becoming brazilian teacher in pandemic times

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore the processes involved in becoming a teacher in this particular historical moment of global pandemic in Brazil. What are the challenges, limitations, possibilities and opportunities that the pandemic presents to the process of teaching work and teacher formation? A review of the literature that included contributions from Caponi (2020), Kohan (2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2017), Larrosa (2018), Neuscharank (2020), Vaz (2012), Arroyo (2012) and Abramowicz (2017) suggests a dialogue between pedagogic theory, philosophy of education and the contemporary experience of political and social events in the pandemic period The discussions reviewed explore the profound extent to which Covid-19 has affected our way of living, working and relating to others, and the psychological effects of social isolation. The situation demands from the Brazilian teacher an attitude of openness to change, specifically in the use of new technologies, and the extent to which they are or are not able to replace face-to-face interactions. The situation also challenges us to reconstruct, beyond the logic of neoliberalism, our notions of the type of school we have and type of school we want, the type of teachers we are and the type of teacher we want to be. We conclude that this process of thinking school again depends, if it is to escape neoliberal logic, on the capacity of understanding the vocation of the teacher to be one of “becoming-child” in the sense of experiencing an openness to and a desire for the new. As such, the “becoming-teacher” is one who allows herself to be addressed by another logic, another more sensitive and more aesthetic temporality, and who finds, in encounter with others, with art, with childhood, with becoming itself, the capacity to think, to resist, to fight for the realization of that logic.