About us
- Introduction
- The story of iT's
- Our titles and online resources
- Creative team
- Website design
- Audio production
- Testimonials
- Sponsors
In the Beginning...
The story if iT's starts in 1985 when I took over as editor of The Calendar, the newsletter that eventually gave birth to iT's for Teachers. The Calendar was published in Spain by International House Barcelona and started life as a newsletter for teachers in Catalonia. The original editor was Jane Cadwallader, who went on to find fame and fortune as a course book writer.
When
I took over as editor, I had very little experience with putting together
a newsletter. At school I had edited a magazine called Go! which,
due to lack of funds and my powers of persuasion, consisted almost entirely
of contributions written by myself, credited to an assortment of bizarre
names. The same was true for those first issues of The Calendar.
Apart from writing most of it, I also typed it, stuck the labels and
stamps on the envelopes and took all the copies to the post office.
The original Calendar office was a large cupboard under the stairs
at IH Barcelona which I shared with the occasional visiting cockroach.
Things improved greatly when the school expanded and I was given a real office with a window. The newsletter also improved greatly with the arrival of Scott Thornbury and Piet Luthi. Scott's writing and humour combined with Piet's amazing visuals turned The Calendar into something very special.
Apart
from including articles and information for teachers, I wanted The
Calendar to provide teachers with activities that were up-to-date,
motivating, and that didn't shy away from difficult topics. You have
to remember that back in the 1980s there was no Internet or satellite
television, video was a novelty and the British newspapers usually arrived
in Spain at least one day after their publication date. So topical activities
were in demand.
Looking back at those issues of The Calendar now, I wonder how we got away with some of the things we printed. Our "Alternative Dictionary" was extremely alternative and our "A to Z of What Boys and Girls Can Do" would never make it into an issue today without some heavy editing. In April 1987 we had a classroom feature on AIDS, and our "Acid House-The Lesson" issue in 1989 even got a mention in El País newspaper.
There was a regular comic strip about the life and teaching times of Toni Teffel, and there was Professor Badger, whose regular column was always a great read and who went on to write The Bluffer's Guide to EFL. In October 1988, Mike Combellack wrote his debut "Computer File" column, announcing that this was the first issue to be produced on a computer. I remember it well.
A lot of the best activities from The Calendar have survived and re-appeared in different forms during the lifetime of iT's for Teachers.
Over the five years that I edited The Calendar, the newsletter grew up into a magazine. It widened its territory from Catalonia to what we labelled as Eastern Spain. Believing the magazine should continue to grow and reach the whole of Spain (and maybe even the world!), I went to Ben Warren, the Director of International House Eastern Spain at the time, and told him my plans. He wisely thought that I was being too ambitious but allowed me to take The Calendar from under the wing of International House and set up a new magazine independently that incorporated The Calendar. This allowed me to start a magazine with an existing subscriber base, which was a huge advantage.
In 1990 the TESOL Spain convention was held in Torremolinos, and I remember it being the place where the master plan started to take shape. A few months later the first issue of iT's for Teachers was published. The following year Ben Warren was tragically killed in London. I have always been grateful to him for taking me on as editor of The Calendar in the first place, and for allowing me to start iT's for Teachers.
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