Teaching English was my third career (or fourth if you count housewife) and it started in France around 1980. I'd been living in the middle of nowhere in the French countryside and had decided that doing a TEFL course would be a good way of getting back into civilisation. So I spent a month at International House in London, returned to France with a Preparatory Certificate and got my first teaching job in Lyons. Three years and a Dip TEFLA later, I decided I'd been in France long enough (ten years) and came back to Oxford because that's where most of my family were. It turned out to be a good choice because English language teaching jobs were not difficult to come by and I ended up with three jobs at one point. I finally settled into one place - the Lake School of English - and I'm still there!

During my time at the Lake School I've set up and run refresher courses for non-native teachers of English and workshops for modern languages teachers. My other area of responsibility at the school has been materials design and I wrote the Reward Resource Packs which are part of the Reward Series (Macmillan)  in school time. I was then sent round the world to promote them. It's a hard life.