From the Classroom to the Internet
I came to the Czech Republic years ago with a suitcase, a master’s degree in English: pedagogy and composition, and a TEFL certificate — the kind of thing that qualifies you to stand at the front of a classroom but doesn't really prepare you for what's actually in it. I learned fast. Real learners don't behave like the ones in methodology textbooks. They have Maturita exams coming up, they're on their phones, and they don't care about isolated grammar drills that have nothing to do with their lives.
So I started making my own materials. Lesson plans built around things my students actually wanted to talk about — AI taking their future jobs, social media, travel, money, relationships. Grammar taught through sentences that made sense in context, not invented examples from 1987.
Over time, those materials piled up. Hundreds of lesson plans. Maturita speaking packs. Grammar worksheets with real examples and full answer keys. I was sharing them with colleagues and posting a few online, and teachers started asking for more — from Prague, from Bratislava, from Hungary, Poland, Brazil, and Indonesia.
That's why English Refresher exists. It started as a folder on my desktop and became a site used by teachers and students across 40+ countries. The free resources stay free, always. The premium materials are there for teachers who want a full year of lessons without spending every Sunday planning them.
I still teach every day. That's important to me — everything on this site comes from the classroom, not a content farm. When I write a lesson plan, it's because I'm going to use it on Tuesday morning.
