On 20th September British Council Bilbao hosted the 2nd Annual Teachers’ Conference. The success of last year’s event was repeated thanks to over thirty quality sessions covering topics of interest and relevance to more than 150 of our colleagues in the English teaching profession.

The 2nd Annual Teachers’ Conference once again brought together participants from state and private schools and private language academies, teaching all age groups from Infants to Adults, to enjoy sessions given by speakers both from within the British Council and the wider ELT community. Talks by British Council Bilbao teachers included how to use TV advertisements in class, an introduction to Premier Skills – a partnership between the Premier league and the British Council which helps bring football to the classroom - and using the International Phonemic Alphabet in class, whilst British Council Manchester provided an interesting session on our Global Products and British Council Madrid gave an insight into the exciting Open Cities project.

Once again this year, we were lucky to be able to count on collaboration with our colleagues from BETEA and TESOL-Spain, including sessions from their respective presidents.  As a further step towards integrating the British Council’s activities into the local community we opened up the call for proposals to participants of our Talks for Teachers and were rewarded with a selection of interesting talks ranging from portfolios and phonics to Australian culture. The Conference also welcomed speakers from the world of ELT publishing and ESOL examinations and two extremely popular performances from the Blue Mango Theatre Group.

The morning was intense, with five hours of talks plus coffee, a prize draw and a Swap Shop where participants brought along their ideas for classroom activities, and took home a pack with a collation of all the contributions. Comments from participants confirm the feeling that this was an annual event to be repeated!