schools, organized in-house teacher training sessions and held meetings.  I was also responsible for conducting observations and improving the overall quality of the teaching at the two schools of which I was academically responsible for.  The induction and appraisal of teachers were also my responsibilities.

• Conducted monthly ‘teacher development sessions’ where I gave my teachers techniques and methods they used to make themselves better teachers.

• I was responsible for enabling our schools to become EAQUALS-compliant through the on-going redesign of our syllabus to CEFR standards, documenting our procedures and improving our administrative procedures.

• Trained and tested as a YLE (Starters, Movers & Flyers), KET/PET/FCE examiner.

• I was responsible for the start of the integration of Cambridge ESOL Exams (KET/PET/FCE/CAE) into our syllabus.  Overseeing the setting up of an exam centre in my city.

• It was part of my job to promote Study Inn and Cambridge University Press around the northern regions of Kazakhstan and this provided a great number of opportunities to explore the region and train those who lacked anything above basic pedagogical instruction.

• I taught approximately 16 real hour a week; a combination of in company, IELTS, individuals, general English and corporate English.

• Trained as in IELTS examiner and examined for KZ001 with the British Council.  Monitoring reports available on request.

• I took two sick days during my contract.

Reason for leaving: End of contract.  The need for more professional development.

International House (Astana, Kazakhstan)

A privately run language school.

Job Title: Instructor.  (Commenced Oct. 2009, completed Aug. 2010. Duration: 11 months)

• I taught approximately 800 teaching hours (~22 actual hours per week).  Teaching primarily General English, English for Specific Purposes (Business), and English for Academic Purposes (using but not limited to New English File, Headway, Inside Out.  Market Leader, IELTS was from a combination of IELTS Masterclass, IELTS 7 and IELTS Step by Step).

• Most of the classes I taught were General English IELTS exam preparation or Business English; the latter I taught only in a 1-1 environment with the others in both a group setting and individually.

• Being a big advocate of using technology in classes, I enjoyed using the interactive whiteboards and I was keen to exploit podcasts, audio and visual excerpt from online news agencies. I tried to use authentic written material to make my classes more communicative, enjoyable and positive.  I built up a valuable catalogue of supplements.

• Personally responsible for setting the curriculum and the pacing of new classes (specifically IELTS)

• When planning my courses I always tried to be aware of the problems which made English difficult for Russian speakers (i.e. the absence of articles, no concept of ‘perfect’ tenses and problems pronouncing consonant clusters and importantly the phonetic the lack of the sounds for various English phonemes).  My students appreciated this emphasis and it allowed both them and me to best use our time together.

• I led the occasional workshop and gave presentations on, for example, how to effectively teach vocabulary.

• I took no sick days during my contact.

Reason for leaving: End of contract.

ECC (Seoul, South Korea)

A privately run language school.

Job Title: English Teacher.  (Commenced Mar. 2007, completed October. 2009.  Duration: 30 months)

• Over 2000 ‘real’ classroom teaching hours.

• Bringing creative ideas to the table to make lessons more fun, more manageable and more constructive was an important part of the job.

• Teaching such a broad spectrum of ages, I used different management tools to incentivise their learning.

• I aided the development of the curriculum, enhancing the lessons with custom-made hand-outs, display cards and wall displays.

• I took no sick days during my contact

Reason for leaving: End of contract extension.

SpeechMachines (Malvern, England)

Software company which specialised in a heavy-duty dictation service for the medical industry.  Owned by Medquest; owned by Phillips.

Job Title: Software Engineer.  (Commenced Sept. 2002, completed June 2006.  Duration: 45 months)

• Developing server-side software for use on a mission critical, half-billion US dollar datacentre which handled ~150k jobs (dictations) a day.

• I was responsible for designing, coding, testing, maintaining and documenting mainly speech to text server applications the most prominent one of these handled hundreds of thousands of jobs concurrently.

• I coded in a selection of different languages from simple utility Perl scripts to complex PL/SQL database procedures, performance optimized C++ using MFC with DCOM and COM, WinForms GUI apps in C# and VB.NET using .NET with XML and Word and Excel document interrogation using VB.

• My role in the ‘workflow’ team mandated liaising with other teams within our company, our QA and support staff in the US, the domestic management above me and software suppliers in Austria (Phillips).

• Make major improvements to the reporting sub-system the duties of which include but are not limited to schema creation, optimizing procedural SQL for efficiency, adding reports to the system and managing the web interface.

Reason for leaving: To go travelling.

Conferences

May 2018: English Language Teachers' Association, Belgrade, Serbia

Presented "Perls of Wisdom: Analysing In-House Materials Quantitatively"

June 2016: BALEAP PIM on English Medium Instruction, Southampton, England

Presented "Learners 2.0: Reprogramming for Uni."

Professional Development Summary

April 2025 - June 2025: NPQLT (National Professional Qualification for Leading Teaching)

March 2025: Google Trainer Skills Assessment

March 2025: Google Educator Level 2

March 2025: Google Educator Level 1

February 2025: IB DP Computer Science - Category 3

October 2024: IB MYP Category 2 - Design

June 2024: IB MYP Category 1 - Design

March 2024:  Biennial IELTS Recertification (Tashkent, Uzbekistan)

April 2018: Certified as an International Baccalaureate Diploma Examiner in English Language B

January 2016: Biennial IELTS Recertification (Istanbul, Turkey)

IELTS Speaking & Writing

October 2014: Biennial IELTS Recertification (Ankara, Turkey)

IELTS Speaking & Writing

July 2013: Cambridge ESOL Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam)

Main Suite and YLE recertification

June 2012: Study Inn (Astana, Kazakhstan)

YLE (Starters, Movers & Flyers) Examiner Training.

June 2012: International House (Wroclaw, Poland)

Delta Module 3: Pass awarded.

January 2012: Study Inn (Almaty, Kazakhstan)

KET/PET/FCE Examiner Training.

December 2011: British Council (Almaty, Kazakhstan)

Delta Module 1: Pass awarded.

November 2011: British Council (Astana, Kazakhstan)

IELTS Examiner Training.

July – Aug. 2011: International House (Wroclaw, Poland)

Delta Module 2: Pass awarded.  Taught; not online or distance.

September 2010 – June 2011: Anglia Ruskin University (Cambridge, England)

MA in Applied Linguistics with TESOL: Distinction awarded.  Taught; not online or distance.

Thesis is available here: https://sites.google.com/site/friendstvcorpus/

Dec. 2009: International House (Astana, Kazakhstan)

Distinction in “Exam Preparation Teacher Training Course”.

Sept. 2009: La Trobe university (Melbourne, Australia)

Pass in CELTA.  Taught; not online or distance.

Sept. 1998 – May 2002: University of Wolverhampton (Wolverhampton, England)

2:1 BSc (Hons) Computer Science (Software Engineering).

Sept. 1996 – June 1998: Dudley College of Technology (Dudley, England)

Distinction in BTEC National Diploma in Computer Science.

Professional Organisation

I am a member of ILTA (International Language Testing Association)

I am a member of EALTA (European Association of Language Testing and Assessment)

I am a member of UKALTA (UK Association of Language Testing and Assessment)

I am a member of FOAI  and FOCI (Forum on Assessment Issues; Forum on Curriculum Issues) in Turkey

I am a member of ELTA in Serbia.

Additional Skills

Additional Languages: A1 German, A1 Korean, A2  (but improving) Russian, shoptalk Turkish.

Driving License: I hold a full clean UK driving license and I can get an International Driving Permit/License given enough notice (4 weeks).

First Aid: I am a qualified St. John’s Ambulance First Aider.  I have been trained in the use of an AED (Automated External Defibrillators).

Interests:  I enjoy going to the gym and improving my fitness; both watching and playing football are hobbies of mine but my major interest is travelling, the gaps in my employment history have been filled with journeys through Europe, Asia and most recently Oceania.  I am a certified SCUBA diver and try to take to the water whenever I get the opportunity.

Immunizations:  I am up to date on the following immunizations: Hepatitis A & B, Japanese encephalitis, Tick borne encephalitis, Yellow fever, Diphtheria, Tetanus, Polio, Meningitis A, C, W and Y, Rabies, Typhoid

Sick Days: I have taken a total of ±4 sick days in the last 6 years of work.

Passport: British.  Expires 2021.  Approximately 30 blank pages.

References: References, both academic and interpersonal, can be arranged on request.

References

#1: Simon Trembath, Head of Design & Computer Science @ The Anglo. strembath@anglo.edu.co

#2: Stephen Doyle, Head of DP Computer Science @The Anglo. sdoyle@anglo.edu.co

#3: Gioconda Liliana Prieto Romero, Head of MYP Design @ The Anglo. gprieto@anglo.edu.co

#5: Wayne Prout, Fmr. Deputy Head of Secondary (Academics) & Head of Maths and Computer Science @ WIST.  Email available on request

#6: Mr Daryl York.  Director of Studies @ Abdullah Gul University.  + 90 (352) 224 8800 Ext 7937.  york@agu.edu.tr

#7: Mr Ray Wiggins.  DELTA Tutor and former colleague.  raywiggin@hotmail.com

#8 Ms Seval Sir, IELTS Country Manager for Turkey, seval.sir@idp.com

#9 Mr Steve Simmons, Director of Studies @ Eastern International University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. steven.simmons@eiu.edu.vn