The Process of Becoming a Teacher: Experiences with Teachers in Northeast Brazil

Background: Working conditions in Brazil, both material and contextual, are not suitable for the exercise of the educator's profession nor for the well-being of educators, which is being, therefore, strongly affected. In addition, a little more than three quarters of teaching professionals in Brazilian Basic Education are women. Design: The methodology used was qualitative in nature. Participants: seven Basic Education teachers, who participated as collaborators in the study, narrated their experiences as educators, and the research sought to explain the meanings and senses of the phenomena narrated by them. Data collection and analysis : To collect the information, two Conversation Rounds of two hours and thirty minutes each were held, and a structured questionnaire was applied to obtain personal and professional data from the collaborators. Then, to analyze this information, the strategy suggested by Strauss and Corbin (2012) was used. Results : From the teachers' testimonies, it was found that their training experiences were marked by the motivations for choosing to be a teacher, their insertion in the teaching community and the awareness of their role as educators. Conclusions : It was concluded that the process of becoming a teacher is characterized by unique sociocultural experiences, in which relationships with others have been crucial for the constitution of oneself as teaching professionals.


INTRODUCTION
The challenges to be overcome by education in Latin America are numerous. This was jointly recognized by UNESCO-UNICEF-ECLAC (2022), who stated that the current situation of education in the region makes it impossible to achieve the goals set out in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Although Latin American countries present positive data in some areas, the three organizations mentioned recognize that: In recent years, there has been a slowdown and, in some cases, stagnation in progress on many of the educational achievements seen in the period 2000-2015. In other indicators improvements are recognized and there are encouraging achievements, some common to the region and others specific to some countries. Despite this, the balance allows recognizing the effect of a period marked by economic difficulties, political discontinuity and the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic (UNESCO-UNICEF-ECLAC, 2022; 3) (Our translation) .
Some of the advances achieved have suffered a decline; among them the one referring to the situation of women; in the cited report we have: "The forced exit of women from the labor market represents an 18-year setback in the levels of their participation in the labor force" (UNESCO-UNICEF-ECLAC, 2022; p. 16) (Our translation), and this is one of the consequences of varied factors; therefore, the goal of a school for all (Gomes, Nunes & Pádua, 2019) has not yet been achieved; for which it remains essential to carry out major investments in the search for school improvement.
In addition, it is necessary for governments to combine: [...] adequate conditions for public funding with powerful government capabilities to be able to translate these resources into consistent and systemic actions. Governance is a central axis that articulates the multiple challenges presented in this report: without the State's capacities for a legitimate and democratic governance of educational systems, most educational policies are unfeasible or unsustainable (UNESCO-UNICEF-ECLAC, 2022;pp 23 -24) .
In this way, social policies would be implemented that guarantee the fair and equitable distribution of resources, creating a network of well-equipped schools, with well-trained and adequately remunerated professionals, capable of meeting the training demands demanded by society. However, this ideal is far from being achieved, as one of the aspects that most impact the quality of education, in addition to teacher training, is the remuneration received by them.
In Brazil, Table 1 shows the average salary of teachers in some states. Even though in Brazil the minimum wage for the year 2022 has been fixed at R$1,212.00, in the case of teachers' salaries, this value may vary depending on the budgets of the States or Municipalities, ranging from R$1,798, 51 (RN) to BRL 5,167.64 (DF). Currently (2022. 1), the Federal District-DF is the place with the highest average, closely followed by Pará and Maranhão. Rio Grande do Norte-RN stands out for being the state with the lowest average remuneration.
In addition to the low wages of education professionals, the conditions in their workplaces are also precarious (Pavan & Backes , 2016;Gomes, Nunes & Pádua, 2019;Sabia & Sordi, 2021). All this has a negative impact on the quality of education received by those who most need it. Thus, according to Arroyo (2011, p. 281, apud Gomes, Nunes & Pádua, 2019) " [...] the seriousness of the material and working conditions of schools is not only that it is difficult to teach without conditions, without material and without wages, the serious thing is that under these conditions we all become dehumanized".
In this scenario, the exercise of the educator's profession is being strongly affected, as working without adequate conditions, both material and contextual, is not favorable for the well-being of educators.
It is recognized that these aspects of the exercise of their profession affect the personal dimensions of teachers, since the quality of social relationships "[...] constitute a determining factor in the development of human beings" (Monteiro & Freitas, 2021, p. 916 ), being remarkable for the teachers the relationships that are established with others, both in the spaces where they develop their professional activities and in those where their training takes place.
The training process takes place not only in formal school spaces, but also involves their ways of living and developing their teaching activity, both the one that each teacher performs individually and the one that they develop collectively, acting in communities of practice and learning (formalized or not) that are formed in the school context.
The professional character of the teaching activity is characterized by great complexity; and, as stated by Nóvoa (2002, p. 27), " [...] it is not easy to define professional knowledge: it has a theoretical dimension, but it is not theoretical; it has a practical dimension, but it is not practical; it has an experiential dimension, but it is not solely a product of experience". But, what is essential is the person who acts as a professional, so it is very important to take into account the processes that led him to be the person he is, that is, the processes involved in the constitution of himself, and in the construction of the their own identity as a professional.
The details of the process of becoming a teacher have been the subject of reflection by several authors ( Mezzalira , Souza & Schambeck , 2014;Pinho;; Silva (2013), specifically, Silva states that: Learning to be a teacher does not start with initial training, nor is it limited to it, it does not start with the profession, but starts much earlier, through the experience of the individual as a student throughout his/her school career. [...] when the professional path begins, a relevant part of the practical training has already taken place; and it took place outside the control of the training institution -in kindergarten, primary school, basic school, secondary school (p. 75).
In view of Silva (2013), it can be asserted that the process of becoming a professor is dynamic, complex and is constituted in the sociocultural spaces where the teaching subject develops as a person and professional.
About teacher training, the author refers to the different temporalities of this process (Guimarães & Henriques, 2019) that happens not only in the formal moments of school spaces, but that is built from the experiences lived throughout life, both in their family relationships, and in those they experience in schools or in other social situations of which they are a part, in geographic contexts, historical moments, and cultural spaces where the teaching subject develops their life; such experiences leave marks (mainly affective) and influence the decisions that teachers make in their daily work (Tardif, 2012;Ferriera , 2016), and this is because it is understood that "[...] life experiences and the environment sociocultural are key ingredients to convert us into the person we are [...] ( Gariglio , 2015, p. 232).
In addition to the above, in Brazil there is a very particular situation since, according to the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira (Inep), a little more than three quarters of teaching professionals in Brazilian Basic Education are women: Brazilian basic education, for the most part, is carried out by women. Of the faculty, comprising more than 2.3 million professionals, 1.8 million (79.2%) are female teachers. In early childhood education, where the regular school trajectory begins, they are practically all of those who educate: 97.2%, in day care centers and 94.2%, in preschool. The data are from the 2022 School Census, released by the Ministry of Education (MEC) and the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira (Inep), in February. The most important statistical research on Brazilian basic education also reveals that female performance is also a key feature in the other stages. In primary education (1st to 9th grade), women are 77.5% of the 1.4 million teachers and, in secondary education, they represent 57.5% of the total of 545,974. Most of them are between 40 and 49 years old (35.2%)the census also indicates a pattern in the predominance of this age group in all stages of education. Women between 30 and 39 years old represent 28.5%, followed by the group between 50 and 54 years old (12.2%) and those between 25 and 29 years old (8.3%). Teachers aged up to 24 years are 3.4%. For Célia Gedeon, general coordinator of the Census of Basic Education, "despite all the modernity we have experienced in recent years, the teaching function is mostly female, also due to historical aspects", he assesses. "There was the idea, wrapped in social issues, that women would be able to teach because teaching did not provide salaries as good as other professions, or because it was a job with 'their face' and with a supposed similarity with the motherhood, for example", she recalls. "However, our education is diverse and women find themselves in this profession", concludes Célia (INEP, 2023, sf ).
This majority presence of women at the forefront of education in Brazil could be seen as an achievement that is not a gracious concession but a history of struggle for their rights. According to Sousa and Salustiano (2018), within the framework of several social events experienced by Brazilian society, such as the re-signification of the teaching profession, the development of a critical perspective of teacher training and the political engagement of educational practices, organized women obtained more spaces for action in the society (Sousa;Salustiano, 2018).
The advancement of women's participation is not only in initial training, it also happens at the postgraduate level; so says Andrade; Silva; Grandi; Obara (2018) who state that, even overcoming numerous difficulties, "women are increasingly occupying spaces that traditionally were exclusively male, such as, for example, in scientific research, both at the master's and doctoral levels." (Andrade, Silva, Grandi & Obara , 2018, pp 122-123) In this sense, a survey was carried out with seven teachers who work in basic education in the Brazilian Northeast and, at the same time, are students of a postgraduate program in teaching at a public university in that region; the intention of the research was to examine the processes that contributed to the constitution of oneself (Lima; Bastos, De Oliveira, 2021) as teachers and to become professional educators; for this, they were asked to construct subjective narratives based on their own personal experiences.
Through such narratives, the teachers were able to give meaning to their own experience and, from the analysis of its content, it is possible to attribute meaning to the different situations experienced by them as subjects who play a specific social role, in this case, that of professional educator (Oliveira, 2011, p. 163).
In short, research on self-constitution processes, as conceptualized by Lima; Bastos, De Oliveira (2021), of the teachers was based on the content analysis of their narratives, from the perspective of Oliveira (2021) and believing, as stated by Josso (2014), that when the teacher talks about himself, it is possible to objectify the events that took place throughout his life and that marked and gave identity to his being both as a person and as a professional teacher, the following research objectives were established.

Main goal
(Re)cognize in the subjective experiences of the collaborating teachers the processes that favored the constitution of themselves as education professionals .

Specific objectives
1. Explain the critical incidents experienced by collaborating teachers, both as students and teachers, during their schooling and training processes in particular time-spatial scenarios.
2. Interpret the sociocultural practices that conditioned their processes to train as teachers and enter the world of work and those that have most impacted them in their professional performance.

Conception of teacher training
In the research, it was assumed that teacher training is a process that " [...] understands the importance of the subjects' history [...] and the culture of their social world" (Lucindo & Gonzaga, 2016, s/p .); this is because working in the teachers' own culture allows the development of a humanizing education in which the voices they use to narrate their experiences are heard and thereby express the meanings they attribute to the experiences that impacted their lives; in this sense, these are "identity narratives" ( Escosteguy & Braun, 2013), that is "they are configured by the way the individual gives meaning to his experiences, in a concrete and specific interaction where he is instigated to 'tell his life' ( Escosteguy & Braun, 2013, p. 47).
They are, then, narrations that refer to the singular experiences of the teachers, understanding that, according to Larrosa (2008 ) […] there is no experience in general, that there is no experience of anyone, that experience is always someone else's experience, I say otherwise, that experience is, for each one, their own, that each one suffers their own experience, and that is in a unique, singular, particular, own way (Larrosa, 2008, p. 90) (Our translation).
On the other hand, as stated by Contreras (2010, p. 66), training as a teacher "implies doing something with oneself" (our translation); that is, to be a teacher, it is necessary to embody the experience of being a teacher, making it part of your own body (Pinheiro, Bicudo;Detoni , 2018), subjectivating it, because, as indicated by Josso (2014 ), experiences of the professors, even if externally they are similar, internally, they are subjective and particularly significant.
But, how to recover these experiences? How can you bring them from the past to today? This crossing from the past to the present takes place through the word, spoken or written. They are the words that allow us to give an account of our experiences, updated by memories and recollections. Answers to these concerns will be given in the next section.

Self-narratives and Critical Incidents as self-recovery devices.
For Alves de Araújo (2015) self-narratives are written documents in which [...] the narrator-actor himself reveals his meanings in the construction of his personal and professional identity, in which experiential learning and training are integrated in the knowhow, and in the reflection of this know-how. (In addition, they allow) to know the trajectory of the individual's personal and professional life and the meanings that the subject constructs about himself, dealing with a description of significant moments in the individual's life, as well as his personal, academic and professional relationships . (His analysis) seeks to go through the individual's educational trajectory, in order to understand the significant elements for the subject (whose) professional identity is a process that is constituted in the individual's personal and social relationships and experiences, configuring himself as an actor and author of his personal and professional life trajectory. (Alves de Araújo, 2015, pp 5-7) (brackets added).
When recalling their past experiences, the subject can attribute meaning to them, recognizing that each experience is an " [...] opportunity to think about oneself, to approach other forms of relationship with oneself, assuming one's own life as a source of knowing and being". ( Contreras, 2010, P. 63, our translation ) . The socialized reading of the narrations about themselves helps the subject who narrates to better understand both himself and the different situations of which he is a part throughout his life.
Thus, the way in which these narrations are generated, and their written record, becomes an important device for the (self) formation of the teacher, because through the evocation and recovery of his experiences, he revalues the situations already experienced by him and, reflecting on them , can build knowledge about their own professional practice ( González-Calvo, et al. 2016;Perrenoud, 2010 ); this self-reflection can make teachers want to transform their reality and create options for such a transformation to take place; the reflectiontransformation link is highlighted by Passeggi (2016) when he states that "[...] the 'most powerful' capacities of human beings, since childhood, are that of 'reflecting' to assess what culture offers and 'design alternatives ' to (over)live in this culture and, eventually, transform it" (p. 72).
This transforming will emerges when the teacher realizes that he is no longer in line with his practice . Reflecting and thinking about your own practice will allow you to question it, confront it, and this can help you in the search for a more appropriate way of acting ( Bilbao & Monereo , 2011 ), given the complexity implied by your professional performance as a teacher.
One way to address the complexities of teaching activities is to consider the so-called critical incidents-CI, conceptualized by Domingos (2015) as a [...] a situation that occurred in the classroom, identified by the teacher and/or the students and which, by causing some kind of dissonance, discomfort or annoyance, opened doors to the teacher's reflection, contributing to the change of their practices in the search for improvement . We believe that what is considered a Critical Incident by the teacher is not always considered by the students and vice versa. Likewise, we also believe that what is considered a Critical Incident by one professor may not be seen that way by another, since the way we feel in the face of a given situation is generated from the personal dimension of each one and, as such, we are all different ( Domingos, 2015, pp. 62-63).
Critical Incidents, "[…] due to their unpredictability and stressful effect, demand an improvised response, almost always reactive [...], which does not necessarily turn out to be correct, affecting both an ineffective practice and the constitution of their teaching identity; but a way of taking care of oneself, as a person and teaching professional ( Lima, et al, 2021 ) can be favored by working with the narratives where these critical incidents are recorded through the recovery of this practice as part of a "[.. .] formative process that is multidimensional [...]" (Lima, et al, 2021, p. 35).
This recovery is possible if teachers had the possibility to speak, write, tell (in the sense of narrating) their experiences, lived in their professional path. These productions comprise the subjective totality of the subject who narrates; in the case of professors, acting as narrators of their own history, they could organize it towards the timeline of their participation in the countless sociocultural practices that took place throughout their entire lives and, particularly, in those that are part of their trajectory as a professor professional (Cerqueira & Dazzani , 2013).
These self-narratives are very important in building the teacher's professionalism, as stated by Santana and Pereira (2019), in the sense that this process does not happen spontaneously, but "is built as the subject experiences and reflects about his (own) lived life", (p. 8). (our parentheses).

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Due to the subject focused in this study related to the recognition of the processes of self-constitution from the subjective experiences of the collaborating teachers in the research, it was assumed the qualitative research of a biographical nature that, according to Delory-Momberger (2016), that the scope of this type of research "is that of the processes of individual constitution (of individuation), of self-construction, of subjectivation, with the set of interactions that these processes involve with the other and with the social world." ( Delory-Momberger , 2016, p. 136).
In order to identify the subjects of this study, a selective sampling was carried out, defined, according to Martínez-Salgado (2012) as one in which the subjects are intentionally selected taking into account their ability to offer suitable, robust and pertinent information to elucidate the subject of study . research interest. Therefore, the following criteria were established to select the subjects: 1) who were working in different schools and had three or more years of experience as effective teachers; 2) who express their willingness to collaborate in the research.
According to the two criteria, seven (7) Basic Education teachers were selected who, voluntarily, were willing to collaborate with the research; all are trained as pedagogues, but have completed specializations in different areas, such as Spanish Language, Literature, Psychology of Learning, Special Education and Inclusive Education.
All seven collaborators are teachers who have been hired and are employed in schools other than the state education network, in municipalities in the interior of the state of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil; their length of service ranges from 3 years to 33 years; their ages range from 35 years old to 60 years old; three work in early childhood education and four in special education; two are academic coordinators and four work a double shift.
As for their families, only two of them had both parents with incomplete high school education. One of them had illiterate parents. Of the others, four had mothers with incomplete primary education and illiterate fathers.
In order to maintain the ethical care of the research, all collaborators signed the terms of free and informed consent to act as informants in the research, authorize the recording of two conversation circles, analyze the collected data and generate an academic production, respecting all the parameters established in professional ethics. To ensure their anonymity, the following fictitious names were used: Kamilia , Rosário, Maria Josué, Tereza, Genesis, Helena and Suzana 2 .

Strategy for collecting information.
Two instances were used to collect information: 1) Conversation Circle and 2) Structured Questionnaire.
For Moura & Lima (2012) a conversation circle is a means of producing data in qualitative research, understanding that [...] it is a space for training, exchanging experiences, fraternizing, venting, changing paths, forging opinions, which is why the Roda de Conversa emerges as a way to relive the pleasure of exchanging and to produce rich data in content and meaning for research in the field of education. In the context of the Conversation Circle, dialogue is a unique moment of sharing, as it presupposes an exercise in listening and speaking. The statements of each participant are constructed from the interaction with the other, whether to complement, disagree, or to agree with the immediately preceding speech. Talking, in this sense, refers to a deeper understanding, more reflection, as well as weighting, in the sense of better perception, frank sharing (Moura & Lima, 2012, p. 98).
In this research, the Conversation Circles were developed in an online format, specifically for two reasons: the mandatory distance generated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the difficulty of being together in the same place, due to the fact that they all live in different cities in the interior of the state. , very far apart; taking these circumstances into account, it was decided to hold conversation circles via video meeting. Thus, two Conversation Rounds of 150 minutes each were held; the first at the end of 2021 and the second at the beginning of 2022, three months after the first.
To guide their speeches, the collaborating teachers were instructed to refer to their initial contacts with the school, their process of training as teachers and their experiences in becoming teachers in Basic Education; all this to know the impact that such experiences had throughout their trajectory and how they manifest themselves in their exercise as professionals, since, according to Gariglio (2015), much of what teachers do in their teaching practice comes from their own experiences personal.
Specifically, they were asked to report their experiences with school, highlighting those that marked their training, both general and specific, for the professional practice of teaching, such as their motivations for making the decision to study to become a teachers, about their experiences as teachers; the incentives they had to improve and perfect their performance as effective teachers.
A Structured Questionnaire was applied to obtain additional information related to the socio-cultural conditions of the collaborators: level of education of the parents, age of entry into the school, year of conclusion of the course at the university, graduation diploma obtained, other studies carried out, entry as a permanent professor, length of employment as a tenured teacher, among other general information.
The conversation circles generated five hours of recording of the speeches and testimonies of the collaborators which, when transcribed in full, generated an understood text, as stated (Costa Val, 2004): [...] any linguistic production, spoken or written, of any size, that can make sense in a situation of human communication, that is, in a situation of interlocution. For example: an encyclopedia is a text, a class is a text, an e-mail is a text, a telephone conversation is a text, the speech of a child who, addressing his mother, points to a toy is also a text and says " té " (Costa Val, 2004, p. 113).
With this transcription, according to Garnica (2004), it was intended to "preserve the characteristics of the testimonies" (p. 5) of the collaborating teachers, and the text generated from the transcriptions constituted the corpus of the research, that is [...] the discursive materiality necessary to produce meanings. It is constituted from the process of converting excerpts from the theme that mobilizes the researcher. The conversion of the corpus consists of selecting specific themes within the theme. Its validity is related to the importance that the cutouts of the theme show. The conception of the corpus and its construction are guided by the theory and the initial problematic of the research, in a permanent movement of going back and forth between it ( Marquezán , 2009, p. 100).
To work with the corpus, the method of continuous comparison proposed by Strauss & Corbin (2012) was used, carrying out detailed readings and rereadings of the text, previously organized in frames prepared ad hoc. Thus, in accordance with the research objectives, emphasis was given (underlined) to the identifiers, that is, words and phrases perceived as significant by the researcher, given that they were used by the collaborators to refer to their training experiences, which they had saved in their memories and that they remembered with remarkable situations in their life trajectory.
Based on these underlined words and phrases, indicators were created that referred to confluent aspects expressed by the collaborators; these indicators were also organized according to their affinity, and from there emerged the categories used to construct the answers to the questions in this research.

ANALYSIS OF COLLECTED INFORMATION
The main intention of this research was to address, from the subjective experiences of the collaborating teachers, the experiences that contributed to the development of their professional constitution process (Alves and André, 2016); this process according to Ávila & Meinhardt (2016): [...] it is the result of the construction process of teaching knowledge from different sources and experiences that are articulated in an interdisciplinary web that runs through the entire training process and that extends throughout the teacher's professional trajectory, in a continuous and permanent way ( Given that the professional constitution of oneself comes from different sources and experiences, it can be said that such constitution is a socialization process that takes place continuously and permanently, so it will be convenient to identify the cycles in which this process takes place.
For Cunha, the professional training of teachers: It takes place in structured social contexts, highlighting at this level the fourfold experience of the school structure. As a student, as a student future teacher, as a trainee, as a beginning teacher, as an experienced teacher, as a teacher member of an occupational/professional group, without forgetting the other socialization agencies such as the family, the sports club or the media of mass (Cunha, 2019, p. 52).
In this research, it was assumed, as sustained by Godtsfried (2015), that "the professional life cycles are important sources of information about the professional teaching practice" (p. 9) and, according to Huberman (2000), constitute a process of socialization which develops in the phases indicated below: "(1) entry into the career (1 to 3 years of teaching); (2) stabilization (4 to 6 years); (3) diversification (7 to 25 years); (4) serenity (25 to 35 years old); and (5) disinvestment (more than 35 years of teaching)" ( Huberman , 2000, p. 47); in addition to what was stated by these two authors, we believe that there is a previous phase that corresponds to the entire course of life that elapses even before entering initial training or graduation in higher education.
Thus, taking into account what was exposed by Cunha (2019), Godtsfried (2015) and Huberman (2000), about professional life cycles, an analysis of the collaborating teachers' statements was carried out based on the emphasis they gave to the different moments of their lives. lives; In this way, testimonies related to: (a) Beginnings as teachers without formal training; (b) The course of their professional training and their beginnings as effective teachers; (c) Process of consciously assuming oneself as a professional teacher.
Thus, the testimonies indicated in (a) correspond to the stage signaled by Huberman (2020) as "career entry" and by Cunha (2019) as "beginning teacher"; those indicated in (b) refer to training "as a student future teacher" and starting to develop "as a beginning teacher" (Cunha, 2019); and those marked as (c) can be associated with the stage when the teachers assume themselves as "teacher with experience", and "member of an occupational / professional group" (Cunha, 2019) which, in turn, correspond to the stages " (2) stabilization (4 to 6 years); (3) diversification (7 to 25 years); (4) serenity (25 to 35 years)", indicated by Huberman (2000). In general, the collaborating teachers' testimonies are articulated with the three processes of professional development indicated by (Gonçalves, 2000): personal, professional and social.
The analysis allowed identifying the phases: 1. Phase I: The motivations for choosing teaching as a profession.
2. Phase II: Insertion in a professional community of teachers.

Phase III: Conscious Development of Professional Identity
Phase I: The motivations for choosing teaching as a profession.
The testimonies of the collaborators included in this phase refer to the reasons why they justify the choice, among those that are possible, of the teaching profession as a way to achieve their desired social ascension, thus allowing them to overcome the precarious living conditions suffered during their childhoods.
Getting a job that guarantees a regular wage income is a strong motivation to justify your choice to become a teacher, taking into account that this could happen right after completing the undergraduate course.
For people from poor communities, entering and finishing higher education is almost a dream, with the Pedagogy course practically the only possibility, because "a daughter of the poor can only have the chance to be a teacher", according to Rosário's mother. . Therefore, the choice for the teaching profession has more economic motivation than vocational or professional identification.
Kamilia and Tereza are explicit when they indicate that their choices were motivated by the possibility of being employed as teachers and receiving a salary and, with that, being able to support their needs and those of their families.

So, I still studied law for six months, but, as I said, that my parents were farmers, they had financial difficulties and that's what made me give up law, it was the financial conditions, that my parents had and I decided to become a teacher (Tereza).
The decision of the collaborators to train as teachers is not just a personal or family matter, and has to be understood in the more general socioeconomic context of the Brazilian Northeast, the region in which their homes were located and which is considered one of the regions of the country with lower incomes and with fewer job opportunities or options (Oliveira, 2016;Mattos;Santos, 2017;Tendência Consultoria, 2018); in this context: "being a teacher was the only professional option that was possible in those cities at that time" ( Kamilia ). The above confirms what is public, that the initial motivation for choosing a teaching career is almost always determined by issues related to pragmatic needs and options for having a job.
This agrees with the findings of Richardson & Watt (2006), for them the choice of the teaching profession is the result more of extrinsic factors such as self-perceptions, values, social status, salary and personal utility, more than of intrinsic factors such as vocation. These extrinsic aspects are also indicated by Praver & Oga -Baldwin (2008).
The collaborators they also made reference to their First Experiences with Teaching which, according to Nóvoa (1995), p. 115), are very important given that becoming a teacher is a process that "is marked by the experiences made, the options taken, the practices developed, the continuities and discontinuities, both in terms of representations and in terms of concrete work". " ( Nóvoa , 1995, p. 115).
But, even if the initial motivation was to pursue a career for social ascension, the collaborators, little by little, followed a path that helped them to identify with their profession; the starting point was her experiences with situations, formal and informal, of teaching, such as collaborating with the literacy of children in the neighborhood where she lived or being a caregiver, intern or monitor.

I was 16 when I got my first bond. And it was very difficult because I didn't want to be a teacher (Rosário).
When I started the first year, without having gone to university, I was very insecure, very fearful. As there were two in the room. Classes were crowded, having the resources of the blackboard and notebook just to work. So, she was there to control the boys and I was there to pass on the contents (Kamilia).
I started as a caregiver; in addition to being a caregiver, I was also being an educator for the children. And little by little, interaction at school, having interaction with teachers. This was an experience that impacted me a lot. Also the experience in EJA, both as a tutor that I felt the need to study pedagogy to improve my practice, to know more (Genesis). Three of the collaborators had their first experiences as teachers when they were minors and long before they formally prepared to become educators; thus, her lack of suitability to perform tasks typical of teaching work is appreciable, as well as her lack of identification with the tasks to be performed as a teaching teacher within the classroom. This is exposed in Rosário's speech: But I remember I was a terrible teacher. I went there, to the classroom, to teach; but didn't plan to. At daycare, I was a terrible teacher, because I didn't want to. I really did it because it was supposed to (Rosário).
In the testimonies of the collaborators, it is clear that it is necessary to recognize that one is not born a teacher and, to become a teacher, one requires adequate training and professional qualification (Villegas & González, 2021); this lack of preparation to adequately carry out the duties of the daily teaching in the classroom, can generate dissatisfaction, frustration and resignation: I really did it because I had to (Rosário).
This lack of adequate preparation to perform teaching can be seen when entering as teachers, even though they are already effective; this is very striking, especially in schools located in the most vulnerable areas since, in practice, education in these sectors continues to be neglected because, as Tardif (2013) says: However, if the principle remains in state and international rhetoric, the reality is quite different: poor students, students from ethnic minorities or immigrants, children from popular and working-class neighborhoods, children from remote and rural areas, students with learning or behavioral difficulties are increasingly confined to establishments that offer lower quality educational services (Tardif, 2013, p. 566).
The collaborators' positions towards teaching are contrasting; while Maria Josué " loved it ", Rosário " did not want " to be a teacher; this indicates that their inclinations in favor of teaching are different.
And for me, being a teacher of pedagogy was that. It was to welcome, protect, care, because I thought the way this teacher treated the students was cute. From the first moment it was this soap opera that motivated me. Then, the second is also the job market. Then, in the fifth period, I already passed a state contest (Maria Josué).
Identification with these reference models is even stronger when there is a socio-affective bond, as in the case of having a close relative as a reference for being a teacher. These experiences are objectified in the relationships that teachers establish in their daily performance with their students, in which the significant consequences throughout their professional lives are accentuated ( Van-Manen, 1994).
These socio-affective connections are little considered in the training of future teachers, and emphasis is placed on technical aspects; even though authors such as Lucindo, Gonzaga (2016) and Josso (2007) support the idea of "[...] a plural knowledge, formed by the amalgamation, more or less coherent, of knowledge arising from professional training and disciplinary, curricular knowledge and experiences" (Tardif, 2013, p. 36).

Phase II: Insertion in a professional community of teachers.
The testimonies refer to the process of becoming part of the community of practitioners of teaching as a profession, a moment in which the Experiences in the Formal Beginning of the Teaching Profession are very significant .
Upon completion of the course, it is possible to obtain a job as a teacher whenever the vacancy is obtained through a public tender; However, this passage from student to teacher, that is, entering schools as a professional, generates a confrontation with reality, because the beginning of teaching is not always similar to the utopia shown at the university, with emphasis on content methodologies and disciplinary (Ferrada-Sullivan, 2017); because this reality is often assumed without having the necessary academic training to act in practice, especially when classes have to be given to classes made up of students from the poorest social sectors, as was the case of Rosário: When I took over the room, we gave it there, from the direction, they said "she arrived very fresh from the contest, very young (Rosário).
Differently from what was expected, the "new" teachers had conflicting experiences: "And then, they threw me at the students, only those who were "mata thick". Just the ones that took the most work. (Rosary)". The teachers stated that they did not receive specific preparation to deal with these cases during their training.
In addition to the lack of preparation, there is the lack, in the Institutional Pedagogical Project, of strategies to assist students who come from sectors taken over by delinquency; for these cases, the school should have an interdisciplinary team of counselors, psychologists and health professionals who can accompany the teachers because they alone cannot handle all the educational needs that their students have, taking into account the specificities of their context ( Érnica & Batista, 2012).
The insufficiency of the school is perceptible in the testimonies of Kamilia and Rosário. According to them, it could be said that the school, as an institution, did not have the capacity to meet these demands of its student population ( Érnica & Batista, 2012); they also had neither established strategies nor an adequate project of actions. So, for Rosário, " they took away the students, only those who were from thick woods", which according to Kamilia 's speech : " no one could control ". From her witness, it is also inferred that all of them "stayed there just to have their salary at the end of the month " ( Kamilia ).
Authors such as Érnica and Batista (2012 ) state that this type of school is incapable of offering students and teachers conditions that guarantee both their safety and the adequate development of teaching and learning processes and socialization, both protection and conditions for learning and development; In this way, "[...] the school system not only reproduces social segregation in the composition of the student body, but also unevenly distributes the quality educational offer throughout the social hierarchy objectified in the school space" ( Érnica & Batista, 2012 , p . 664), above all, in a complex multidimensional social dynamic such as that of students from peripheral schools.

Phase III: Conscious Development of Professional Identity
Even though the collaborators in this study had remarkable experiences with teaching from an early age in their lives and, shortly after entering higher education, managed to complete the Pedagogy course, the awareness of a professional identity still needed to be developed.
Becoming a teaching professional is a process that results not only from completing an undergraduate course in Pedagogy, it is also very important to reflect on experiences with teaching, both before and after completing the course, valuing them and taking advantage of them. to become aware of the impact they have on the teacher's life.
Authors such as Contreras (2010), Josso (2014) and Larrosa (2008) highlight the importance of reflecting on their own experiences at school to transform their practice and develop their teaching identity; a tool to support this reflection are the narratives (González-Calvo, et al. 2016;Perrenoud, 2010;Passeggi , 2016).
The analysis of the collaborators' testimonies allowed identifying four types of experiences as effective teachers: (a) Experiences of Foundational Practices; (b) Experiences with Critical Incidents; (c) Experiences of Self-Regulated Practices; and, (d) Experience of reflection on practice.
(a) Foundational Practice Experiences. They refer to the experiences that happened during the relationship with colleagues at the same school where the collaborators worked as teachers: "My mind opened after graduation and after that experience with these teachers [...] " When I started to do an internship, that it was in schools, that I started to relate to other teachers, from school, other knowledge, and a supervisor, and I started to become a teacher from there" (Rosario) Among these founding practices are the links with teachers or colleagues who inspired them, as they indicate in the statements below: I had a teacher who inspired me the most. Her practice is really beautiful. She talks a lot with the kids. She listened a lot, you know. And I was very inspired by her. Also with the second link I met a teacher that made me change a lot, to whom I owe what I am today. She inspired me a lot and was always pushing me to do the planning (Rosario).
These experiences with inspiring teachers also happened during his training for teaching: There was a teacher who was really fantastic, the teacher seemed to be teaching her son, because of her care when she spoke, because of her passion and care when referring to early childhood education. It was after this discipline that I fell in love with early childhood education ( Maria Josué).
It is also appreciated how, in the process of becoming a teacher, remaining in environments where it is possible to interact with other colleagues who are looked upon as a reference, generates what Albert Bandura calls " vicarious learning", defined as that which is "[.. .] acquired through observing the behavior of other individuals" ( Cloninger , 2003, apud Jara, Olivera & Yerrén , 2018, that is, observing other people performing certain actions that we ourselves should perform. The inspirations that arose from interactions with their colleagues allowed the collaborators to think that working as teachers could be pleasurable, especially when changing the perception that they maintain about relationships with their students ( Josso , 2014;Contreras, 2010 ) . This is evident , in the case of Rosário , when she highlights the metaphor used by one of her inspiring colleagues: " If the child likes ice cream, be her ice cream. If the child does not like sweets, be his chocolate ". Confirming what Moreira-Monteiro and Freitas (2021) maintain "[...] social relations are a determining factor in the development of human beings" (p. 916), as indicated by Rosario in the following text: "I stay I see myself and I feel like helping you, because that way, I believe I was helped a lot and I really like helping, because I experienced it ". Thus, reflecting on these inspiring experiences gave the collaborators the opportunity to become aware of their learnings: I learned to be a teacher, to make a plan, there with them, because they demanded it. Every week they wanted planning, very straight (Maria Josué).
I learned that the teacher can't just focus on books, right? You have to look for a way to attract this student (Rosário).
The findings referred to here confirm those of Utta (2022) who states '[...] When faced with stimulating and pleasant educational relationships and actions, with a predominance of sympathy and empathy, it is expected to create, as it were, initiation rites to inspire more and more attitudes of human affection and sensitivity: Having been influenced by these inspiring teachers, made the collaborators think and make some changes in their attitudes, which should happen in order to meet the demands of the students, as well expressed by Genesis: "We need to go, somehow , as many times we left home, looking for a student to bring knowledge to them". (Utta , 2022, p. 204) In the collaborators' reflections on their experiences, it is possible to recognize the value of "experiencing the process" (Vigotsky, 1996;Josso, 2007;Tardif, 2013), assuming it as another opportunity to learn to be a teacher: You have to look for a way to attract this student. So, guys, I tried to talk to colleagues. I talked with one, I talked with others (Rosário). In early childhood education, but then I didn't even know my job. I had a student who was spectacular. The conversation wheel. They themselves would go and sit there and call: " [...] little circle, little circle". (For the time being, she was talking about this topic if you could see on her face the happiness of recounting this experience (Kamilia).
As soon as I was called to participate in the contest at Riacho da Cruz, there, the day care center had everything you needed. The nursery school provided clothes for the children, the uniform, the material. Everything was well planned. I learned to be a teacher, to make a plan, there with them, because they demanded it, every week they wanted a plan, very straight (Maria Josué).

(b) Experiences with Critical Incidents as teachers . A definition of
what Critical Incidents (CI) are is given by Almendro -Padilla; Costa-Alcatraz (2018) with the following ideas: Those events in professional practice that cause us perplexity, cause us doubts, surprise us or bother us or bother us because of their lack of coherence or because they have presented unexpected results. A CI is therefore any unexpected event that requires an improvised, usually rapid, response. Urgent consultations, problems arising from poor communication with the patient, errors in medical practice are, among others, scenarios in which critical incidents occur (p. 61).
According to these arguments, in their practices, the collaborating teachers found themselves facing unexpected, surprising situations that called their attention because they went against what they thought; for example, the behavior of students, the so-called "lack of discipline", or "disrespect for the rules", "lack of attention", "conflicts between them"; all these situations can be considered as Critical Incidents, due to the perplexity they cause and because they do not correspond to what is conventionally expected, that is, that students attend school to learn and for that they must pay attention to the teachers' speeches, be mobilized for the content taught by them, to have a socially appropriate behavior, among other issues; but the reality is very different; therefore, it is necessary to reflect and review what is being done and organize specific strategies for each situation.
The following are some of the critical incidents: Hi girls, can you believe I spent the whole afternoon as if I was solving their messy situations. They did not sit down (Rosario).
He got upset. He says he won't go to class anymore. He took the things, left (Suzana).
The most frequent critical incidents referred to the teacher's relationship with her students due to their "lack of discipline", given that, in the past imaginary for them in their initial training, is that they must "control the discipline of the class" and this remains as one of the biggest challenges for every beginning teacher "[…] beginning teachers leave the achievement of meaningful learning in the background and focus more on guaranteeing a minimum of order and discipline in the classroom" (Bilbao & Monereo , 2011, p. 149). Therefore, in the face of any disagreement with this expectation, defenses are activated because they feel that their authority is being questioned ( Korthagen , 2010), as happens when parents demand that teachers take care of their children.
I had a problem there. One child pulled the other's hair and the mother has been trying to hold me. Then her mother came to school and said to me: I don't want this to happen to my daughter anymore. Let no one pull my daughter's hair anymore (Genesis).
But, since they don't have adequate tools, generally only the threat is used: "look, don't worry, you'll understand. There will come a time when you will understand." But he [...] took the things and left" (Suzana). All of this is part of a culture typical of panoptic spaces (Foucault, 1987) where power relations are privileged, the control of individual uniqueness, the demand for respect for socially established norms, believing that, in this way, it is how the student should and can learn (Foucault, 1987;p. 180).
The helplessness of the teacher is felt more when the school does not provide any support for beginning teachers and the institutions in charge of their initial training also do not provide suitable strategies to deal with these critical incidents and take advantage of them pedagogically, such as talking and looking for strategies of teaching that motivates to learn. In these reports, it is observed that they have not been so easily destabilized in the face of these adversities in the teaching processes, since they manage to self-regulate their practices in line with the students' needs.
(c) Experiences of Self-Regulated Practices. The teacher's performance in the face of critical incidents and the consideration of their ways of acting to face them provide the possibility of making them aware of their own practice and, what is more important, taking control of it. The reflection made it possible for our collaborators to think of another way of acting, more sensitive to the behavior of the students, putting themselves in their shoes; understanding that these subjects cataloged as "indiscipline" are just normal behaviors linked to their development stages, as Suzana has made aware: " So, maybe we reacted wrongly, but what matters is to reflect if you react wrongly or mistaken. And look for another opportunity to find out how the right way should be" ; in this way, they would have managed to minimize the effects of inappropriate student attitudes (Perrenoud, 2010).
When looking retrospectively at what was done and how, the collaborators realized that they could emancipate themselves from traditional teaching practices (Contreras, 2010;Passeggi , 2016). Thus, for example, when Rosário found herself with the class that did not "have the discipline" desired by the school institution. This is how, based on sharing with colleagues and seeking to "be the sweet that the student wants", a plan was organized with more active and attractive classroom activities through games, theater, reading and storytelling, among others, as she recognized that " [...] if it was that class where you sit down, reason and work on the board, it wouldn't work." When she told stories, at the end, she asked the students to perform dramatized and theatrical scenes. This impacted so much that even today "[...] I meet mothers who were my students, including their children studying at the Unit where I work." For her part, Maria Josué points out that working with parents was the best strategy for the good development of children, maintaining a permanent dialogue with their parents when noticing resistance in the children's school process. On this same subject, Génesis also decided to work taking into account the interests of his students: " They taught me. From then on, I took their knowledge, so that the class wouldn't be too boring if I was going to work with literacy, I started to work from their lives" ( Genesis).
Helena expresses that, taking into account her own experiences as a student, she has become a sensitive teacher with students who have difficulties: "So, in view of my experience with children, in view of such difficulty, of learning, I have this look different." In some cases, the collaborating teachers felt supported, given that there were public policies in progress that had programs that challenged the traditional school, as reported by Rosário: "I loved the project here in Mossoró, at my school , to work all the time full-time, it was this "More Education" program which , according to her, was very challenging, as there was a lot to do, but "the boys loved it". It held: workshops and rotations, school garden activities and worked in partnership with other institutions: I know that I even partnered with UFERSA and spoke with Georgia. He was a Doctor of Agronomy. He had blueprints. He gave me an intern. So, we made resources in suspended, ordinary, vegetable gardens and so on, and the kids loved it. The boys planted arugula, lettuce and peppers. And when there was a lot of harvest, they loved to take it home. I loved her. But I think it doesn't exist anymore (Rosário).
These education programs that implemented the public policies of those times, together with the strategies to give protagonism to the students, have helped to work with a population that wanted to be active, away from the traditional school, as Rosário communicates in her report: With children outside the age range, I would do fashion shows with them. I said who is going to be my helper. I chose that guy who was more difficult for me to choose as a helper, so that he would feel, you know, exalted ( Rosário ).
We also had this program "Acelera Brasil" which was by Ayrton Senna, and they had some books and everything. All this helped a lot ( Rosário ).
Thus, all the collaborators used strategies that were uncommon in schools, some of which were facilitated by the opportunity to be part of these educational programs applied by the State in schools, allowing them to turn these challenging experiences of their students from peripheral areas into a great success, through innovative activities. and unconventional that link the teaching of disciplinary contents with art, nature, science and culture, where the body, body communication, learning a trade, among others, played an active role, involving an interdisciplinary teaching linked to the needs and interests of students.
In the end, all of this has provided satisfaction for our collaborators who, currently, feel recognized and valued in their professional performance, constituting their identity and image of themselves as teachers involved with their teaching practices, a subject that Kamilia communicates very well with her he speaks: The school has those very challenging moments, but it also has those very rewarding moments that you have to see them developing or not developing and then what makes things worthwhile (Kamilia).
This means that they have developed skills for self-regulation, knowing how to interpret the opportunities that the school offers to transform themselves based on the recovery of their "[...] reflected and aware experiences, thus integrating the dimensions of our being in the world, our registers of expressions, our transversal generic competences and our existential positions" ( Josso , 2007, p. 417). That is, becoming aware of yourself, and being sensitive to valuing, listening and perceiving the differences in the students' feelings, can be rescued from the experiences already narrated by them, such as: "having a different look from your experience" (Helena ); learning with students based on their interests (Genesis), reflecting that among the challenging moments there are also rewarding ones ( Kamilia ); you can have partnerships, colleagues who become those who encourage you to carry out more organized and team planning and activities.
(d) Experience of reflection on practice . Having had the opportunity to speak and reflect on their practices through this research also contributed to reinforce ideas about what we should do to become better teachers, as commented by Kamilia , Rosário in the following texts : It was a good experience for us to be reliving moments and, certainly, they learn from us, because sometimes we live the moment and do not realize that there was learning there" (Kamilia).
You are more convinced that this conversation, this dialogue and this reflection bring us this attitude, this change, and we are more convinced (Rosário).
With these statements by the collaborators, it is confirmed that these conversations facilitated the production of these reports about their practices and thus these narrations also became a training experience, because it allowed them to recognize that every experience "[...] always has something to teach us [...]", and provides us with an opportunity to assume our own life as a source of knowledge and build ourselves (Contreras, 2010); and narrating is a good tool for recovering contents stored in memory, and makes it easier for teachers to appreciate their "[...] unique lives and relate them to the evolution of their professional and social life contexts." ( Josso , 2007, p. 414), and therefore benefit their identity and constitution as teaching professionals.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS.
Carrying out this research was a very complex process due to the diversity of sociocultural worlds in which we had to position ourselves, because researching in this modality is trying to have this look from the perspective of the subjects; demands having, even so, an open and sensitive attitude to be attentive to the ideas of the researched ones, and not to replace their speeches with our own, respecting their senses and their experiences, especially when communicating the results, safeguarding the secrecy about the that was said when sharing their lives.
In this perspective, the research allowed identifying some of the sociocultural practices that marked their training trajectories, from the beginning, taking advantage of the opportunities that the public university offered them to study and become teachers. It is clear that some of the collaborators did not want to be teachers, but it was their only option, firstly, due to the geographical location of the institution that was possible for them, and, secondly, because it was the course with the lowest requirements for admission, given that "daughter of a poor person could only be a teacher".
Another important aspect is that the research allowed the collaborators to recognize the experiences that were most striking in their process of becoming the teachers they are today, and are associated with their interactions with inspiring teachers and were admired for their qualities as human beings.
human, people open and willing to listen to their students, and make the process of teaching "the candy that students want".
Having started their careers in schools, located in sectors of the most vulnerable populations, allowed them to learn to develop strategies to overcome natural adversities derived from the social and economic conditions of the sociocultural contexts of the populations served by the schools where they worked, and to identify the critical incidents that were remarkable on the trajectory of becoming teachers: (a) relying on more experienced colleagues; (b) take advantage of some public policy programs that opened the possibility of making interdisciplinary planning, with sense and meaning for children; (c) develop partnerships with various institutions; (d) develop products that allow not only teaching subject contents but articulating with the communities of its students and thus developing socio-community projects.
Likewise, the strategy of meeting with the researcher to talk about her life path was an important opportunity for them to express themselves and to be heard in a pleasant and relaxed environment, since it favored the collaborating teachers to recover their memories, and their reports. or narratives about their practices, allowed them to identify the sociocultural practices where the process of training as teachers took place, making it possible to reflect on the processes and circumstances that benefited the constitution of themselves as a teacher, recovered by the memories and experiences that were remarkable for them. them (initial contacts with teaching; partnership with inspiring colleagues; taking advantage of the opportunities offered by educational public policies; relationships with the parents of their students, among others; all of this based on the premise according to which, what happens to us about a certain phenomenon kept in memory helps the teacher to assume the protagonism of his own training, in partnership with his colleagues and learning from them, without neglecting the study of theories that serve as a foundation for the solutions of many of the adversities that the teachers face in their daily tasks as educators.