Testimonial from an English teacher in Russia

I joined English First in '97 in Moscow where I had already been working for a couple of years and admired EF's image so decided to apply! I helped open the central Moscow school and worked there as Director of Studies for a year. Good times!

Then I moved on to the Warsaw office to manage academic operations for the most wonderful area - Poland, Lithuania, Slovenia, Morocco and Azerbaijan - so a lot of work and travel but tonnes of fun; in Warsaw I set up a Trinity Diploma course which created a nice academic feeling amidst all the business hustle and bustle, and graduates from that course include, among others, Steve Allen who is now director of studies of EF London and Mark Rendell who is now deputy vice president of English UK!

I then moved in 2001 to be academic director of the new EF school in Vancouver, a dream location and a great school (well it would be, we built it!) and I decided to stay pretty much from the moment I saw the city from the airplane.

The work is a great mix of frenetic school management with a couple of quiet creative days at home a week to develop EF curriculum and materials and plenty of travel to choice locations around North America.

The great thing with my time with EF so far is that I have got to do so much - teaching, management, recruitment, marketing, course book writing, world travel, consultation, teacher training and development...not to mention a certain amount of partying...and rarely is a day ever the same.

Neil Hammond, EF Vancouver

"'My course with Windsor Schools gave me the boost I needed to set me off on what I hope will be a useful career. A TEFL certificate is a passport to a whole weird world of opportunity. There is no denying that Surgut is a very strange place. When I arrived the snow was a metre deep all over and the temperature was -22C. Today 16th May the sun is shining brightly and I'm sunburnt from spending yesterday at a barbecue in +28C. Without EF I would not have been able to find this astonishing place with its extraordinary architecture and bizarre climate. Many thanks."

Mark Marshall - EF Surgut, Russia in 2005