“I think it's nice to teach people something and also to witness the sudden ‘Aha moments’.”
“I'm a realist. I'll never have thirty children in a class of thirty who will say, 'Wow, Biology and Chemistry are the best subjects in the world.' That won't happen. But if I reach a few children in my class who then say, 'This is something I want to pursue further—I want to delve a little deeper into it,' then I consider that a success for me.”
“Usually, they don't talk to you until they've finished school—when individual students will come up to you and say, 'Oh, thank you, Ms. Johanna, for the time you spent with us.' [It’s great] to get someone excited about the subject—about my subjects, about the topics.”
"The other thing is that you notice you are gradually building a relationship with people and seeing them grow up. This is especially true when I have students who (...) have effectively grown up in our school. In the past (...) we often had students like that. They were twelve, and then I saw them again when they were fifteen, and again at their high school graduation, when they were eighteen. You saw what had happened during that time, and you could really accompany them on their journey to adulthood. That's the second aspect that I find really beautiful (...) When you see that they are going along on their own path, that is something that makes you happy."