“I'm originally a musician--a violinist—and I’ve worked freelance for twenty-five years. (…) Because I didn’t have enough work to make a living only as a violinist, I was thinking, ‘What can I do?’ (…) Then a friend of mine said that because in Holland we have a lack of teachers (…) you can do a two-year program that the government will pay for [and become a teacher].”
“I was already teaching (…) violin but I thought that was really hard because I was in classes only once a week and it was difficult to make a connection with the children (…)”
“So I started this two-year teacher education program, but while I was doing that I also continued working as a teacher at the same time to continue earning an income.”
“[During this time] I found a teaching job through a friend (…) This was with a Catholic school organization and they have different schools all under one umbrella. I learned a lot while working there. They follow a method where it’s first ‘I do’, then ‘we do’, then ‘the children do’. Then you check if they met the learning goals. The goals were really drilled to death, I have to say. I didn't like that there was not much space for my own enthusiasm, my ideas, and my music and stuff. So then I changed to another school, also from the same umbrella organization, and it's also five minutes from my house—so that's also easy. I'm still at this school and there's more space for [me to do things]. The children are four, five and six years old. I don't work with [prescribed] methods, so there's more freedom to do art and music and singing.”
“Because of my personal situation, I'm still not finished with my teacher education program (…), but now I only have to do a mathematics exam and then I'm finished.”