Ana Benito Vilizan
Director
Ana’s background is a mix of different journeys. Taking a Geography and
History degree, she specialized in Modern History and CAP (Pedagogical
Aptitude Certification), the equivalent of the PG Cert in Education. She started her professional life with a short, direct teaching experience in secondary
schools, before continuing her academic career studying Historiographical Sciences and Paleography PhD and a postgraduate in Juridic Documentation and Public Administration, eventually certificated in Business Administration (MBA), Corporate and Institutional Communication (MCC) and Team Leadership. Headhunted by the multinational consulting world she developed her ten year career from consultant, project manager to Business Developer Manager, also teaching in the Facultad de Documentación de la Universidad de Barcelona. A major life change saw her living in Asia and India for five years, until she settled, as a wife and mother, in Orgiva. Since 2018 she has been in the service of Arbol Madre striving to give the best of herself.
Valentina Nuñez
Primary Teacher and Pedagogical Coordinator (Curriculum)
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Sara Ortega Dominguez
Primary Teacher and Pedagogical Coordinator (Assessment and Special Needs)
Sara is a qualified primary education teacher and graduate in psychopedagogy from the University of Granada. She has worked as a tutor and teacher for more than 8 years with students from 6-12 years old. She specializes in education for diversity, serving groups of students with different needs and learning rates. She is also intercultural teacher offering Spanish extracurricular activity for foreigners. Sara is currently completing her Primary Waldorf training. She likes to carry out workshops in theater and improvisation, dance, storytelling and creative writing, sewing and gamification. She is also a nature and permaculture lover.
Maria Eugenia Tapia Gàlvez
Primary Teacher
Maru has been with Arbol Madre for 4 years. She began working as assistant at the Kindergarten and alongside this, trained as a teacher, gaining her qualifications in Primary Education and Waldorf Primary Education, completing her practical element at Arbol Madre. She recently completed training in Forest School methodology, and she is a trained Life Guard. For several years running she has been monitor at the Arbol Madre summer camp.
Almudena Alvarez Gonzalez
Kindergarten Teacher
Almudena’s vocation has always been to care for and accompany children. At the age of 18 she began her Primary Teaching career and to this day she has not stopped studying and learning about education. She is an Early Childhood Education teacher, Montessori Guide, completing her AMI training with Guadalupe Borbolla, and specialist in Waldorf child accompaniment, training with Sandra Chandía. She also trained in non-violent communication and Waldorf children’s community. Her true teachers, however, are the boys and girls with whom she shares every year. Almudena says, “I firmly believe that education is the tool to create a more just, more respectful and more beautiful society. I trust in an education that leads human beings towards the freedom of being and towards the development of all the potential that each boy and girl keeps within them, with patience, respect and love. In the words of Rudolf Steiner ‘one must take the time,’ so that what each child brings to this world can manifest harmoniously.”
Nadia Hassan
Kindergarten assistant
Nadia initially trained as an engineer and worked as a technical project manager. However, her passion for education and children led her to train as a Montessori Assistant at the AMI in 2015. Later, thanks to motherhood, she delved personally into the study of respectful education. Since September 2023 she has participated in the Arbol Madre Kindergarten as an assistant. She loves working with children ages 3 to 6, and her heart is recharged with the love of children each day she spends at school. She considers that the most important thing at this stage is to teach good manners through example. For this, the spiritual and emotional work of the accompanying adult is a priority.