Education for Sustainability for English Language Teachers

The need! The planet is facing a huge challenge of survival. To help people understand the key issues UNESCO has declared 2005-2014 the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) with the goal of integrating ESD throughout the whole of lifelong learning.

* For English Language teachers, ESD provides a huge opportunity to give an exciting and relevant context for language teaching.
* For those teaching other subjects through English (CLIL) sustainable development is probably already part of your subject content.

The purpose of the courses. Both courses aim to:

· give an understanding of how unsustainable our planet is – causes and solutions,

· provide training on how to teach sustainable development through English both during language and specific subject classes,

· give a greater experience of the English language in teaching and in everyday context.

Who are the courses for? Any teachers at school, vocational, and adult education levels. There will be a maximum of 15 people on each course

Where are the courses held? Both courses will be held in the attractive, historic medieval market town of Shrewsbury in England, the birthplace of Charles Darwin, close to the world heritage site of Ironbridge.

Who is running the courses? The two experienced course leaders are James Hindson and Aleksandra Zaparucha. James has a background in ESD and has written a number of publications on the subject and trained teachers in over twenty countries. Aleksandra is an English Language teacher from Poland and has written extensively on CLIL.

How much are the courses? The courses cost 1350 EURO each. This includes all accommodation and meals together with five full days teaching, two free books on ESD and CLIL and a training file. Discounts are available in the following situations: if you pay before the 31st December 2009, if you are a second person from the same school or college, if you are a member of a national English language teaching association.

Is funding available? We are currently placing the courses on the EU Comenius Grundtvig database. They should be listed there by the beginning of October. The deadline for applications for funding to attend under this scheme is the middle of January 2010. You can apply for the EU funding even though the courses are not yet listed. You can find addresses for your EU national Agency here -

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