Gallery Teachers

Membership Committee

Back to membership

  • Steve Hirschhorn

    GTMC Chair

    Steve Hirschhorn

    Steve Hirschhorn has been teaching and training teachers for around 40 years. He has lectured and delivered workshops from Peru to Japan and most stages in between, going the long way round! Steve has been a Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics, school Principal and Director of TESOL; he was External Examiner for three UK universities’ MA TESOL and English Language boards. He has written numerous articles on various aspects of teacher-training, teaching and learning language. During the 80s, Steve studied Silent Way and Suggestopedia and continues to develop ideas from the Humanistic Approaches. He enjoys surprising younger students with his knowledge of computers and even computer games! In the late 80s he created an IPA font which enables IPA writing rather than cut and paste systems (now at v7). He is currently busily retired.

  • Emma Lauson

    BA, PGCE, DELTA, SPMGT GTMC Secretary

    Emma Lauson

    BA, PGCE, DELTA, SPMGT

    Emma is the Director of Studies at KKCL. She has been teaching EFL for over 10 years and has lived in Spain, Portugal and the UK. She can speak Spanish, Portuguese, French and Moroccan Arabic and is a singer-songwriter in her spare time, so watch out for her performing around London!

    Her favourite part of the job is meeting people from all around the world and helping them to improve their English.

    Emma speaks Spanish, Portuguese, French and a bit of Moroccan Arabic. She can also understand Italian.

  • Nigel Heritage

    B.Ed, Cert TEFLA, SPmGT GTMC Safeguarding Lead

    Nigel Heritage

    B.Ed, Cert TEFLA, SPmGT

    Nigel has been involved in safeguarding children for over 40 years, since he first trained as a teacher of children with learning difficulties. He has had to deal with many different safeguarding situations throughout his career which has included working in the UK state sector, in ELT overseas and also in UK, managing junior summer programmes and for the last 12 years, training.

    Nigel is a tutor for English UK and is the leading safeguarding trainer and consultant for ELT in the UK. He specialises in student welfare in general and safeguarding and young learners in particular.

    Safeguarding children well is one of the most important things we do for international students visiting UK. It is very important that we get it right.

  • Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto

    BA, MA, SPMGT GTMC Member

    Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto

    BA, MA, SPMGT

    Barbara has taught both English and ESL in the United States, and EFL in Japan for more than 25 years. She earned her BA from Western Oregon University and her Masters in TESOL from Northern Arizona University. Barbara has conducted workshops throughout Asia, the U.S. and Latin America, and is co-author of the best-selling young learners Let's Go series (Oxford University Press). She is also a founding member of the JALT Teaching Children special interest group. Her motto is "Always try new things," so these days, when she's not teaching, writing, or giving workshops, you'll often find Barbara online exploring the potential of social media for professional development. If you'd like to explore with her, you can usually find Barbara on her award winning blog, Teaching Village.

  • Dorothy Zemach

    MA TESL GTMC Member

    Dorothy Zemach

    MA TESL

    Dorothy Zemach is a teacher trainer, author, writer, and editor based in Oregon, USA. She holds an MA in TESL from the School for International Training in Vermont, USA. After teaching ESL and foreign languages for over 25 years, she now concentrates on writing materials and conducting teacher-training workshops. Her areas of specialty and interest are teaching writing, teaching reading, business English, academic English, testing, and humor.
    A prolific author and editor of ELT textbooks, Dorothy has penned everything from the Teddy Bear’s Magic Music teacher’s book to the lowest and highest levels of Macmillan's flagship course Open Mind to the groundbreaking English for Scammers (self-published). In 2012 she founded a micropress, Wayzgoose Press, that publishes fiction, literary non-fiction, and ELT materials.

  • Ken Paterson

    RSA DipTEFLA GTMC Member

    Ken Paterson

    RSA DipTEFLA

    Ken Paterson first taught English as a foreign language in France in 1977 as an ‘assistant’ on the gap-year programme set up by the Central Bureau for Educational Visits and Exchanges.

    After studying French at the University of London, he began teaching EFL in London in 1984, joining the University of Westminster in 1987, where, for the next 23 years, he held a number of posts including Director of ELT, Chair of Professional Education and Chair of English and Linguistics. His teaching brief covered all aspects of ELT from elementary learners to MA TESOL students, and included text analysis for translators and BA English Language students. He gained the RSA DipTEFLA in 1992 on the International House distance-learning course.

    Ken began writing ELT grammar practice books in 1995, and has continued to do so until the present day, discovering specialist interests in spoken and academic grammar, and giving regular conference talks at IATEFL and abroad for TESOL Spain and the British Council. The Handbook of Spoken Grammar was shortlisted for a British Council ELTon in 2013 in the category ‘Innovation in Learner Resources’.

    Ken is currently a freelance ELT author.

    PUBLICATIONS
    Harrison M, Jakeman V, Paterson K, Improve Your Grammar, Palgrave, 2016.
    Paterson K (main author), Wedge R, Oxford Grammar for EAP, Oxford University Press, 2013.
    Paterson K (main author), Caygill C, Sewell R, A Handbook of Spoken Grammar, DELTA, 2012.
    Paterson K, Oxford Living Grammar Upper Intermediate, Oxford University Press, 2012.
    Paterson K, Oxford Living Grammar Elementary, Oxford University Press, 2009.
    Paterson K, Harrison M, Coe N, Grammar Spectrum for Italian Students, Oxford University Press, 2007.
    Paterson K, Harrison M, Coe N, Oxford Practice Grammar Basic, Oxford University Press, 2006.
    Paterson K, Grammar Spectrum 1, Oxford University Press, 1995.

  • Thomas Jones

    GTMC Member

    Thomas Jones

    Thomas Jones has lived in more than a dozen countries and delivered training in over 70. He is principal of an international college in the summer, teaches at universities and schools around the world and is invited to speak regularly at global conferences year round. He runs his own training company and is a consultant for Telc, and others. He is rubbish at maths, but his mother thinks he is great.

  • Ray de Witt

    BA, Cert TEFLA, APC ESP, DipHE, MA TESOL GTMC Member

    Ray de Witt

    BA, Cert TEFLA, APC ESP, DipHE, MA TESOL

    Ray de Witt started teaching English in 1977, having failed to find satisfaction using his degree in Chemistry. After some years in the private sector, teaching all types of students from groups of children to one-to-one Business English, he moved into the state sector. Having had diverse experiences at Kilburn Polytechnic and the Universities of Middlesex and Westminster, he broadened his experience again with a delightful year teaching in central Italy. Returning to UK, he started delivering the Trinity CertTESOL via his own company before another stint at the University of Westminster. In 1998 he gained a permanent position as Senior Tutor at the University of Sussex, where he still works part-time. There he introduced the Trinity CertTESOL, embedding it also into the BA TESOL, as well as teaching a wide range of General and Academic English, and sessions on the MA TESOL. This in turn led to a series of teacher training workshops for three universities in Chile.

    At Westminster I co-authored a manual with ideas for teaching EAP and then, as one of the original ELTS examiners, ‘How to Prepare for IELTS’ for the British Council.

    He was an enthusiastic member of SEAL and currently works as a moderator for Trinity CertTESOL.

    Qualifications

    • BA Chemistry, University of Surrey
    • Cert TEFLA, International House, London
    • APC ESP, University of London Institute of Education
    • DipHE, University of Westminster
    • MA TESOL, University of London Institute of Education

    UCLES FCE and CAE examiner [retired]
    IELTS examiner [retired]
    Trinity CertTESOL moderator

  • Valentina Holubeva

    GTMC Member

    Valentina Holubeva

    Valentina Holubeva is an experienced ESP teacher from Minsk, Belarus, and a Senior Professional Member of Gallery Teachers. She is a Board member of the BelNATE association and administers a Facebook group Teaching English in Belarus. She has taught English in a variety of contexts: secondary school, university, teacher development, corporate training, from pre-readers to senior citizens. Since 2007 Valentina has been running ICAN English speaking club and writespeakenglish.com, which is a free platform for TEFL projects.