Where do you find your educational drive?
‘Most of the courses I teach have to do with first language acquisition or language structure, and I've been researching how children learn that language structure all my life. Language is extremely complex, but as native speakers of a language, we hardly think about it; It is actually self-evident that we speak to each other and usually understand each other. I try to pass on some of my fascination for language to students. In the preparation, I think about how I can make the student wonder about the complexity of language.'
'Reading new articles and thinking about the way you are going to offer that to the students and how to get them activated, that is what I enjoy. I always have too many ideas and too little time to work them out properly, so when the start date of the course approaches, the time comes to stop brainstorming and make choices. That often causes stress. But when an innovation succeeds, it's a kick.'
'Now that I haven't taught for more than six months, I notice that I miss the contact with the students the most in my current position. Students keep me on my toes, especially through their questions. They often force me to go back to basics. It is a pitfall if you only speak to colleagues who share a knowledge base with you. Then you don't have to explain a lot of things, but you have to do that with students, and very often that also leads to new insights for me. Usually these questions are about very fundamental matters, such as the assumptions we make in science, which occasionally need to be re-examined. If students don't have any questions, I think that's a bad sign. Then I always think that my lectures were not inspiring enough, or that I did not challenge them enough to think, or that I did not explain the learning material in an understandable way for students. ’
What moment in education has stayed with you?
‘My very first lecture in Groningen. I had just become a PhD student at the time and was teaching a master's course and I was by far the youngest in the lecture hall. There were two emeriti (of medicine) in the room and people who were my fellow students until recently. I had just attended lectures in a summer school of the Linguistic Society of America. That was so different from what I was used to; in my education programme we were given the theory that was explained on the basis of examples. There we were given datasets that we had to analyze and based on that, we discovered the grammatical rules. I liked that so much more and I wanted to apply that in my own lectures.'
'My last lectures have also stayed with me. That was an honours lab in which I wanted to apply a scrum method. I had read a lot about it myself and talked to a couple of Scrum masters, but I had never done it myself. As a teacher, you have a completely different role than in a traditional lecture where there is very often a transfer of knowledge. Here my role was more that of a coach. It was the lecture from which I learned the most, and although it could have gone better on many points, it was also very fun and educational for the students in the end.'
Where do you find the inspiration for your education?
‘I am very eager to learn myself and always hope that the students are too, and that they are as amazed by things as I am. I also always find it inspiring when people get the room activated. These can be other teachers or speakers at conferences.'
'My inspiration also comes from current events and the social challenges that exist, for example around low literacy or the multilingual society. I challenge students to think along, for example by having students find out what the language policy is of a daycare center in their place of residence and to reflect on it. And ideally, I would have the students write an advice at the end of the course.'
'Questions from students about the material are also sometimes a source of inspiration for lectures, assignments or teaching methods. Actually, there are many sources of inspiration.'
What is your favourite approach in education?
‘The art is to get students so involved that they want to know more and start thinking. For example, I ask them what the first word they ever learned is. Of course, no one knows anymore because the memory does not go that far back, but they can ask their parents. Some parents still remember that, others don't. And that while the first word is usually seen as a milestone. Also, no one remembers how they learned their mother tongue. To understand how language is acquired, we must therefore try to uncover this process and reconstruct it, as it were, and find the pieces of the puzzle and then connect them together. Inquiry-based learning, in other words.’
What tips do you have for lecturers?
'Listen carefully to students' questions. Make the connection with current events and/or the perception of students. The more abstract the material, the more important this is. And dare to experiment. You learn from that yourself and that also keeps it exciting.'