Being a teacher at be.Living is much more than just a job: it is a way of being in the world, a choice that transforms lives, including your own. It’s treading, day after day, a path where every gesture is purposeful, every encounter is shaped by warmth, and every learning experience springs from the strength of the community. It’s seeing each child in their uniqueness, listening to them attentively, closely monitoring their development, and providing the necessary conditions for them to flourish and manifest their full potential. It’s a constant investigation of one’s own practice, carried out with dedication and steadfast commitment. 

In this year in which we celebrate 25 years of history, we listen to the voices of the teachers who walk with us and who make be.Living much more than a school: a living community that pulsates, breathes, and reinvents itself every day, promoting meaningful and concrete experiences so that we can build, together, the school and the world we want for our children.

“This is a school with a very clear purpose and a very strong sense of community,” says Camila Maia, pedagogical coordinator for Early Childhood Education. For her, being at be.Living means belonging to a group that not only performs tasks, but believes in, invests in, and is committed to serious, transformative, and innovative education. “Everyone here has a sense of enchantment, a personal connection, and a deep commitment to everything that happens. This is reflected in our relationships with families, with the children, and within our own team. I see respect and care as very strong hallmarks,” Camila adds, emphasizing that collective and intentional work is what strengthens the school and makes its actions so impactful.

This dimension of a living school, which reinvents itself and proposes to constantly review educational practices, also appears in the words of Letícia Esteves, a teacher at the Elementary School. “I joke that I have already lived many be.Livings. The school constantly strives to rethink itself, to change, to make this educational community a living community. We want to look at a specific aspect of our work, focus on it, and bring the subject to conferences and training sessions,” says Letícia, for whom be.Living is a space where you learn by doing together, investigating, making mistakes, and getting things right, just as children are encouraged to do.

This idea that the educational process is a shared journey is reflected in several accounts. For Caroline Carvalho, an elementary school teacher, being an educator at be.Living “means walking together, building new knowledge and new skills, overcoming difficulties by being there every day, learning from the children, from management, and from other educators.” Caroline emphasizes that the role of the teacher is not to show the child what to do, but to “build their path with them, supporting them to shine and add to the knowledge they already have.”

At be.Living, listening is a value that guides teaching practices and coexistence. Patrícia Costa, Assistant Coordinator of Early Childhood Education, points out that at school, students learn to be human beings, to be partners, to be leaders, and to be led. “We take on many different roles here. We learn to listen, to empathize, to look at others. Each person has their own journey, and we need to understand and respect that. I think that’s something we pass on to our children. They are not just another child, but an individual within the group, with their own experiences, culture, and background,” Patrícia notes.

This view of childhood as powerful and unique is also central to our Elementary School assistant coordinator, Amélia Gabriela. It was at be.Living that I learned to see children as powerful, capable, conscious beings who are the protagonists of their own stories. I understand that they have a voice, an opinion, and are fully capable of making decisions for the common good, as I see happening in the assemblies,” Amélia says, pointing to one of the school’s strongest pillars: the children’s active role in their school life.

The relationship with families also appears to be an essential aspect. For Otaviana Lima, a Early Childhood Education teacher, “being a teacher at be.Living also means welcoming families. We interact with the families to make them feel welcome, and that’s a very important process. It’s something enjoyable, pleasurable. Once the children have gone through the adaptation and welcoming process, it’s so nice to see their eyes light up when they say they want to stay here. Similarly, it is very gratifying to see how the families felt very confident about their choice.”

In fact, “welcoming” was the word most often cited by teachers. Yoga teacher Rudra Avella sums it up: “If I had to come up with one word to describe the school, I’d say welcoming. You can sense this from everyone: teachers, guidance counselors, receptionists, door monitors.” For Rudra, be.Living is also a place for constant innovation and training: “There is a continuous movement to improve education through training sessions in which everyone participates, always reflecting on the best way to educate individuals to be autonomous and aware of the collective.”

This freedom to create, reflect, and innovate is celebrated by Marina Bianchi, who started as an assistant and now works as an Elementary School teacher. “Here I learn that every day is a new day, every year will be a new year, with a new class. be.Living provides me with this place to create, following the project and everything the school believes in, but managing to work with the children on content that makes sense at that moment, for that group or each child,” Marina says. For her, the most important thing is that children engage with learning: “If we can awaken that, it will have been worth it.”

For Gabriella Renata Muniz Laranjeira, a teacher in Early Childhood Education, being part of be.Living means being part of something great, something bigger than herself. “It is a combination of forces from everyone involved in this space, and the result is this pleasant, powerful environment that is so meaningful for children.”

The emotional bond with the school and its purpose is something that is repeated in the statements. Carolina Pinheiro Fioco, an Elementary School teacher, puts it delicately: “be.Living is affection, warmth, and respect for children and for all the people who walk together here. It is a place where we find comfort, affection, belonging, and endless possibilities to learn and grow, every day. If I could be a child again, this is exactly where I would want to be!”