How do our students see their teachers and the education that we give? What do they need? How can the interaction between students and teachers be improved? That was what the Communications & Multimedia program wanted to know. To answer these questions, theatre makers Vera Ketelaars and Anne Gehring interviewed several students and based on the answers they presented the teachers with a theatrical mirror. An eye-opener, because many teachers did not know what is really going on among the students. How they experience the lessons. With which themes and dilemmas they struggle. How big is their need to be seen. Which lessons happen best.
In the second part of the intervention, the teachers had to get to work themselves. They were challenged to examine their motivations and to empathize with their students. For example, they had to share with their colleagues why they had become teachers, answer the question of which event in the class had made a deep impression on them and they had to try to imagine what it would be like to be a student (again). The combination of the mirror and the exercises gave the lecturers more insight into their role as teachers and in the needs of their students.
I was touched when a student said “I can not do anything at all”.
What often touches me is that you do not always see what is going on with a student. The example of the girl who was so troubled and actually wanted to become a man. He is now. We must be attentive to this kind of thing. The loneliness of students, the search, the uncertainty. Difficult to join somewhere. That touches me. Language is so important. Some can not. Are we dealing with this properly? Sometimes I wonder.