On Saturday 20th May hundreds of ELT teachers descended on sunny Toruń for the annual IH TORUŃ TEACHER TRAINING DAY Conference (#ihtorunTTD). This year was extra special as we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the school. We had some wonderful guest speakers including ELT royalty Jeremy Harmer and Adrian Underhill, Dr Grzegorz Spiewak (kindly sponsored by Macmillan Education), Alex Warren (kindly sponsored by National Geographic Learning), tech whiz-kid Russell Stannard, Edyta Pikulska, Urszula Kropaczewska, Cambridge Exams extraordinare Vincent Smidowicz Dr Alicja Galazka (kindly sponsored by OUP) and many wonderful speakers from IH schools such as Emma Wooding and Gwilym Piette (IH Bydgoszcz, Poland), Milena Montalbano (IH Team Lingue, Italy), Zoe Harris (IH Bielsko-Biala, Poland), Lilly-Anne Young (IH OTTI), Fernanda Riegert Borba (IH Brno), Francesca Sollohub and Glenn Standish (IH Toruń, Poland) and Christopher Walker (the editor of The IH Journal).
We started the day with several hours of inspiring workshops followed by loads of yummy pizza. We then moved venues for an afternoon of plenary sessions and an enjoyable hour of 30th anniversary celebrations. We had live greetings from former teachers as well as two former IH Torun DOSes Malcolm Garrett and Tim Brombley. We also had video greetings from former IH Torun Senior Teachers as well as 17 messages from IH Directors from all around the world which just helped show how international International House truly is. We were also honoured to have a special congratulatory video message from the British star of stage and screen Sir Derek Jacobi.
The anniversary celebrations were also attended by the Mayor of Toruń Michal Zaleski who gave a warm speech congratulating IH Torun on its 30th anniversary and then helped to cut the cake alongside the School Director Romek Poslednik and DOS Glenn Standish.
IHWO was officially represented by former IH Trustee Adrian Underhill who spoke some words and then ingeniously used the phonemic chart (which was worn by Romek) to spell out ‘Happy Birthday IH Torun’.
We thank everyone for helping make this such a wonderful event. Here’s to the next IH Torun Teacher Training Day.
