Alma’s participation in ESFM’s Reading and Writing Fair “Clara Parada de Pinto”
In 2024, at Fundación Alma we are working on training students from all five years and all specialties of the ESFM “Clara Parada de Pinto”. This year, for some reason, there were other institutions, public and private, that also offered workshops to students and although this initially worried me, I think it also meant a great opportunity to differentiate ourselves from other training institutions.
At the beginning, during our workshops, we announced that in addition to training in content and the products that we would have as a result of the workshops, Fundación Alma would hold group and individual sessions to accompany or advise students who are doing their IEPC-PEC educational practices. So we didn’t just stay a few hours at the ESFM, we were there throughout the year with teachers and students, we were in face-to-face meetings with the students working with them to develop materials, to modify the way of presenting the report to demonstrate the pedagogical impact of their work, we gave them pedagogical and also methodological tools for their practices and the report of these.
Our work then was not isolated, it was not punctual; I believe that in 2024 our work became another link in the training of teachers and the administrators, teachers and coordinators themselves and even the students themselves have recognized us as a DIFFERENT institution, an institution that “is part of the ESFM”, as they say. I think that is why we were invited as jurors to several pedagogical fairs that were held in Trinidad, we were invited to cultural events, formal events and they also allowed us to witness the degree defenses, spaces in which the other institutions were not.
With all this and listening to the speech of the general director of the ESFM at a public event who said “now all of us here are jointly responsible for the training of future teachers, if they are good teachers in the future we will have to congratulate the teachers, directors, even the Alma Foundation, but if they are bad teachers we will also have to assume the responsibility of not having trained them adequately.” It is clear to me that we have achieved a lot as an institution and that being a complementary part of the training of future teachers we also have a great challenge and responsibility with the education of our country.
By:
Leonel Saavedra Caceres
Departmental Coordinator Beni