Categories: Blog

All heroes

Tomorrow is International Mountain Day and next week there are days for Monkeys, the Kingdom and Ugly Sweaters. It doesn't bother me much, with all those days. But there are exceptions: Human Rights Day, for example, every year on December 10. So today. At the International […]

Do you want to work as a teacher in secondary education?

The Municipality of Rotterdam, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, the LMC Secondary Education Foundation and the UAF are looking for candidates for a work-study program in secondary education. Are you a status holder and would you like to work as a teacher of mathematics, physics or technical vocational education? Then this apprenticeship program might be something for you. What do we offer you? • Extensive orientation on teaching […]

Sending flowers and lining up digitally: it is something, but not enough

In recent weeks, emotional colleagues have increasingly appeared on my laptop screen. We still work hard, but setbacks – a collaboration that ends, a student with whom things just don't seem to work out – hit us harder than before. I also notice it in myself: the corona crisis makes me shake emotionally more quickly. […]

Change

My book, which I am writing together with Job Hulsman, has been postponed. It was supposed to come out in October, but it will be January. Please wait. The 'culprit' is the coronavirus. Books that were supposed to appear this spring have been postponed. As a result, October, November and December will be busy months in book country. After the holidays there is more air, more space. […]

Fear of the unknown

'We would like to do something for refugees, but I don't know how. The cultural differences are not small. How will the rest of the team react?' I shut up and look at him – let's call him Dirk. Dirk continues: 'Then the traumas… How do you deal with that in the workplace? Just to […]

Two minutes

Tonight at eight o'clock I will be silent for two minutes. One hundred and twenty seconds. I'm looking forward to it, as crazy as that may sound. Always done. If possible, I will take May 4 off from work and clear my agenda. This year it worked. 'Freedom cannot be taken for granted', I wrote in my […]

The real world does not begin abroad

The last of the nine participants was the refugee scientist Tagrid Dinar (until 2013 working as a veterinarian in her native Sudan, graduated in the Netherlands as an epidemiologist) to receive her certificate. She grabbed her chance and the microphone and said, "I want to thank everyone." She called her research supervisors, just like the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, […]

'What can we do?' she asked (13)

She—tight jeans torn at the knees, focused gaze—sat at the very front and listened intently. Last December was Human Rights Day. Soroptimist International Club Almere had organized a meeting at the City Hall in Almere Stad (theme: work and education for everyone) and I was a guest […]

Visiting the king… yes, you can in the Netherlands

When the driver dropped us off at Breda station in his red car on September 22, 1990 (I had flown from Tehran to Paris with my two boys) I was relieved, free and full of hope. But I had no idea of ​​my future. I didn't even know where we ended up. Van Breda went […]

Still no one wants them (but it's never too late)

It's been like this since I can remember: nobody wants them. Origin, religion, political preference, skin colour, sexual orientation, that's what we see when we meet someone for the first time. Why are we unable to absorb people as human beings? The summer holidays are a period of rest for me: [...]