Where do you get your educational passion from?
I get my teaching enthusiasm from contact with students. When I first started teaching, I liked to talk a lot myself and thus transfer knowledge, perhaps also because it gives you the idea of control. That has changed quite a bit though: now, I get a lot of pleasure from interaction. That can be anything. Asking questions during lectures and seeing where the discussion leads, or more the mentor role.
What teaching moment has always stayed with you?
A conversation with a first-generation student who struggled with the tension between life and learning at university on the one hand and, on the other, the environment at home, friends and family, for whom university was a far cry from their lives. There was almost a kind of embarrassment among students for doing a scientific study. This resulted in a great conversation and made me very aware of the importance of paying attention to students' personal development in our education.
What do you hope to pass on to students?
I work in the Humanities and then, as an alumnus, you sometimes face some scepticism about the added value of your studies. So what I hope to give students is a good insight into what they know and can do and what they want to develop further. So a certain self-awareness and self-confidence to bring their knowledge, insights and skills to society.
What did you learn from your students?
Letting go, that very succinctly puts into words what I learned from students. Students have shown me that they are quite capable of coming up with and implementing a lot themselves without it being handed to them on a silver platter or in a study manual. So I have learned to let that happen and sit on my hands a bit more. I have a lot of experience with this in think tank teaching, where a small group of students tackle a social assignment or issue. Students learn the most, in my experience, if you also give them a chance to struggle with something in a big way, run into walls or take wrong paths.
What was your biggest learning moment as a teacher?
One big learning moment I get from my time as a secondary school teacher is the importance of a kind of pedagogical sensitivity. Especially as a beginning teacher, you are very concerned with keeping order and control - I certainly was - and for me this was insufficiently accompanied by making sincere contact. I have become more aware of this and also try to get a picture of the person behind the student in the lecture halls when interacting with students.
What else would you like to try out in your teaching?
Making the course consist of developing the teaching together, so as a teacher with the students together, that seems very cool to me!