45 years of you, Madeira Teachers Union! | Funchal News | Madeira News – Information for everyone for everyone!

The Teachers Union is celebrating. 45 years of serving a demanding class, but passionate about their profession: Teaching, always with Love.

I have become accustomed, for many years, to seeing this union structure as a space for critical awareness, plural debate and free thinking, at the service of teachers, the discreet but effective artisans of an evolved society. How many times, even as a journalist, did I go up Rua da Conceição, where, in the former headquarters of the SPM, great causes were designed to make commitments in society, with audacity and above all interests. There were press conferences after press conferences to align strategies, position on the troubled times of the past and alerts to navigation. Remarkable times, of commitment to great causes, with Amélia Carreira, Adília Andrade, Rita Pestana, Marília Azevedo, Sofia Canha and so on until the end of our days, with other faces of struggle and social commitment, such as Francisco Oliveira.

Behind this union structure, there is a team of little ants with always a word of encouragement for those who request it, from concerns about training yet to be completed to more acute and somber issues of career progression. The answer always arrives and the feeling stands out that it is also worth supporting these people who come forward to support teachers and show their victories and anguish.

So often, it doesn’t matter the protagonists of each era who courageously commit their time, in a mission to give credibility to a union structure with history. It’s less important to slip up. It is more important that trade unionism is visionary, always ahead of its time and not in the wake of calendar ephemeris or cyclical sound bites. All this critical awareness is done with People, with an apostolate at the service of the nobility and wealth of Being a Teacher, Today and Forever. Not to amplify moments of disenchantment, but to proclaim the daily overcoming of a class that makes emerging problems a turning point, surprising everyone and everything. Yes, because Being a Teacher is increasingly necessary and recommended.

* Rosário Martins (journalist and teacher)