This issue of the magazine is dominated by the man who symbolised Pilgrims for 51 years and whose influence in ELT will perdure for at least another half a century.  Mario has left us, so we wish to celebrate his life in this issue: please read the many tributes to this legend of the EFL world in this Magazine

Pilgrims trainers have carried on making Mario proud by maintaining his pedagogic legacy: they attended and spoke at a number of conferences around Europe: IATEFL Poland, TESOL France, TESOL Spain, ETAS in Switzerland and TESOL Athens to name just a few. And more are to come: IATEFL in Edinburgh, APPI in Portugal .... The Pilgrims way (humanistic teaching) has never been as relevant as it is now: we are proud to remain pioneers in ELT.  

Pilgrims' partnership with Learn and Lead Innovation took a concrete turn in March when some of the Pilgrims trainers attended an induction session with members of  Learn and Lead which is a grouping  of independent training centres across 12 countries. It allowed both organisations to identify the complementarity of our 2 approaches: while Pilgrims has always focused on classroom delivery designed to empower teachers to inspire their pupils, LLI has chosen a wider remit by extending the scope of its work from the classroom to the full management of the schools; it operates at three synergistic levels: classroom - team - organisation. This signifies that the profound improvements Pilgrims trainers bring to the teachers’ classrooms can be enhanced by the emergence of a positive climate school as a whole, thus having an exponential impact on the motivation of both teachers and pupils. Synergy between all stakeholders in a school, be it teachers, academic Heads of Departments, the management and parents creates happy schools with happy people!

Joint programmes with Learn and Lead Innovation are planned to take place in Segovia during the month of August this year: a number of teachers have already reserved their place on those courses. It should prove a wonderful opportunity to further Pilgrims' belief in as wide a holistic perspective as possible.

​Finally,I should like to announce that, at Pilgrims, we are putting a lot of effort to widen our community of ​broad minded trainers​: we are blessed with an extremely loyal team who have conducted teacher training on the campus of the University of Kent for many summers: they are the bedrock of PIlgrims' reputation for innovative pedagogy; however,  the corollary of this long running loyalty is the need to widen the team with younger trainers with the right Pilgrims values. This evolution takes us back to my introduction where I suggest that Mario’s legacy deserves to last for another 50 years! 
 

Please check the Pilgrims in Segovia Teacher Training courses 2025 at Pilgrims website.

Please check the Pilgrims f2f courses at Pilgrims website.