Passion for Teaching

Neil teaching

07-06-2007

Neil Briggs-Evison has always known he would be a fine teacher. Coming from a family of 22 teachers, it seems to be his genetic heritage! But as a talented thinker and keen mathematician, he chose for himself a career of accounting and became distracted by workings and financial demands of England's leading firms and government agencies

Neil loved working in the corporate world and particularly enjoyed working with the people. As finance and business director, Neil took responsibility for staff development in developed the scope of his role to include training. In this capacity, Neil was employing much of the skills and techniques that he would later be using in his language class

With almost 20 years in the corporate world behind him, Neil decided he had had enough of the financial world, and decided it was time to enter his real profession. Neil was leaving behind a world that he knew well, where he was well-respected, and where there were excellent financial rewards. But he was moving into a profession that he had a natural love for, and did not did not expect the transition from the corporate world into school life to be anything but fulfilling.

With warm weather, spicy food and tropics beaches ahead, Neil headed for Thailand. Neil's frequent business trips to Asia had given him a keen understanding of the country, it's people and their way of life. In 2004 Neil joined the Spencer team as a high school teacher at joint venture project at one of Bangkok's top government high schools. Neil was at this stage one of only four native teachers in the school, and quickly made his mark as a popular teaching among the students and a valuable resource for the other teachers in the English department. Since then, the department has grown; Neil now leads the team of eight native-English speaking teachers that hail from Australia, Scotland, America, South Africa and England. Neil's students have won speech contests, put on plays in English, presented projects had a great time doing it!

His expertise in teaching methodology and his excellent knowledge of the language have not only made Neil a success in the classroom and among his teaching peers at school, but Neil has much more to share. He has joined the Chichester College TESOL programme here in Bangkok , where he is a part-time teacher trainer. Neil specialises in ESP and English for corporate students, but is also successful as a supervisor of the trainee teachers who come to Thailand to learn the skills required to teach English as a foreign language. These trainees find his calm, confident classroom presence reassuring, his insights into the world of teaching valuable, and his feedback on their teaching practice useful to their development as novice teachers.

" I love seeing the students progress and develop; and seeing theory and practice coming to fruition," he says while enjoying a cup of coffee during a break. Neil's strength as a teacher is his ability to bring out the best from the students in his class, motivating them to do their best, and enjoy the process of learning. Neil truly is a master of the craft of teaching.