I first met Mario in Hastings in 1977. This came about because the year before I had met and spent a day with Caleb Gattegno. I was astonished by his remarkable demonstration of how learning takes place and how it may be assisted. It was nicknamed The Silent Way. Enthralled by its immediate impact on my teaching I arranged for Gattegno's director of studies Cecilia Bartoli to come over from New York to give two successive long weekend workshops at The Queens Hotel in Hastings in February 1977, and gathered 40 or so participants from UK schools to cover the costs. On the second evening, during a break at the bar, I chatted to a guy who was not part of our workshop assuming he was a hotel guest. We spoke a little about Chile and his recent experience there, and I found out he was Mario, who I knew of because we’d had a manuscript of an early book of his circulating in the school, which we very much liked.

He said he hadn’t met The Silent Way before and had come to attend just a few hours of the workshop, adding that he would sleep in his van. I said but it's pretty cold out there and he explained in some detail that he had a series of cardboard boxes in the back of his van, which when fitted together in a certain way would be quite warm. So he attended the workshop the rest of the evening and a couple of hours the following morning, then was gone, possibly, as I learned much later, to give a workshop on how to teach by The Silent Way!

At that time – 70s to mid 80s – many EL teachers knew about or had even experienced a variety of ‘alternative’ approaches to language teaching, such as Suggestopedia, Community Language Learning, The Silent Way; The Inner Game, Total Physical Response, Inner Track Learning, and so on. The Society for Effective Affective Learning (SEAL - founded by Michael Lawlar) brought together all these approaches with other feeder fields in a series of annual SEAL events which offered a rich variety of colourful and provocative approaches to learning, language and life, and which were heaven to the magpie in Mario (me too actually). I would joked with him that he practically had a recipe book by the time he left!

Over the years Mario and I shared a professional and personal interest in these ‘humanistic’ approaches as they were dubbed then, and we also each directed  a ‘left of centre’ teacher training institute, he at Pilgrims, me at IH Hastings, which were carving out their own humanistic directions by experimenting with and adopting these approaches.

We broadly agreed on many things, though I sometimes told him that I thought he went for the colourful lesson recipe at the expense of the facilitative skills and inter-personal qualities required by the teacher to make it work. We never resolved that and the fact remains that his recipe books have been very popular, and have helped countless teachers unhook from two dimensional mainstream techniques and activities, and to try more adventurous, creative and perhaps risky lessons.

By the mid 90’s I felt the term ‘humanistic’ was being over used, had lost its reference to qualities of relationship, empathy, presence and skilful facilitation, and its usage had degenerated to mean things like “being nice to learners;’ and ‘not being demanding’, ‘not setting homework’, and so on.

I told Mario we had stopped using the term at IH Hastings, and would employ specific descriptions instead of the blanket term ‘humanistic’. But Mario went in the other direction and began to use the term to describe Pilgrims’ mission and activities, and a year or two later it became part of the name of the excellent online magazine you are now reading - HLT!

Over the years we often met at events dedicated to these teaching ideas, and in September 2001 Jane Arnold organised one of her humanistic weekend events in Seville bringing together teachers and facilitators at a Yoga venue in Seville. Mario and I went out together on the plane from UK, and as soon as we were airborne he pulled out a stack of assorted postcards from the special postcard pocket in his coat, and by the end of the flight the pile was ready to send, some of them cut into shapes. Having previously received postcards from Mario I made no secret of reading some as he wrote, and cheekily asked if they were written in some special code. Oh no he replied airily, they mean just what the words say. This constant writing, of cards letters and copious short provocative magazine articles did much to creatively stir up ELT and encourage others to do the same. This was one of Mario’s great contributions.

The next day we each had visits to make in Seville and agreed to meet in the afternoon at Jane’s place before going on to the workshop. I went to International House in Seville but the person I'd arranged to see was not in her office, and in fact the entire administration was deserted, the classrooms too. I was surprised to find everyone packed into the staff room watching a disaster movie on TV. I thought this was very strange and checked with a person nearby, and she said oh no, this isn’t a film, this is live, now, from the US. It took me a while to grasp what was going on...

Of course, in the evening we all had much to say about what was later called 9/11, but during the following 3-day workshop the 35 participants hardly mentioned it, maybe due to our immersion in the workshop experience. In the evenings we sang songs, read poems, told stories, but the highlight act which was repeated several times in slightly different forms was when a house mouse appeared out of the skirting board, sniffed around and sat in the centre looking at us unperturbed, and then wandered off. We watched each of these appearances in silence, and it led to much discussion. Maybe somewhere in Mario’s recipes for teachers there is a house mouse lesson, requiring only a single item of realia… with whiskers and bravado…. ?