Anneke Hoekstra

I began teaching in 2013. Thanks to an incredible initiative at the American School of Bombay to recruit and retain young hires, I was invited to join the teaching team as a “novice teacher,” teaching a reduced load and learning through observation, moderation, and mentorship. Though this was my title, Jen Brooke, Brian Chanen, and my other colleagues fostered my growth without ever making me feel incapable or silly, something I’ve put in a mental time capsule for when I am the seasoned member of faculty mentoring new teachers. Our collaboration was in such lockstep that they even felt comfortable giving me a class of IB Year 1s a semester into my first year, which of course set me on the path I am on today. If they hadn’t believed that young teachers are capable of learning fast, I wouldn’t be able to say that I’ve been through several IB cycles already. Jen helped me think through every decision about curriculum design, lesson planning, assessment, and post-assessment with immense patience and clarity. As you can imagine, from this close collaboration we developed not only a good work partnership but also a deep friendship.  

After four years at ASB, my husband and I moved to Zürich, Switzerland. I was hired to teach Upper School English at Zurich International School where I still teach today. I am also a proud alum of ZIS, having attended from 2001-2006. Thankfully, even though I now work with people who have known me since I was 12 or 13 years old, I was again immediately treated with respect as a colleague, not as someone people could only see as a teenager they once knew. 

I really love school. More specifically, I love being a student. After my second year of teaching, I enrolled in the Bread Loaf School of English and graduated with my Master’s in English in 2019. Taking some wonderful courses like Latino/Latina Lit, Native American Women’s Writing, Climate Change Fiction and Black British Literature, I was nourished with revitalizing ideas of how to make my classroom more text-rich and text-diverse while honing my own reading, writing, and teaching skills. A course called “Theatre in the English Classroom” challenged me to consider what rigor looked like – and turned my IB Classroom upside down for the first two months of school that year in the best way possible!    

As a full-time teacher, it sometimes feels hard to continue to dream of new ways of doing things. I have wonderful collaborative partners here in Zurich who push me every day to be a better educator, but there are still so many nitty-gritty tasks to accomplish all the time. This website continues to allow me to dream, to think about how each student can thrive, and hopefully, for me to give new teachers even a small fraction of that wonderful mentorship I received in my first four years of teaching that continues to this day.  

Education 

M.A. in English, The Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College 

B.S. in Secondary English Education, Northwestern University  

Illinois Educator License, English 5-12 (USA)