TV review | Every child wants a teacher like Sofie, but not every educational institution wants Sofie as a teacher

The experts collapsed at the desk, salivating RTL Boulevard focuses on the talk show war into which the public competition has thrown itself. Eva Jinek will get an early start after the summer timeslot van Khalid & Sophie, Khalid & Sophie moves forward to the time of Op1 and Op1, ah, that thunders off the edge. While entertainment expert Rob Goossens at RTL Boulevard There was a lot of speculation about how Eva Jinek would cover the gap between her salary at RTL (1.2 million) and that at AVROTROS (maximum two hundred thousand), the editors of Op1 an angry letter to the NPO board. The board had been so busy exchanging pennies between the talk shows that they had not (yet) gotten around to informing the editors about the discontinuation of their program. The editors and presenters found out on Wednesday via a push notification from the AD.

A few words from that letter stuck: hard work, astonishment, rude and indecent. The same evening ended in that atmosphere and with those words documentary Sofie’s Utopia. For almost a full hour I saw an enthusiastic teacher at work, okay, she was a bit busy, perhaps a bit chaotic, but Sofie van de Waart readily admitted that. She had “very serious ADHD”, discovered this at the age of 34, after a difficult school year, difficult career and a burnout.

Sofie is a gifted specialist and we see her at work at Explora in Breda. Her class is filled with gifted students from two Breda schools. You are gifted with an IQ of 130 or higher. The children from groups 4 to 7 who are allowed to go to Explora for half days are not tested or measured in advance. It is also not necessarily the children who get the highest scores or have the best reports. Exactly not, says teacher Sofie. A gifted child can underperform, she knows from her own experience. “They express their boredom by whining and chatting.” If their giftedness remains undetected, they can become angry and rebellious, become depressed or develop anorexia.” They are, she says, children who need extra stimulation, challenge and attention.

Olivier (10) says that he often loses sleep over the climate. The famine, floods and tornadoes that will come. “The next day I am very tired. Then my parents know: he has been thinking about something all night again.” The parents of Anil (10) knew that he was smart, they thought of “mavo or vwo” for him. The fact that he scores the highest of all children with an IQ of 133 is “frankly beyond expectations.” For Madelief’s mother, on the other hand, her IQ of 132 is no surprise.

Sofie van de Waart writes educational columns under the name Sofie Govaert Fidelity. On her site I saw that she had submitted a documentary idea to Omroep MAX for a portrait of her student Jan. It became a portrait of her, made by Paul Sin Nam Rigter.

Just normal children

I liked everything about the documentary, but I just don’t know which emotion prevails. Irritation: because of the exclusive treatment of gifted children. Pleasure: because the children visibly liven up. Recognition: they are just ordinary children who say wise things. Or is it just pure jealousy. Wouldn’t all children flourish from extra stimulation, challenge and attention? It also becomes a lot easier to flourish in a class with 22 children and four teachers.

Every child wants a teacher like Sofie. However, not every educational institution wants Sofie as a teacher. This becomes clear at the end of the documentary when she receives an email in class in which the management informs her that she will no longer provide her services.

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