Ana Alexandra Resende, a 46-year-old woman, wrote an opinion piece expressing her outrage at the impossibility of stabilising her professional career in teaching in Portugal. The author knows the school system from the inside, having taught for years, with students, classes, responsibilities, assessments, and meetings.
The author states that she continues to seek an opportunity to professionalise, having already written to those in charge in an attempt to understand what path to follow, but frequently encounters silence. She questions how it is possible that a country needs teachers and, simultaneously, makes the journey of someone who has already taught and wants to continue doing so so difficult.
Ana Resende mentions that she is starting a doctorate, she works, she has experience, and she has reinvented herself several times. She argues that she is not asking for a profession to be handed to her, but rather to be allowed to follow the necessary path to practice the profession with stability. She criticises the idea that it is necessary to "know someone" or to grovel to have opportunities.
The author concludes that she is tired of hearing that she needs to be resilient, arguing that there are days when people have the right to be fed up. She questions when it will be the turn to live in a country where merit, knowledge, and experience have value and where a favour is not necessary to have an opportunity.
