Sita was completely used to the discovery centre after a few days. After consulting everyone, Patrick had bought a second-hand camera with which Sita could make photos and film. The first time she had initiated the camera, she had gone all over the centre, filming, and later taking photos. The second and third days she had done so again.

Rosalie was bothered by it. So after that third time, she said, "Sita, I didn't mind you filming and taking photos, but it does bother me in my work. Will you stop doing it to me? Otherwise I won't be able to work through finely."

Sita nodded, she seemed to understand, but a little later she said to Bea: "Is Rosalie angry with me now?"

"I think," Bea said, "you should ask Rosalie that. Do you want to do that alone, or shall I go with you?"

"Go with me?"

Bea smiled and gave her a wink. "Come, then we'll go and see her together for a while."

With a hand on her shoulder, Bea walked with Sita down the corridor to the room where Rosalie was typing.

"Rosalie, sorry to disturb you, but I think it's important," Bea said. "Sita wants to ask you something."

Rosalie looked up, looking questioningly at Sita: "What then?"

Sita bravely took a step forward: "I disturbed you filming and stuff... are you mad at me now?"

Rosalie was surprised: "Well no, Sita, I'm not angry!" and put her arms around the girl. "I just had to tell you that it's disturbing to me if you start filming and taking photos every time I'm working. If I didn't tell you, you wouldn't know. We can tell each other what we like, but also what we don't like. If I do something you don't like, you can say that too, get it?"

Bea crouched down with the girls and looked at Sita. "Try to think, Sita... if Rosalie didn't say it bothered her, you wouldn't know. And then you'd go ahead, filming every day, taking pictures. Right? And every time it would bother Rosalie. What would happen in Rosalie then? What would she feel?"

Sita looked at Rosalie for a moment: "I think she would get kind of angry then. Then she would, yes, that's it, she would be annoyed about it, and then if she still doesn't say it, she would get angry at the end anyway, I think."

"Yes, that's it!" responded Rosalie. "I would really start getting bummed, and inside say 'grrrr' every time or 'here she comes again with that camera' and in the end I would get mad at you. But now I've told you how it feels to me and you can choose what to do: continue filming and taking pictures and bothering me, or stop doing that."

"And if I continue with it," Sita said thoughtfully, "you'll get angry a lot sooner, because you had said so."

Rosalie pondered, "Yes, I think so yes, because then you wouldn't consider me. Do you feel bad that I would rather you stopped filming with me?"

"No way, if it's dry outside, I can film outside too. Can I do that Bea? Can I just do that outside?"

"Yes, that will usually be possible. However, I would like you to tell us in advance that you are going to do it, so we know where you are. And are you reassured by Rosalie now?"

Sita laughed: "Yes, she's really not angry. Just go on typing. Will you read to me from your book sometime?"

Rosalie smiled: "I'd like to do that one day, cosy together on the sofa."

.

Over coffee, Bea reflected on the little talk, asked Rosalie and Sita to tell her how it had gone. Then she asked the whole group, "Shall I write a report of this for the website?"

"Can I do it?" asked Rosalie, "together with Sita?"

"Top idea, Rosa!" said Ineke, "but do you want that too Sita? Do you mind if all the people can read about your conversation on the computer?"

Sita shrugged her shoulders: "Sure, it was nice, it's fine for other people to read that."

"You two discuss together when you want to do that," Bea suggested.

"Right after drinking?" asked Sita.

Rosalie nodded: "Good! On my laptop?"

Sita was fine with it.

.

Rosalie was good at engaging Sita in typing. She asked her questions, and made a story out of what Sita said. Rosalie noticed that she did find it a bit difficult sometimes, because now she couldn't just type a story from inside, but had to consult with someone. She didn't mind, not that, but it was a little more difficult.

"So, I think I typed everything. Shall I read it to you?" asked Rosalie.

"Yes, do so," Sita replied.

Rosalie read everything aloud. Sita had one more question, if she wanted to change something. Rosalie looked at that sentence, looked at Sita and with a "You're absolutely right!" she changed the sentence, read it again and saw that Sita was completely happy with the change.

"Come, then let's go and ask Bea how to get it on the website," Rosalie suggested.

They stood up, and looked for Bea. "Bea? Our little story is ready. How to proceed?"

"Ah, you did that smoothly! I'll walk with you for a moment. The website is not difficult. I think Rosalie can do it very well, putting a piece on it herself. Only I want to warn you, though, that that's only allowed if we all have given you permission to do so, because the website belongs to all of us."

Rosalie nodded vigorously: "Yes, of course, I understand that!" and sat down behind her laptop.

Bea showed her step by step how to look up the website, how to log in and click on the editor.

"Then let's go back to your text for a moment. Have you learned how to copy and paste yet? You can, right?"

"Yes, I can."

She copied the text, to which Sita exclaimed in amazement, "It turns all grey!"

Rosalie laughed and clicked, "Away with all that grey! But the laptop now remembers which text I copied. Now I go to the website... that's this one... and now?"

Bea pointed to the border, where all kinds of options were listed. "Just click on 'Text', hold it and then drag it here. Yeah, good! Now you can paste your text here in this box."

Sita clapped her hands together as the little story suddenly appeared on the website just like that.

Bea smiled: "Well, your story is on the website, but if someone is going to read it on their mobile phone, the letters will be very small. That's why I always make the letters a bit bigger. Just select the whole text, just like you did with copying. Good, and then you can click here. Your text is now on those smallest letters, but we actually always use these letters, just a bit bigger."

Rosalie clicked on it. Both girls were surprised by the fact that all the text was suddenly bigger.

"You can also add a colour to it. Purple letters, or red, or blue." Bea pointed to where to click then. A beautiful field appeared with all kinds of colour options.

"Which one do you like, Sita?" asked Rosalie.

"That blue one over there..."

"I like that one too, shall we go with that one?"

Sita nodded enthusiastically and beamed when the letters did indeed turn bright blue.

"How beautiful that is!" she exclaimed.

"And we made that together, Sita!" Rosalie beamed. "Bea, can we also include a picture of us together?"

"Would you like that too, Sita? Would you like a photo of you together to go with it?"

"Yes, but I can't take it myself. Will you do that?" she asked Bea.

"I'll just do it with my mobile, because I don't know how the camera works very well yet," Bea responded.

Rosalie laughed: "Then you have to discover that!"

Bea pulled a goofy face: "You're absolutely right... I'll get it, just a moment!"

Bea noticed that taking a picture with this camera was very simple. But how could she put the picture on the website?

"Just wait, I'll fetch the cord," Sita said.

"Cord? Okay..."

Sita didn't know all about it yet, but was able to get Bea started enough to figure out how to move the photo to the laptop.

"High five Sita!"

Smiling, Bea and Sita gave each other a high five.

Bea asked Rosalie to go to the website again. "Look at all those options, is there anything you can use to put a picture on the site?"

Rosalie went down the list, already stopped at 'Image'. "I'll give this one a try," she said, dragging the 'Image' block to the text they had just put on it. Anything happened, dashes appeared and disappeared as she moved the cube across the field. Rosalie suspected that those dashes showed her where the image would be, and released the cube next to the text. She grinned: "Here it comes!"

She calmly went about her business, contemplating each time which step to take, and with minimal help from Bea, managed to get the picture onto the site.

"How handsome you are..." sighed Sita, "I want to be able to do that too!"

"But Sita, you can learn that quite well! Once you've done this a few times together, you can do it yourself. Bea, can the website also have a page for Sita's photos and films? Or can she create her own website?"

"Wow, you're asking me a question there! That would be nice... shall we discuss that with the others in a moment?"

Sita nodded beaming.

During the lunch break, Bea put the question to the others. "I've been thinking about it for a while, whether it would be useful to give her a page on our site. But actually, I think it would be smarter to give Sita her own website, on which she can have a wonderful time, learn how to put photos on it, and maybe videos too."

Jan thought along, "Can you then put on the discovery centre website that Sita also has a website? Then other people can look it up... Is that possible?"

Patrick nodded: "Smart plan Jan, that's definitely possible! We can put the link, that's that little line at the top of the website, we can put the link of Sita's website on the discovery centre's website. Then people who come to our site just have to click on it, and they can see what Sita has done on her site. And if you want to make your own website sometime about the things you do, that you like, we can do that with you too. And then we'll put the link of your site on our site too. That's actually quite a good idea, but I think it would be wise if we also put it to your parents. Because then, of course, their child's name and everything else will be on the internet. But first about the idea itself: would you like to make your own website?"

Rosalie and Sita nodded glowingly.

"Oh yes, that seems like so much fun!" said Rosalie. "Then I'll make a sort of diary for it, and a separate page for my books."

"Clever of you," Patrick replied, and then at the same time put a link to the gallery's page, that they can buy your books there."

"And I'd like it too," said Sita, "then all the people can see my photos, and my videos!"

Sita's parents didn't think it was a problem at all. And so it happened, that with a little help from Bea, Sita discovered how to transfer photos and videos from her camera to a laptop, and transfer the best ones to her own website. All other photos and videos she deleted from the laptop again.

A few days in a row, they worked on it until coffee time. Afterwards, Sita was so contentedly tired that she would lie down on the sofa with the cuddly toy she brought from home to unwind. Usually that only lasted half an hour, then she went off to do something else. Taking new photos, playing outside, making a jigsaw puzzle. She appeared to have a clear understanding of how things were put together. This was clear from the way she made puzzles, from the speed with which she figured out how to put her photos on the laptop and then on the website.

After a week, Bea sent the link to Sita's parents. Their surprise was great! They admired the photos, were moved by them, and praised Sita.

"I can already do it myself, put the photos on the laptop and move the best ones to the website," Sita told them. "And I also want to learn to make those beautiful pictures, like they do on the website with all the art. Two or three pictures together. I'm going to ask Bea about that, if she will help me with that."

.

Bea had no idea how that worked either, but knew, Huib was handy with it. "Shall we ask for help from Huib, that gentleman who makes those beautiful wooden figurines?"

Sita hesitated. "Will you stay with me then?"

"Sure, because I'd like to learn too!"

"Then it's fine," Sita said.

Bea called Huib, who was fine with a break. Within ten minutes, he was already at the discovery centre. "Hey ladies, I kept my work clothes on so I could get here quickly. So you are Sita? And you want to learn to make collages from photos?"

"No, I want to put some photos together, just like on the art website," she replied.

"Aha, I see." Huib grabbed his mobile and looked up one such picture. "Do you mean something like that?"

Sita nodded happily: "Yes, a few pictures together."

"OK, I always call that a collage. Let's see how we can do that on your laptop, shall we?"

Huib saw that Bea had already put the photo-editing programme he always used himself on it. "Shall I show it to you first and then help you make one yourself? Or do you want to do it yourself right away?"

"May I? Do it myself?"

"For me it's fine," Huib laughed," you sit here and I'll sit next to you to show you how it works. Where are your photos?"

Sita went straight to the right folder in Explorer.

"Wow, you can take beautiful photos, young lady! And now which photos do you want to put together to make a collage?"

Sita chose four and looked at Huib questioningly. Step by step, he led her through the programme, while Bea watched carefully to remember what they were doing.

Huib took plenty of time, letting Sita do more and more by herself. It amazed him that such a young child could have such focus, be so good at things he had always thought were meant for adults.

He helped her create a new folder in Explorer where she could keep her collages.

At one point, Sita told him herself, she was getting too tired in her head. "It feels like I can't think anymore. Shall we continue another time?"

"We can!" said Huib. "You know what? Try it yourself tomorrow or so, I think you can do it. And if you need help, call me again. If I can, I'll come straight to you, all right?"

"Why don't you become a companion here?" asked Sita. "You can do it very well!"

"Thank you for your compliment," smiled Huib. "I think it's because I like this myself, making collages. But I won't be a regular companion here, I like working with wood too much, making figurines and stuff."

He briefly showed her his page on the gallery's site. "Look, this is the one I made last."

Sita looked at it open-mouthed, moving her head in all sorts of directions. "It looks like... it looks like a group of dancers. They don't have arms and legs, they're actually like branches, but still they look like they're dancing. I really like that one!"

Huib smiled: "And I love that you see that in it. I hadn't named it myself yet, because I didn't know a name. Shall I call it 'Dancing'?"

"Yes, that's a good name!" beamed Sita.

"Good, I'll take care of that! And now I'll get back to my new woodwork. If you feel like it, come and have a look, in the big barn at Bloemenhof. Just consult your parents or one of the companions here."

"Is that allowed, Bea? Can I go there with you sometime?" asked Sita eagerly.

"That would be quite fun to do," said Bea. "You can take lots of kinds of pictures there, of the estate. And if Huib agrees, of his work too."

"When are we going to do that?"

"After the coffee break?" suggested Bea.

Sita nodded enthusiastically. "Will you be in that barn then, Huib?"

"I think so, and otherwise you can just walk further to our house. Bea knows the way! I'll see you guys show up, see you then!"

.

The next day, Sita was busy with all the photos she had taken at Bloemenhof. She transferred them all to the laptop and deleted the ones she didn't really like. With Bea beside her, she started sliding photos into the work area of the photo editing programme, turning them into simple collages.

"There you have Huib. He's working on a new sculpture. He doesn't know yet what it will be, he moves his tools as he feels he should move them. Actually he dances with his tools, something like that... he does it by intuition. I like that."

At the end of that morning, Bea asked Sita if she was OK with putting the link of her website on the discovery centre's site now. Sita didn't quite understand what that meant, so therefore Bea decided to do it right away and show her what was happening.

"Look, now I'm pretending to be someone else. Just someone in the country, maybe a few hours' drive away from here. That doesn't matter on the computer. I discover our centre's site. Gosh, how nice there, nice little school... oh, it's not a school? They work differently there, let's see... I'm actually visiting the discovery centre, not really, because it's too far away, but I'm kind of visiting it via the website. And I'm going to read what they do here, I'm going to see what's written about the discoverers, things they experienced. Those are here, under 'Experiences'. Nice, here about a girl who writes books herself, Rosalie is her name. And there is also a girl who likes working with a camera. Let's see, here is another page, 'Websites of discoverers'. Oh look, that camera girl has her own site! I'll have a look there, click on the link... yes, there's the site with photos! What nice photos, really nice... she even made collages. Who could that girl be? I can't tell from here, all I know now is that her name is Sita. I'd love it if there's a picture of that girl with it... well, maybe she'll do it some other time."

Bea paused for a moment, seeing that Sita was laughing at the round trip from one site to another.

"Would you like it if there was a picture of you on your site?"

She nodded. "And then I also want to add who I am. Then I'll have to make a new page, I guess?"

Bea, marvelling at her initiative and insight, nodded. "Do you remember how to do that?"

Sita pointed to the 'Pages' block and clicked on it. "Here it should be possible... with that plus sign here, I believe."

"True, but wait a bit more. Shall we take a picture of you and type a story first?"

"I can't do that, typing. Then I have to learn to read and write and type first..."

"If you want to learn that, we're going to help you with that in the time to come. But for now, I can type for you what you want to put on that page. Do you think that's a good idea?"

Sita pondered and asked to be sure she had understood correctly, "So now you are going to type the story and take a picture? And later today, or tomorrow I will learn to read, write and type?"

"If you want to, yes, we can do it that way," Bea replied.

"Good plan!" said Sita firmly and slid off her chair. "Then you sit here and type."

"Okay," Bea said, sitting down. "Do you know which programme I need to type?"

"Rosalie always uses the blue one." Sita pointed to the blue box with the W from Word.

"Right yes! Let's do the same." She clicked on it, after which a new screen appeared. "I'm not going to explain to you right now how to make the typing screen all right, we'll do that when you start learning to type, okay?"

Sita nodded, with her mind already on the text she wanted to accompany her picture on her website. "Just type... I'm Sita. I go to the discovery centre. I discovered that I really enjoy working with a camera. Every day I take photos and sometimes make videos. I can now make collages and put pictures on my website. I love it when you come and see my photos!"

Bea typed smiling. "Nice, Sita, clear and not too long. People don't always feel like reading long stories. Do you want to make that page on your website yourself?"

"If you help, I will!"

They switched seats again. Sita went to her website, where the editor was still on under 'Pages'. She clicked on the plus sign and got a small box she didn't understand.

"What do you want to call this page?" asked Bea.

"Sita," she replied, "because it's about me."

"Can you type your name yourself, do you think?"

"Maybe so... how can I make the s big?"

Bea pointed her to the SHIFT: "Just hold it with one finger, then tap the s with another."

"Oh yes, that's nice and big! And the i? It's not there?"

"That's because on the keyboard they always use the capital letters, the big letters. That stick there, that's the i."

Bea also had to point out the t and the a, because all the letters were still new to Sita. Briefly, Bea thought back to how Rosalie had found those letters without a doubt. She understood that she could, because she had already read so incredibly much when she wanted to start typing. Sita had a different order of discovering and learning things, and therefore had no idea what all those letters on the keyboard represented. Anyway, her name was now in the box, as the title of her new page. Bea helped her on her way. Sita dared herself, having seen Rosalie do it, to drag the 'Text' block to her new page, and select, copy and paste the text Bea had typed for her into her page.

"Just making those letters big again, just thinking about it though... secting everything again or something?"

"Yes, select," Bea replied.

"Oh yes, select, rotten word... oh sorry..."

"Never mind, you can think it's a rotten word," Bea laughed.

Sita chuckled and slid her cursor over the text. With a little help from Bea, she managed to enlarge the letters and change colour.

"So, now a picture!" she gloated.

.

The discovery centre's website was not viewed very often, so not many people came to Sita's website either.

Anneloes of Soul-Journalism was one of the few people who did discover her site. During the coffee break, she showed the site to her colleagues. "What do you think, Eric, time for a new interview?"

"Indeed, exactly what I was thinking! Are you psychic, do you have telepathic gifts?" he asked with a big grin.

"You should know, I can see right through you!" laughed Anneloes. "Shall I call the centre right away?"

She got Ineke on the phone, who passed him on to Bea when she heard it was about Sita. An appointment was quickly made, and the interview itself went smoothly and pleasantly, with Sita showing how she was working on her website on the computer with minimal help from Bea and making collages for it.

The interview appeared on Soul-Journalism's site a few hours later, catchily titled: "Discover yourself! If photography is your thing..." and with Sita clearly on the opening screen of the video. It was viewed incredibly often, all over the world. The English subtitles were clear, allowing people from all countries to sympathise with this super young explorer. At the interview, they of course mentioned the discovery centre link again, and this time also the link of Sita's website.

Patrick used an Analytics programme to keep an eye on whether their own site and now Sita's site were being viewed. The number of visitors appeared to be rising at lightning speed, at both sites. This made Rosalie want to create her own site. Ineke took some nice photos of her, which she made into a collage with Ineke's help. She wrote texts she wanted to put on it and saved all the information for her website in a new folder in Explorer. She pondered how she wanted to lay out her website, asked for a little help in registering her page and started to figure out on her own how to lay out the site and fill her pages. She had convenience from the fact that she had already been working on the centre's website once, so she dared to figure things out on her own a little easier.

And knowing how copy and paste worked, she tried to copy the link from the gallery's website and copy it onto her site. She found that this worked fine in a text block, where she added that her books were for sale on this site. She discovered the possibility of letting people comment on her website, and placed that comment option in all kinds of places: under each book, on the page of her diary, under each piece of written text, under the page 'Rosalie' where she had placed a collage of the photos Ineke had taken of her, and had written something about herself along with it. She slid off her chair to ask Ineke to come and check if she had done it all right. Ineke loved it, found it mind-bogglingly surprising how Rosalie had managed to do it all herself. Together they went over the layout again, made some small changes and were very pleased with the result!

During lunch, Rosalie explained what she had done and asked if her site could also be on the discovery centre's website. While she was talking, Bea and Patrick looked up her site, showed Jan and Sita how Rosalie had made her site.

"Are we agreed, that this site should also get a spot on our site?" asked Patrick in a low voice and a tension-filled undertone.

"Yaaaaaaaaa!" cheered Sita, in which everyone joined her! A loud applause followed.

"I'm going to take care of it right after lunch!"

.

The discovery centre companions had deliberately not put a comment option on their site, but had given the option of sending an email message via 'Contact'. Patrick, who usually handled this part of the work, noticed a huge increase in the number of messages. There were especially many questions from parents and from teachers. Questions full of disbelief, but mostly questions about possibilities and how it worked. He made a few standard answers and saved them, so he didn't have to type out the same answer every time. He also added the link to Soul-Journalism's interviews to all the answers, so people could see a bit more about their way of working.

Some parents from the area got in touch, wanting to know more about a possible application for their child, either because their child was struggling with the school system, or because they themselves were struggling with it and preferred their child to follow a different path.

The number of discoverers at "I Discover Myself!" grew to nine children in the last few months before the summer holidays.

Teachers from schools wrote for information because they wanted to know more about their method and whether it would be possible to apply it in their own classrooms. Patrick's answer then was simple:

'You can't just change your school's system to full self-discovery teaching or anything like that. You can, however, start listening to your inner voice, to what your soul is telling you about the children in your classroom, and ask yourself how you might connect to that. Ask yourself questions like: 'Should all children learn a certain type of sum in the same way, or are they allowed to discover for themselves how best to do it?' And if you really want to start working completely from your own soul, guiding children as we do... then I think you should consider changing jobs, resigning and starting a discovery centre yourself. Unless all your colleagues experience that they want to follow this way of working. Then, of course, you can look for ways together that suit you. Above all, feel what suits you and what suits the children in your class!'

.

After such responses came requests to join them to watch and talk, requests for some help in starting a new discovery centre. Patrick was fine with helping a little with that, but above all, kept telling his new colleagues to keep listening to their inner selves in everything they did in setting up their centre.

.

Soul Journalism staff discovered on social media and news pages that things were changing in education land. They sought contact with new centres, conducted interviews and created a page 'Around education and discovery centres' on their own site. They moved all interviews related to this to it and noticed from the responses they got, that there was an accelerating shift in education land.

Besides new discovery centres, they also noticed that there were schools that were changing course step by step. Most of these schools decided to take it one subject at a time.

For instance, there were schools that, in the higher grades, let the children look things up on their laptops by themselves during world orientation subjects. They encouraged them to look for things that interested them about other countries, about history, about nature and to use photos and texts to create a kind of paper. They sometimes followed Sita and Rosalie's example, gave the children the opportunity to create their own website where they could share the 'papers' they had made.

At another school, a third-grade teacher was brave enough to engage self-discovery in learning to read. She had arranged a bookcase so that the children could very easily find the books they needed. All the word cards from the method she had always used, she hung on a string through the classroom so that the children could easily find the letters in the words. She wrote on the school's website after a few months, that she was surprised at how quickly the children learned to read, how several children wanted to learn to write or even type on their own. She concluded with a surprising discovery: 'In our education system, we have been far too programmed, overloading the children with far too much work that did not interest them, while they are perfectly capable of learning to read very well on their own in a few weeks. Most children are now, after three months, already further along than they were after a year in the old programme... We have to learn to let them go, at most help them if necessary!'

Some other schools changed their way of working on a group-by-group basis, starting with self-discovery in the first year, with the idea that when the children of that group moved on to the following years, they would be familiar with the new way of working and it would therefore be easier to discover new learning that way. But they soon found out, that those small children were like hungry wolves, wanting to devour new things, things that according to the old system belonged in, say, the third or fourth year, and... that older pupils wanted to learn that way too!

Anneloes, who was becoming increasingly fascinated by what was happening in education land, requested interviews here and there, and through those interviews and through email messages also asked questions about staffing. Several schools had sought help from parents and other interested parties, giving them information about mentoring. Thus, parents and others within the classes came to supervise as volunteers.

Anneloes noticed that it was a tough job for the schools, but that enough passion had arisen in most teachers to persevere. The various experience stories on their school websites, the experience stories on the websites of discovery centres and the interviews Anneloes and Eric posted on their site supported the staff in their desire to stop teaching the children things, but let them discover for themselves and help them only where necessary.

The old system disappeared piece by piece and gave way to working from the child's soul, the soul in which the desire to develop was ready, waiting to be worked on!

To chapter 111. Everything is going to be new at companies

Or to the Table of contents