Back for class
They did teacher training, stood in front of the class, quit - and returned after years. We asked returners what that's like. “Children don't change.”
Picture: Renate Beense
Can I still do it? That was what Heidy Bouwer (60) wondered when she sat at home for a while, exhausted - a burnout, said the company doctor. Not surprising: for twenty years she was a team leader in the senior years, a "fantastic job", but also tough.
“A job like this is going well until something happens in your private life,” she says. “When my brother died suddenly, I couldn't do it anymore. The position demanded things from me that I could no longer afford. Implementing another big change that I knew: teachers don't like this. I am very much in favor of innovation, but the responsibility was too heavy.”
She decided: I don't want to go back to my management position. But then what? Back to class? “Something new, but also something old,” she says. “I hadn't had my own classes for twenty years, developed no methods, hadn't marked tests. But it beckoned. I missed those kids.”
It was great right away. I picked it up again
Lisette de Bakker-Maljaars (39) noticed this too, in the period after she said goodbye to teaching. That was not her own choice, by the way: “I graduated thirteen years ago at a time when the jobs were not up for grabs.” She then started at her old primary school in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen, where she also comes from. “But we had to contend with a shortage of students, there weren't enough students, so the young teachers barely got a job. I didn't get a contract."
She got stand-in jobs in special education, filling in gaps due to leave and illness. Fun, but also: restless. Insecure. No one paid her through the summer. In 2013, a new job came her way, as a secretary at a carpentry company. “Totally different, from a teacher's room with mainly women, I suddenly found myself among the carpenters.” She did that with pleasure for seven years, but: “My heart was simply with those children. I would never have left if the conditions had been right.”
digitization
Due to the current teacher shortage, there was suddenly an opportunity for a permanent contract. De Bakker-Maljaars now has that at St. Williebrordus primary school in Hulst, as a kindergarten teacher in group 1/2. “It was great right away. I picked it up again. A method is a method, a child is a child, a class is a class. Only: everything is digital. Also the lives of the children - suddenly it's about Instagram, Tiktok.”
“Yes, that digitization is quite something”, Bouwer sighs. The blackboard, student evaluations, absenteeism: all on the air. “It was only when I returned to work that I realized what an enormous digitization we have undergone. I really sat with my tongue out making powerpoints and fiddling with how to pop them in Classroom.”
As a teacher, Bouwer once stood at the cradle of the introduction of the second phase, in which subject packages were changed into profiles, among other things. “Children had to choose firmer subject packages, the subjects became heavier, at the same time there was more broadening, and subjects such as ckv were added,” she recalls.
The children have become much more assertive, they are better able to work together and carry out more complex assignments
Now, twenty years later, she sees that students are reaping the benefits. “I think it has ensured that education has become a bit more active. Education has progressed. The children have become much more assertive, they can work together better and carry out more complex assignments.” Take the profile papers for example: Bouwer judged in competitions for the best profile piece. “I was looking at the high level.”
But, what also struck her: the exams are pretty much the same as when she worked as a teacher for the first time. “Very traditional, I think that could be different. And I still think there is too much classroom activity in schools.”
Nick van Deursen was already deputy director at the age of 26. But he missed the children. “I think you can do more as a teacher.” Image: Renate Beense
Nick van Deursen (37) agrees with that. He was very young, 26, when he exchanged the class for the position of deputy director at his primary school in Overschie, Rotterdam. He wanted to make a career, had a goal in mind and, in his own words, went as smoothly as possible. "I thought it was really cool, I remember that during my football training sessions I was addressed as 'director' by teammates, for fun, but with a serious undertone, because the rest were 'just' employees."
I went for higher, but not for happiness
Van Deursen has since come back from that. “I went for higher, but not for luck. Only when my wife was pregnant with our twins, a tough pregnancy ensued and my wife got a burnout not much later, I woke up. Is this what I want now? Answer 250 e-mails a day, hardly see a classroom and are not at home much?”
Lots of fun
After ten years as a manager, Van Deursen returned to that class, in groups 7 and 8 at the Rozenhorst primary school in Rozenburg. Back to the mud, with his paws in it. “Those kids have stayed the same. Some are rascals, you are in Rotterdam after all, but I immediately had so much fun with them again.”
What he did encounter - “and now I sound very old” - was the amount of administrative hassle that had come with it. “In my first teaching phase, I mainly had to make sure that those children had a good time, that they could make progress towards secondary school; preparing for 'real' life."
"Now I am mainly concerned with putting things in systems. Evaluating everything. And in the meantime I see more and more children have little self-confidence. Many cannot express themselves well emotionally, are physically and mentally weak. Then I think: let me focus on that, let me talk to Pietje about why he was late, instead of first writing down in a system that Pietje was ten minutes late.”
He feels that there are more 'must-haves' on the curriculum now than when he first started. "I'm willing to explain the direct object, but do they need that when they go out into the big bad outside world?"
It wasn't until I stood in front of the class that I realized how much I had missed the kids
Van Deursen thinks not. And then you could say: shouldn't he be in charge again? “I've thought about it, but I think you can do more as a teacher. As a manager, I could no longer compete with all those protocols, decision trees. But as a teacher you are close to those children. You can really be there for them. It wasn't until I stood in front of the class that I realized how much I'd missed them. It is more pleasant in the classroom than in such an office.”
Whistling
“Children don't change,” says De Bakker-Maljaars. “And neither is your teaching heart. If teaching is something natural for you, and if you are given the space to become well-acquainted, you will get right back into it.”
Builder agrees. “I didn't expect to like it so much again.” She could even laugh at all the teacher pitfalls she fell into with her eyes open again. “When I wanted to discuss the first test I had marked, I said: I haven't done it for a long time, so maybe I was too strict. Well: they did everything they could to raise standards throughout the lesson. But that was only the first few weeks. Now I feel everything: I can still do it.”
This article is from the March Education Magazine. Do you want to stay informed of everything that is going on in education? Join the AOb and receive the Education magazine every month.
