General Info

Hello,

My name is Rafal Drewniak and I run Golden Gate together with my wife Ania. In this section I will try to give you some insight into what teaching for our school is all about.

Ok, I will have to start by saying that we are always looking for bright and TEFL qualified native teachers to join our team. We value enthusiasm, open-mindedness and creativity over extensive training and experience, even though we do require the candidates to have some formal TEFL training (CELTA or Equivalent). Native teachers are very important to us as they are key to our vision of sensible language training: teaching for real life communication.

We teach mostly general English to local students ranging from early-school beginners to advanced-level adults. The tandem system, we have been successfully using for over ten years, makes the best use of the strengths of our native teachers. Essentially, the system consists in a native teacher teaching the same group of students alongside a (more experienced) Polish teacher, on a rota basis. The Polish teacher is responsible for teaching formal aspects of English, such as the grammar system or reading, so the native tacher can focus on teaching communication skills and cultural content. Don't worry then, you won't have to take a refresher course in English to do your job well. All you need is to be responsive to your students' needs and creative in coming up with interesting ways to teach the things you know best.

Obviously, you're not on your own as far as teaching materials are concerned. At each level students have textbooks that provide the teaching content and you have a Teacher's Book to guide you through classes in terms of organisation, timing and rationale behind the activities to be taught. Also, we have a range of photocopiable activity books, internet-linked computers and audiovisual equipment to help you make your classes more interesting.

For more detailed information on the school, the positions we are offering and our town/region, just click on the tabs in this section.