Since teachers of Krapinsko-zagorska county have shown the interest in having their own branch, our HUPE PR Gordana Bujanić Tretinjak organised a meeting on 13th September 2017.
We are thankful for the support of Vocational school Bedekovčina that hosted this event. The headteacher Vera Hrvoj welcomed HUPE and said she would gladly give the support to our meetings in the future.

HUPE President Sanja Božinović welcomed teachers who were able to join us and wished the branch a lot of success. There were 20 teachers present at this meeting (some 10 more appologised for not being able to attend - they had classes and their headteachers didn't want to let them attend the meeting - but they promised to be active members of the branch in the future.)
The teachers who were present unanimously voted Petra Končić the branch president, and we wish her a lot of success in presiding HUPE Zagorje.

There were two workshops held at the meeting; one by Ana Galac (teacher at Pučko otvoreno učilište Velika Gorica) and the other by Sanja Ivoš (head of primary school department at Školska knjiga).

Ana Galac presented her very successful and inspiring workshop called English in Town about taking students to town to use English in real life situations. Sanja Ivoš gave a very interesing talk Teaching Life Skills, on how the skills students need for life have been changing over the past few decades and what skills are considered the most important at the moment.

We wish HUPE Zagorje a lot of success in their work, many great workshops and talks and a lot of networking and sharing of great ideas and positive experience.

The third HUPE Varaždin Branch meeting was held on May 11, 2017 at Osnovna škola Orehovica (Školska ulica 2, Orehovica, Međimurje).

It was attended by 10 teachers (two teachers cancelled their arrival).

Our presenters were Irena Žiger and Anita Parlaj - Narančić from Škola stranih jezika Žiger. Both of them held great workshops.

Ms Irena Žiger held a workshop EPG – what can you do with it? She introduced us with EPG – the European Profiling Grid. It is a tool for assessing language teacher competencies.

Ms Anita Parlaj – Narančić decided to play with us so she had a workshop From the past to the future – learning is playing! She showed us many different techniques of learning through playing games with children.

It was another great day with many interesting ideas and nice people.

Thank you all for coming and hope to see you soon again!

Best regards,

Adela Tompoš
HUPE Varaždin Branch President

It was a great plasure for HUPE Branch Karlovac to host Mark Andrews for two days at the end of his tour in Slavonia. He stayed with us on 26 and 27 May 2017. First day, Mark did the sightseeings and saw three of four Karlovac rivers. In the evening, he joined the Prom night of students of Industry and Trade Vocational School in Karlovac, which came as a surprise for Mark. There was a lot of fun and dance...

The HUPE Branch Karlovac meeting was held on 27 May 2017 at 10 30 a.m. in Knjižnica za mlade, Banjavčićeva 2, Karlovac. The meeting was attended by eighteen teachers and students.

Mark Andrews, a training director at SOL-Services for Open Learning, North Devon, ran a workshop „Britain, Manchester, doing the here and now in the classroom".

As Mark Andrews said, most of his workshops on methodology are concerned with how can teachers present a certain topic in class and transfer knowledge to students teaching them at the same time very important values. The workshop dealt with various practical activities to help teachers in developing students' chritical thinking skills and discussion competences.

For this purpose, Mark started the workshop with a short presentation and the activities related to local history, merging the interesting details from the history of Karlovac with those of Great Britain.

Many of the activities were designed to reflect on past and present and to encourage students to participate activelly in creating better future by building a better regional cooperation, keeping and respecting at the same time local and national values. Students were itroduced to a few practical ways which can help resolve differences and misunderstandings and generate enthusiasm and seek cooperation.

The workshop also enabled teachers and students to have a deeper insight into the world of the media and its power to influence people and create opinions.

Both teachers and students enjoyed the workshop very much.

Dubravka Lapčić
HUPE Branch Karlovac President
Industry and Trade Vocational School
Domobranska 2
Karlovac

The fourth and the last Slavonski Brod HUPE Branch meeting in this school year was held on May 3, 2017 and was attended by 14 teachers.

We started off with a workshop Teaching English with CLIL run by Nikolina Reder (sponsored by Alfa). Ms Reder presented wonderful ways of motivating our students for work and raising their interest in cross-curricular topics. A lively discussion developed on best ways of teaching content language and language itself.

Three students attending second grade of Ekonomsko-birotehnička škola (Julija Lubina, Aneta Grgić and Nensi Dubac) shared with us their experience of English all around Festival which was held in Zagreb in March this year. They won the third place in the Film category. They also presented their video Rural Tourism to English teachers attending the meeting.

After that we watched a presentation on 25 years of HUPE, prepared by Ms Dubravka Despot and shown at this year's HUPE conference. We found our colleagues and friends in the pictures and remembered many wonderful moments at the conferences we have attended.

Finally, we (unanimously) elected the new president of Slavonski Brod HUPE Branch, Ms Nikolina Pranjić, who is going to take over the branch with the beginning of the new school year.

I would like to make this report a bit personal and say a few things about being a HUPE member "on the other side" (a member of the Executive Board). Over the past four years I have really enjoyed working with all members of the board(s). I have met a lot of wonderful, energetic, creative and enthusiastic people willing to invest their time and effort for the greater good – the good of all English teachers in Croatia. I really look forward to meeting them all and chatting with them at HUPE conferences in the future.

I don't hope, but know that HUPE will continue to grow and attract many more awesome people like Marinko, Sanja, Ivana, Željka, Dubravka, Sara, Ana, Lidija, Suzana, Adela, Dajana, Lana, Dubravka, Davorka, Anita, Fani, Branka... I hope I have not left anyone out.

Slavonski Brod HUPE Branch President
Mirta Kos Kolobarić