The image is already recurrent: every day, Fernanda Martins arrives at Escola Secundária de Loulé, coming from Campina de Cima, by bicycle. Geography teacher, your taste for cycling is old. In classes, he tries to instill in students issues related to sustainable mobility, but success, he says, "is still weak".
With an accelerated pace, teacher Fernanda Martins is leaving another class. On his back he has a backpack, typical of cyclists, where he has a computer, books and all the material he needs for classes. «I have to set an example, bring everything and come very heavy», she says. This is a problem that the teacher is faced with and that has already forced her to stop cycling.
“Last year, I was developing a back problem that forced me to stop riding a bike, as I came with a lot of weight in my backpack,” he reveals. Therefore, now, whenever she has to go “equipped” to school, she opts for the car, despite having bought a basket for the bicycle where she can bring her backpack. Besides, there is only one other situation that makes her leave her bicycle at home: when it rains. But as in the Algarve it doesn't rain much…
The bet you make on using the bicycle did not come about by chance. Always smiling, the teacher reveals that she has been talking about these issues of light mobility in her classes for several years. O commitment by the bicycle, signed by the City Council, for days at the Loulé Secondary School itself, it comes towards promoting this type of mobility, but there are gaps, in the teacher's opinion.
“I think we are starting with the roof and not the base. Before encouraging the use of bicycles, we have to create the minimum conditions for this to be possible. For example, in Loulé, we have to adapt some spaces and limit speed on some streets. Thus, drivers would be forced to walk at that speed and would not honk because we are cyclists and go slower», says professor Fernanda Martins.
Throughout the city of Loulé, the Geography teacher notices several flaws. The first: «the central separator of the Avenue has several gaps, which make it easy for those who ride a bicycle to fall». The second: “the fact that streets that are not open to traffic are not open to cyclists”. And, finally, the third: “the lack of itineraries”.
«Coming by bicycle? Is the teacher crazy?”
Since she was young, teacher Fernanda Martins has been riding a bicycle. When she was a student, there were those who asked her if she was a boy… just for riding a bicycle. Today, it is at school that he continues to fight for this means of transport to be used more.
Last school year, in the classes he had, he surveyed the reasons why students did not ride their bikes to school. Some people said to him: “In this heat, come by bicycle? Is the teacher crazy?». Others claimed that the bicycle, which is made available at school by the Câmara de Loulé, is for girls, as it is pink.
“It's psychological, but I notice that among boys. If they were all of a more neutral color, the students would adhere more», he emphasizes. He acknowledges, however, that the «Camera worked well». “They are given bicycles, which they can take home if they sign a liability waiver, helmets, padlocks. Everything. There is prejudice,” she says angrily.
In classes, the teacher tries to alert students to this need to «avoid using the car». To do this, it calculates, for example, the carbon footprint… and develops case studies. «Each student takes a problem, analyzes it, looks for causes and solutions. A few years ago, I had a student who was one of the great mentors of the need to create bike paths in Loulé and in connection with other locations. At the time, the Plan for Sustainability and Urban Mobility was being drawn up and the case study was presented to a member of the City Council, who found it very interesting», he recalls proudly.
For this school year, the teacher also has a project: the students of Geography C, from the 12th year, will ask, throughout the School, what is the reason why their classmates do not want to ride a bicycle to Secondary School of Loulé. «It is also necessary to take into account the fact that there are students who are from Boliqueime and, therefore, it is difficult for them to come by bicycle. If, in Loulé, conditions are already bad, outside the city they are terrible», the teacher says.
Francisco Lino is an isolated case throughout the School
The bicycle park at the entrance to the Loulé Secondary School is almost empty every day. Almost, because, apart from teacher Fernanda Martins' bicycle, only one student uses this means of transport to travel to school.
Francisco Lino is an isolated case. Tall, helmet in hand, he walks through the corridors of Loulé Secondary School. Despite being a student of Professor Fernanda, it wasn't in Geography classes that he felt motivated to ride his bike to school. “I've been mountain biking for many years now”, he reveals. “I come every day by bike because I want to and because I like it”, he concludes.
In these days when a lot has been said about the use of sustainable mobility and bike, the example of this teacher and this student is one that makes you think that, after all, beyond the rhetoric of beautiful words, there are those who take these issues very seriously.
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