In 2013, we moved to Florence and I quickly discovered it was a different town compared to Milan! There wasn’t the same demand for business English and the schools I came across were not great (I’m being diplomatic!) So, I decided to change tack and I opened my own small, but quirky English school. And because it was mine, I was able to put together programmes that I wanted to do. I worked with a teacher who has the same mindset as I do, and we were able to get really creative with our lessons and events and i started becoming really interested in advanced English. I learnt so much with this experience and it is one of things I am most proud of. However, in 2018 we moved back to Milan, for family reasons and the school changed hands.
When I left, my students asked me what was next?! They didn’t want to stop studying English with me, but they didn’t want to move north with me either!
I needed to come up with a way that my students could keep up their English, in an engaging and effective way, but that wouldn’t break the bank (individual lessons are expensive!)
I had already been playing around with the idea of eLearning, but I’d never really got anywhere with it due to lack of time and expertise. However, when we left for Milan, I suddenly had all this time on my hands. It was the perfect opportunity to study the digital world, the platform and so on, and design my new courses. Therefore, after a lot of research …(and many false starts!) … English Digital Academy was born and launched!