Just like children grow through movement, education must also be in constant motion, making room for new questions, reflections, and perspectives. At be.Living, this movement takes place through the professional development opportunities we offer our educators, fostering a practice of ongoing reflection and care in pedagogical work.
“It’s essential for the school to provide professional development opportunities,” explains Gabriela Fernandes, pedagogical coordinator for Elementary School. “Of course, teachers have their individual pursuits of development, this is part of our job. But when the school promotes these meetings, it also ensures the maintenance of the political-pedagogical project, which guides the way the school works. It’s not just training: it’s aligning practice with the vision of education that we build here.”
Gabriela explains that all training is based on three intertwined axes: the personal axis, linked to the commitment of each educator to their own process of transformation; the institutional axis, which reaffirms the school as a continuous formative space; and the collective axis, which mobilizes the entire team around a shared practice. It’s in the meeting of the individual, institutional, and collective dimensions that the formative work gains consistency and translates into real impact within the school.
This year, two themes informed the meetings: Mathematics and Education for ethnic-racial relations. In the former, the advice of specialist Priscila Monteiro helps the team to consolidate the conception of mathematics teaching in school, redefining the curriculum and classroom practices. Gabriela points out that this process is not restricted to collective meetings, but also involves close individual monitoring: “If I notice that any teacher finds it more difficult to work on certain aspects of the didactics of mathematics that we believe in, I take these reflections to the individual meetings. Thus, we were able to go deeper together and ensure that the training actually reverberates in the planning and in the daily teaching-learning processes.”
The training in Education for ethnic-racial relations is being conducted by educator Luciana Alves. More than a one-off course, it’s a continuous movement that the school makes a point of resuming. In 2019, be.Living had already promoted a powerful training on this topic, and resuming it now reaffirms the importance of keeping this agenda always up to date. “Training in Education for ethnic-racial relations cannot happen only once. It needs to come back constantly, because the team renews itself and because the process also requires a personal dimension of self-reflection,” emphasizes Gabriela. The objective is to provoke the team to engage in a conscious and anti-racist curriculum, capable of confronting structural racism and expanding the presence of diversity in school projects.
“Education must be dynamic, just like life itself,” adds Camila Maia, pedagogical coordinator for Early Childhood Education. “The training meetings allow us to connect life at school and life in society. They help us to expand cultural and pedagogical repertoires, to provoke the teachers’ gaze to new ways of thinking and acting.”
Camila says that the meetings are planned in order to engage all faculty members. At times, they bring together the Early Childhood Education and Elementary School teams, creating a collaborative space for shared learning and exchange. In others, they’re organized by cycles, contemplating the specificities of each stage. The coordination team also closely monitors each educator’s individual journey, ensuring that learning resonates in lesson planning and, consequently, in daily practice with the children.
This effort of study and reflection is not restricted only to the groups’ teachers. There’s also a program dedicated to assistant teachers, who participate in ten annual meetings with a final production of their own authorship. “We bet on this training because we understand that the future of the school also lies in preparing those who are becoming teachers,” comments Gabriela. This commitment strengthens the idea that each member of the team is part of a permanent learning community.
In practice, each session is designed to engage, inspire, and deeply impact the experiences of educators. “They’re not lectures”, notes Camila. “These are thought-provoking ideas that spill over into projects and into daily interactions with the children.” This dynamic makes training not something isolated, but an organic part of school life, an axis that feeds the projects and gives meaning to the experiences of research, art, culture, and coexistence.
And it’s precisely in this overflow that the greatest meaning of the training lies. “As adults engage in reflection, these insights reach the children—whether through a project, during circle time, or in everyday actions. The entire training process overflows to the children. This is what ensures that professional development is truly meaningful: transforming the perspective of educators so that the experiences of children become increasingly powerful,” concludes Camila.