About Tim and Renata

Hi. I'm Tim Keeley. I've been teaching English in Indonesia, Ukraine and the United Kingdom for 10 years. I got into teaching after travelling the world and opening my eyes to what amazing people live on planet Earth!

Who are Tim and Renata?

After teaching for about a year, I started to become bored with using a text book for every lesson. Sometimes the topics weren't engaging to students in Asia, and sometimes the cultural content just wasn't relevant; for example, what's the point of teaching 'summer, winter, spring and autumn' to students who only know 'rainy season, sunny season'?

I found that choosing authentic, topical lessons gave me much better results; especially when using music. Soon, students started asking me to teach them using the songs they loved, and the improvement was amazing. I can't underestimate the importance of motivation, and with music I found a great way to engage my class

Hello, I'm Renata Lebioda-Green. I've been teaching English for 20 years in Poland, Oman and the United Kingdom. I started teaching because I love meeting new people, and I think my students have taught me more than I ever imagined.

My first degree was in classical music and I worked as an opera singer in Wroclaw, Poland, and sang early music such as Bach and Handel in Europe.

I've always thought that music can be used at the heart of a language lesson, not just used for gapfills and warmers.The constraints imposed by the educational institutions I worked for in Oman and the UK meant that I couldn't experiment with music, different methodologies and genres, so this project has helped me to spread my wings.