Rafel Roman
Rafael’s masterpieces, made in collaboration with his wife Olga, have been his two children.
The experience of being a father started up in him a transcendental engine that led him to train as a Montessori teacher for Elementary and to found, together with his wife, Galápagos International Montessori School, in Granada (Spain), and Espacios Montessori.
https://www.montessorischoolgranada.com/
He completed his Montessori for Elementary teacher certification at the International Montessori Institute, after being a Technology teacher at a High School for 7 years. He is currently a member of the Governing Board of Galapagos International Montessori School, and has coordinated, organized and taught numerous Montessori assistant courses. He actively collaborates creating new training programs for Living Montessori Mexico, which provides Montessori teacher training.
He is a committed and inspiring communicator of Montessori education, and has given numerous talks at events such as: the International Pre-Congress for the Rights of Children and Adolescents (April 2016 – Malaga), the I Montessori Congress (Almería), the International Montessori Online Congress 2019, the Online Congress “Educating for Freedom”, and the Montessori 2020 Online Congress. He has also given informative speeches on Montessori education in various locations throughout the Spanish geography.
Also, he has designed and taught Montessori training courses in several centers, such as the University of Granada, the Public Teacher Training Centers of Granada, Malaga and Cuevas-Olula, the private University of La Inmaculada, the Alliance Francaise, several pre-schools looking to transform their methodology, etc.
In addition, as part of his work around creating awareness about Montessori education and its philosophy, he collaborates writing articles for different websites, as well as the weekly newsletters for his subscribers, Montessofías.
He is also an independent consultant for entrepreneurs wanting to start their own Montessori school, and he is a board member of the Montessori Association of Schools and the Montessori Association of Andalusia.
In the past 15 years, Rafael has focused all of his work on education and teaching, first as an Interior Design teacher, then as a Technology teacher in High School, and finally as the founder and manager of a Montessori school and training center. However, he graduated in Valencia as an Industrial Design Engineer and worked for several years designing furniture, homeware and crafts.
From 2002 to 2007, he was offered the wonderful opportunity of working as a Cooperator for the Embassy of Spain in Ecuador, specifically in the Galapagos Islands. He conducted creativity workshops for groups of artisans from different rural areas of Ecuador. He also participated in the Designs for the Real World project, in collaboration with Oxfam Int.
His training in Industrial Design and his experience in Cooperation, especially in the Galapagos Islands, were a turning point in his career. His creativity was from then on focused on contribution and the protection of nature and innocent beings, and to this day nurture his concern for creating new educational settings.
Music for Rafael has been the thread that has always run through his professional life. Thus, while working as a High School teacher, he performed in his music group “El Trio of the Azores”, singing, playing the guitar, and composing most of the songs. After this experience composing and playing music, he began to practice Biodanza and trained as a facilitator of Biodanza SRT, which he has also incorporated into the school curriculum. The experience of Biodanza has led him to integrate different styles of music through movement, thus being able to experience in an amplified way the emotional and transformative impact of music.
During these past two years, he has been developing the Challenge Education methodology, which includes the use of music for the emotional regulation of the groups of students, and has been designed to introduce in the educational system a motivating and attractive way of teaching for children. He is currently beginning to implement this system in the Virtual School online project, along with Christopher Vuk.