Mária Podonyiné Horváth

Maria has been teaching English, English as an Additional Language and Hungarian Language and Literature for 22 years as a full-time teacher. After teaching for 12 years in an English-Hungarian bilingual secondary school Maria was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship and spent one year in Seattle, Washington State teaching ESOL and mainstream English classes. In 2008, Maria returned to the United States to teach English as a Second Language in Virginia for four years, both in a secondary and higher education setting. During that time, she was nominated for the International Teacher of the Year Award where she was ranked seven out of the several hundreds of nominees. Between 2012 and 2015, Maria took a leadership role as Department Head at an independent business school in Hungary. In the last few years she has been working as a full-time English Teacher teaching English Language and Literature (GCSE and IGCSE) for all year groups in a secondary school and later at a university technical college in England.

Together with her family, Maria returned to Budapest towards the end of 2017 and was excited to join BISB in February 2018.

Maria strongly believes that teachers are “sculptors” who shape the minds and souls of young people. Maria’s students inspire her and even after so many years of teaching, she gets up every day with the thought to make a difference in their lives. She likes to be at the forefront of education and always looks for new challenges and opportunities to enable her to grow professionally. Having worked intensively in 3 different educational systems, one day, she would love to write a book about her experience.

Maria loves art, travelling, going to the cinema or theatre, writing poetry and swimming in her free time.