Empower through Education
"Teaching is not transferring knowledge, but creating the possibilities for its own production or construction"
(Paolo Freire, 1996).
I am a trainer focused in active pedagogy, trade unionist, social justice.
About the Project
Empower Through Education
I aim to empower trade union reps through active pedagogy approach. It is also the philosophy of our National Trade Union School.
By focusing on engaging teaching methods, I strive to enhance learning outcomes and spark curiosity in each member.
My project goals include fostering critical thinking skills, promoting inclusivity, and encouraging creativity in learners. Through collaboration and interactive learning experiences, I aim to create a dynamic educational environment.
As a trainer focused on active pedagogy and a trade unionist advocating for social justice, my project seeks to address educational inequalities and empower trade unionists from diverse backgrounds. I believe education is a key tool for social change, and I am dedicated to making a positive impact through this project.
About Me
Trade unionist and trainer
My name is Fátima Aguado and I am from Madrid, Spain.
I am a trade unionist because the feeling of social justice has been with me since I was young. In our union, we seek to improve people's lives, their working conditions. As a trainer as well.
I think that knowledge is one of the most powerful tools we can give to workers to improve their lives, to help them deal with the difficulties they face daily in their workplaces. Because proper education transforms, opens minds. It emancipates. It makes you free.
My own training process, with ETT1 and ETT2, was also like this. Who would have told me when I started this process that a world would open up before me?
At the Complutense University of Madrid, where I completed my degree in English Philology with a specialization in Italian, they encouraged us students to train as teachers.
I didn't dislike the idea of being a university professor but this was a very hard dream for someone like me having to work.
When I finished, I even took the CAP (Pedagogical Adaptation Course) necessary to teach in secondary schools. I only missed doing the practicum in some school or institute but I never reached that goal since I was already working in my company, Iberia airlines, to pay my university studies.
However, I always liked the idea of being able to teach adults at some point in my life. So, in a sense, my training as a philologist served for me to use and put into practice everything I had learned during my degree
Because I had so much training, I immediately started to lend a hand in the union, until I was released from the company to work for the union.
Since then, I have always been involved in both the international and training fields, bringing the two worlds together. I later became an expert in European Union law and I believe that my broad vision allows me to connect with very heterogeneous and multicultural realities. Active pedagogy fascinates me and I believe that schools should implement such methodologies as a norm.
A unique narrative
How to tackle the far right as a common thread
Constructing an e-portfolio means building a unique, personal narrative that involves an intense process of personal reflection. Everything has a why and a for what purpose.
For that reason I present my e-portfolio as a single guiding theme that has as its background protagonist the phenomenon of the far right in our societies.
The three experiences are related and are part of a union purpose, a question we have asked ourselves in the union related to the rise of the far right in our societies and, as a consequence, also in the world of work.
Is it possible to combat it? How? Do workers' representatives find hate speech in their daily lives? How do they perceive the phenomenon? Do they have tools to fight it? Does this issue affect their daily work? What tools can we design to combat it?
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