A question has exercised many teachers' minds over the last 50 years: what makes Pilgrims Teacher Training so uniquely powerful? The answer to the question is as simple as the question is complex: the Pilgrims trainers!  Long before I had a role with Pilgrims, I was fascinated by what made the trainers so engaging. 

It all seems to stem from the teachers' complete disregard for generally accepted pedagogical concepts: the trainers think outside the box because they refuse to fit in a box! This calm approach to teaching is conducive to creativity, and creativity inspires, and thus it is ultimately the driver of all good teaching.

I shall try and illustrate this core characteristic of Pilgrims trainers by drawing on  3 examples based on past trainers: Mario, Bonnie and Paul.

Mario Rinvolucry introduced letter writing in his training, thus encouraging his students to use this age-old activity to dig deep into their beliefs system: a letter reflects one's personal approach to the community of learners and thus exposes the barriers to our own learning. This is probably one of the best examples of self directed personal development. 

Mario is right in being a great believer in the power of communicating with hand written letters: I was fortunate enough to experience the strong pedagogical impact of such an old fashioned tool: I made the point to Mario one day that one could detect a common culture within Europe when looking at it from other continents; he would have none of it and penned me letters arguing the vast cultural differences between European geographical areas! My letters argued that, although attitudes may vary, there is a fundamental European way of thinking which contrasts with Californians or Australians. Although our letters served our respective convictions, it made us respect each other’s intellectual beliefs: Mario was proud of his plural national background which allowed him to focus on cultural parochiaism, whereas I was keen to see commonality beyond internal European borders. I certainly feel that our correspondence sharpened my critical thinking skills and elevated debates to levels which verbal jousting couldn't reach.

I was fortunate to be able to attend many of Bonnie Tsai’s conferences and training sessions. Bonnie was always everywhere: in the summer she was in Canterbury training teachers on the Pilgrims programmes, but during the rest of the year, she travelled to many parts of the world: I remember arriving in Boston to find her training the OISE teachers at our school there. Once I visited a school in Geneva and the first person I saw in the staffroom was Bonnie! 

Her repertoire included a number of essential teaching skills:  NLP. Multiple Intelligence, Coaching, Creativity in education.She was the epitome of the charismatic trainer who became an inspiration to a multitude of teachers and trainers alike. Like is so often the case in Pilgrims' training, standing rather than sitting was prevalent in all Bonnie's sessions! And balloons were de rigueur as an effective tool in forging classroom connections…

Paul Davis, an amazingly charismatic character, had the gift of turning the most boring language teaching activities into  the most exciting classroom session: dictation is probably the best example given that he wrote a book about this exercise which sidesteps totally the very pedestrian concept of committing on paper a passage delivered orally by the teacher: he turned it into an activity which inspired the pupils to recognise the spelling from deciphering the meaning.

Paul was not just about imparting impressive methodology; I always left one of his talks with fascinating facts, such as the most widely used collocation in the English language...

I have chosen to focus on past Pilgrims teachers not to embarass present teachers, so I want to stress that the trainers today follow in the footsteps of their past colleagues in maintaining the long Pilgrims tradition of counteracting the traditional classroom activities with fresh innovative approaches.    

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