Education column
Mission accomplished
Humour is an important tool for a teacher. It is – naturally – entertaining, but it also helps to hold attention and make things stick.
Peptides in a sea of mossinformation
Non-teachers sometimes have the impression that we teachers do nothing but transfer knowledge. As if the pupil were a tabula rasa, a blank slate, waiting to be written on. If only that were the case.
Is the Pupil Still the Priority?
The EO broadcasts a television programme on Tuesday evenings entitled de Klas van '26.
This programme follows three form tutors as they prepare their examination classes for the national exams. It is heartwarming and incredibly familiar to see how these tutors throw themselves wholeheartedly into supporting their pupils. All three teachers demonstrate closeness, enthusiasm and commitment, with the pupil at the centre of everything they do.
The wasp
Classroom disruptions come in all shapes and sizes. Some are your own fault: you prepared the wrong section, gave unclear instructions, or got the...
The curse of knowledge
I am sometimes so envious of my pupils. A pupil asks me a question about DNA sequencing and, because I don't know what he...
The little godfather of Red Bull
This is my final year as form tutor for the lower secondary bridge class. How much I am going to miss my little ones....
Trial and Error
My fifth-year pupils are working on a practical assignment about the senses, in which they are free to devise their own research question and...
Plop
'Spring into Sex' is nowadays a nationally recognised concept, but on our school's timetable, sex education actually falls in winter. Both second-year and fourth-year...
Classroom skills
Because parents tend to 'help', I have my first-years make a herbarium entirely at school. We go into the woods together. I explain everything...
Conditioning pupils
As a teacher, your ultimate task is to influence the behaviour of your pupils. In my year-10 class, for instance, I had the ambition...