In a cozy room in Nieuw-Buinen, between child seats, paper crafts and a basket full of cut hands, Miss Nelleke Vos-Kroeze is sitting. She has been teaching toddlers at school 59 for 49 years, but this summer she is waving off. Not because she wants to stop, but because the school has to close its doors due to a student shortage.
“Well, I would have liked to have achieved those magical 50 years,” she says smiling. “But it’s no different.”
Nelleke was 19 when she started. “In the building behind this school with a class of 28 children. I still see myself in the photo, a young deerne, inexperienced, but so happy that I could be a teacher.” Now she’s almost 69. “And I’m still a teacher, always a toddler teacher. A Old Klosseas we say that and you don’t change anything anymore, “she laughs.
She was first the head of kindergarten, and grew when that institution with primary school was merged into a primary school. “I had to get used to that, it didn’t seem like anything to me at first. But it was fun; more colleagues and more contact.”
Every morning there is a familiar verse in her class: ‘Grabbing, grabbing, grabbing …“” A student from the class may grab a paper hand from a large basket. And if your name is on the hand, then you are the ‘helping hand’ that day. We have been doing that for years. “
“I remember that,” says former student Anne Meijer enthusiastically. “Everyone was pulled a hand, they then went into the basket.” Anne opens a book with old crafts. “Yes, here it is! So simple, but so nice, you just never forget that.”
Helena de Vries was once in Nellekes class as a shy toddler, and later did an internship during her Pabo course. “She wrote in my internship report that I had to use a little more facial expression. That I really had to take children into the story. That made me tell a course. Nelleke always did everything out of the wrist.”
Thijs and Jack from group 1/2 are stepping on the schoolyard and Nelleke is closely monitoring them. “Miss Nelleke is my favorite teacher,” they say in unison. And why exactly? “Because we eat bread, eat and play fruit,” laughs Thijs.
There has been one time when Nelleke doubted to apply at another school. “But I thought: why would I? I am topping it here.” And so, year after year, she remained school photo after school photo. “Suddenly you are 25 years teacher, then 40, then 45. And then you think, maybe I will also get the 50.”
But that went differently: the school stopped and not the teacher. “We were first in a route of new construction,” says director Bea Hofsteenge. “And suddenly it was about closure, everything was all about within a few months. That was a blow.”
Due to shrinkage there are only six children in Nellekes class. The doors of school 59 close after the summer and with that there is also an era. “I would have liked to continue until October 1,” says Nelleke. “Then I would have been in front of the class for exactly 50 years, but it is as it is. Sad, but it is that way.”