About the teacher training centre
IH Bucharest was opened by Alina and Mihai Gânj more than 18 years ago, and they are still actively involved in the day to day running of the organisation. They, and the whole team at the school are committed to offering excellence in language and training services.
Our main headquarters – where teacher training courses take place – has always been in the same location in the central area of Bucharest and very easily accessible by local transport (bus, tram, underground). We also have other two centres in Bucharest.
We are a very large school and have both adult courses (mostly in-company) and YL courses (over 2000 YLs attend our classes yearly). We run CELTA and IH CYLT training courses, and courses for teachers teaching very young learners.
Besides running CELTA courses, the school also offers a series of workshops aimed at teachers of English as a foreign language from state schools in Romania. This provides a common ground between the public and private education system, where a transfer of expertise can take place. The Romanian Ministry of Education and Research has officially acknowledged IH Bucharest’s merit in providing training to its teachers.
What is the CELTA?
The CELTA is a TEFL qualification which prepares you to teach English as a foreign language. You don’t need any existing English language teaching experience or training. It’s usually a 4 or 5 week full time course (but you can also take it part time).
Standing up in front of a class for the first time is a daunting prospect, so you need to make sure you have the skills you need to teach effectively. The CELTA prepares you for the classroom in these ways:
- Taught sessions on methodology, lesson planning, language analysis and language skills. (In total, you’ll have 120 hours of input.)
- The opportunity to observe experienced teachers in a real-life language classroom situations – so you can see the different skills and techniques they use.
- Teaching yourself – with helpful and detailed feedback from your tutors. This practical experience is invaluable when you start your first job.
You’ll have to complete some written assignments as well, but when it’s all successfully completed you’ll be ready for your first job and first students!
Read more about the CELTA here
CELTA Online with IH Bucharest
As our trainees testify, we have managed to deliver genuine Cambridge-level quality on our online CELTA both content-wise and as far as the tutors’ performance is concerned.
How do we do that?
First, we include extra sessions for trainees to get used to the platform (hence, the course duration is 5 instead of 4 weeks): we make sure they get familiar with the online course environment and comfortable learning and teaching in it.
Secondly, we constantly highlight parallels between online and face-to-face teaching, so that any possible inconveniences are smoothed out, and trainees end up feeling empowered to teach online competently in the “new normal”.
Thirdly, we pay special attention to equipping the trainees with online classroom management skills. Finally, we facilitate and cherish the trainees’ exposure to a multicultural team spirit, as the course participants can be from anywhere in the world.
All that expertise, approach and input will feed into our next fully online CELTAs
Watch this video of testimonials about the online CELTA:
CELTA at IH Bucharest
IH Bucharest is part of an impressive training infrastructure and expertise, backed by the following credentials:
- we’ve been around for more than 18 years, the market leader in business English teaching in Romania
- we’ve been running teacher training courses for over 15 year
- we’ve been a member of the European Association for Quality Language Services (EAQUALS) since 2008
- we won the Award for Teaching Excellence at the 2017/2018 edition of the iStudy Guide Awards
- our junior unit, English Kids Academy, won The Best Preparation Centre Award in the step-by-step category at the first edition of the “Preparation Centre Awards”, organised by Cambridge Assessment English
- we received 11 out of 12 points of excellence in the 2018 EAQUALS Inspection
All of the above ensure that the training you receive at IH Bucharest is bound to be of world-class quality.
See what our trainers say about taking the CELTA with IH Bucharest
What will my fellow students be like?
Most of our candidates are female with about half of them being around 30 years old, while the rest vary in age, between 22 and 45 years old.
Early Bird Discounts
We will give an early bird discount of up to 15% if the full course payment is made 3 months before the start of the course, 10% if two months, 5% if one month
Tutors at this training centre
Alex Tilbury
Teodora Manole
I started teacher training with becoming a mentor, which was something my own wonderful mentors inspired me to strive for. This involved everything from 1-to-1 input sessions to assisted lesson planning, observations and the occasional counselling session – not too dissimilar to what happens on a CELTA course, in fact! I then slowly started delivering in-house training sessions, short in-service courses and larger-scale workshops for local teachers - and of course the CELTA!
Una Ni Chaoilte
After Budapest I moved to Catania, a city in the very south of Italy, on the island of Sicily. Apart from IH Catania I have also worked for IH Belfast and IH Galway in the past, and I did my DELTA with IH Budapest and IH London. I trained as a teacher trainer after I completed my DELTA.
Robert Martinez
Iulia Lehner
I took up teacher training in 2015. After a successful teaching career in Bucharest, I felt that the next step is teacher training – a passion that the many training sessions we had at IH Bucharest inspired in me.
CELTA Student Testimonials
The tutors were amazing . Their door is always open and they are more than happy to sit down and spend time with you to give advice and encouragement and share their creativity . Thank you very much!!!
Both Julie and Alex were amazing , very well prepared and they offered lots of support and excellent explanations. Thank you!!!
IH Bucharest is the perfect place to do the CELTA.
What a well-run and highly organized course!
A little bit more about our history
It all started in 2019. The management had already made the decision, trainers were contracted, trainees were interviewed, students were selected for the teaching practice, and so our first 4-week CELTA course was carefully organised and successfully delivered in June 2019. It marked the official launch of the IH Bucharest Teacher Training Centre. Our first step in providing professional development to teachers of English in Romania and beyond.
But besides running CELTA courses we offer workshops to teachers in the state education sector. Our trainees were at first a handful of state school teachers who decided that the professional development provided by IH Bucharest helped them improve the quality of their teaching in elementary and secondary schools. We started out modestly, holding our sessions occasionally rather than regularly at a partner location (Cărtureşti, the most important bookshop chain in the country), with IH Bucharest senior teachers acting as trainers. In time, we changed the venue, and our own spacious training room saw a constant increase in the number of participants, while more international and experienced trainers took the floor, and the workshops picked up pace, with one session a month.
That gradual growth has led us to transfer our sessions online. The numbers rocketed: between 100 and 450 teachers registered for the latest webinars delivered by our Head of Teacher Training and in-house CELTA trainer.
We are very pleased to welcome prominent trainers from around the IH global network to host our webinar series; the director at Lacunza IH Beasain, Robert Martínez, Lexical Lab co-founder Hugh Dellar, IHWO inspector Alex Tilbury, IH Montevideo teacher trainer Alastair Grant and one of the most influential IH professionals worldwide, ever: Scott Thornbury.
The Romanian Ministry of Education and Research has officially acknowledged IH Bucharest’s merit in providing free quality training to teachers of English working in the public education system. To ensure consistent online education for all the schoolchildren in Romania, our webinars on online teaching tools and methodologies have been particularly valued, as they equip state school teachers with much needed e-teaching skills.
The Ministry’s pledge to facilitate public education teachers’ access to the professional development services provided by IH Bucharest means that we are now very well positioned to succeed in giving IH full national exposure and bringing the IH brand and quality to thousands of teachers of English in Romania, who can now interact directly with top IH trainers from around the world. For many of those teachers, we hope the experience will be one of the most memorable landmarks of their professional growth.