Ferdows Kazemi was born and raised in Iran and came to the Netherlands in 1993. She studied General Social Sciences at the University of Utrecht. Her love for the Dutch language led her to work as an NT2 teacher in 2016, and she still does so with great pleasure and enthusiasm.
She and her students do not always share the same political or religious views, but they do share the sense of being in a country of which you initially do not know the culture and do not speak the language. She knows how difficult it is to settle in a foreign country, and how much effort it takes to learn a new language. She also knows what war or oppression can do to people and how difficult it is to leave the past behind. This comparable history creates a special bond between her students and her.
In addition, she cherishes the Dutch language because she owes her mastery of it to her own effort. She only started her first Dutch lesson when she was 27 years old and had mastered it in less than four months. Dutch is therefore not her mother tongue. She didn’t get that mastery as a gift. That is precisely why she values this language and does her best to make students aware of its relevance. She enjoys explaining the language rules to students, questions asked about them, jokes about the language, and she regularly hears from students how passionately she teaches and how much they learn from and share with her.
Ferdows is married and has an adult daughter.
