Introduction

The narratives in the registers of an early-childhood-education and elementary school (initial years) teacher from a public municipal school were taken as research empiricism and support the discussion proposed in this text. The study was based on a doctoral research in which the production of knowledge analyzed, based on dialogues with children, the possibility of teaching teachers the importance of always asking themselves questions about the way they do things and what they do in the school routine, understanding training as an unfinished process. In this sense, what is unfinished always undergoes a process of construction and reconstruction.

In the perspective that children do not directly reproduce the adult world, but are able to establish a new relationship with what the world offers them, they, by presenting what is unforeseen and spontaneous at school, invite teachers to think about new work perspectives, by showing how the school routine, which is something thought about and directly planned by adults, can be different.

The theoretical-methodological framework of the study is outlined based on Walter Benjamin and Martin Buber, whose concepts instigate the central questions of the proposed discussion. How do the children reveal their understanding of themselves, others and the social world in their speeches and games? What do they say about the school? Which topics, conversations and questions do the children bring up in their relationship with the teachers? Which aspects - in the teachers' narratives about their own practice - can contribute towards the production of knowledge to do things in another way at school?

Understanding that teachers’ work needs to be taken from a perspective that is capable of considering the human being in his totality and uniqueness, the contributions of Benjamin's philosophy are useful: the concept of narrative; experience; working with fragments; the idea of construction and deconstruction; history at the intersection of the present, past and future; the critical conception of children and childhood; the human being as a historical, social, language-producing subject, always immersed in collectivity. For Benjamin (1994), the listener and the narrator share a common experience and an interest in conserving the narrative to avoid the degradation of the experience. The challenge of narrating the past is understanding that all events matter.

When dealing with education as a relationship, Buber asks: “what possibilities does the school recognize for this type of education?” (^{BUBER, 2012}, p. 91). According to the author, education needs to be based on dialogue, where listening and responding are drivers of educational relationships and practices. Education is a responsibility with the world: to turn towards the other, with authentic relationships, to recognize the other as being different to you and realizing this, to address an answer to the other that meets their need. Responding to what happens to us.

In this sense, this text, acting as a challenge by interweaving the narratives of the teacher’s encounter with children and their childhood in the school routine with the writing, at first addresses the contributions of Benjamin's anthropological philosophy, understanding that the narratives provide an investigative path. Next, based on the dialogue with the children, from their view of the school, the pedagogical praxis is placed under pressure, leading to the reflection that teacher training is an unfinished process, and also one that occurs in the relationship with the subjects who live a daily routine. The considerations retrieve the main findings of the study, emphasizing the need to think that the training of teachers is a place where they have the right to tell their stories.

Memories, registers, narratives, self-writing

When criticizing the project of modernity, Benjamin denounced the impoverishment of expressive language, the inability to connect between the present and the past, the inability to narrate and establish links of collectivity, and to exchange experiences. The concept of experience, the main point of Benjamin's work and which is fundamental in this study, is understood in a broad sense, which is more comprehensive than what is expressed in common sense. This concept is found in several of his texts. In “Experience and poverty”, (1933) and “The Storyteller” - considerations about the work of Nikolai Leskov”, written in 1936 (Benjamin, 1994), this concept is being developed. In “Experience and poverty”, he talks about an elderly man who, before dying, tells his children that there is a treasure in their lands, thus giving them a wisdom of life experience as a result of the activities of a lifetime that, when told to younger people by the elderly, allow the continuity of tradition and of itself. This is the experience that has always been communicated to young people,

[...] concisely, with the authority of old age, in proverbs; verbose, with its loquacity, in stories; sometimes as narratives from distant countries, in front of the fireplace, told to children and grandchildren (^{BENJAMIN, 1994}, p. 114).

In the text “The Storyteller - considerations about the work of Nikolai Leskov” (^{BENJAMIN, 1994}), the concept of experience acquires a collective dimension and the main discussion that goes through it is the author's blunt criticism on the disappearance of the art of narrating. The experience becomes increasingly scarce in modernity, due to the subjects' inability to narrate memorable events, on the technological advances that are a characteristic of progress and which end up minimizing the collective memory. The storyteller in Benjamin is one who knows how to give advice, since giving advice is seen much more as a possibility of continuing to tell a story than as a practical guide for life. The narrative does not seek to inform, “it immerses the thing in the narrator’s life and then removes it from him. Thus the narrator's mark is imprinted in the narrative, like the potter's hand on the clay of the vase” (BENJAMIN, 1994, p. 204).

Benjamin differentiates between the historian who writes stories and the chronicler who tells stories. For him, it is impossible for the conventional historian to simply present the events to which he refers, without explaining them in one way or another. Showing daily events as examples of responsibility of the world is the chronicler's task. It is the chronicler who narrates the events without, beforehand, distinguishing between the great and the small, taking “into account the truth that nothing that ever happened one day can be considered lost to history” (^{BENJAMIN, 1994}, p. 223). Critical of his time, he undertakes a philosophy against forgetting.

When formulating theses on the concept of history and making a critique of the ideology of progress, he invites us to think about temporal categories based on the criticism of the understanding of life as a sequence of evolutionary stages, considering the intertwining of past, present and future. Based on this perspective of temporality, history does not arise from a primordial starting point, it can be constantly remade and retold. The narrative's decline is linked to the gradual loss of memory and the inability to leave traces. Thus, Benjamin warned of the importance of the narrative experience as a condition of the historicity of the human being (^{BENJAMIN, 1994}). With regard to teacher training, the redemption of a memory that reveals a significant experience brings possibilities not only to redefine what has already been lived, but also to take action in the present.

It is in this historical time of intensity and not of chronology; it is in this present time that the meetings take place. In life, in everyday life, and why not, in the profession? Has teaching been a meeting place between children and their teachers? And apart from the meeting, have the teachers had room for the narrative of their experiences? Have the training processes considered the retrospective appropriation of the teachers' life history? Remembrance brings out what has been lived, experienced, learned; and it can bring reminiscence, a sudden image of something that was in some almost inaccessible corner of our lives, because “the past brings with it a mysterious index that impels redemption” (^{BENJAMIN, 1994}, p. 223). The past needs to be looked at from the encounter with the present, and such an encounter proposes a revolution in the way thought is constructed. In digging and remembering, Benjamin says:

He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging. Above all, he must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil. For the matter itself is no more than the layers which yield their long-sought secrets only to the most meticulous investigation. That is to say, they yield those images that, severed from all earlier associations, reside like treasures in the sober rooms of our later insights--like torsos in a collector’s gallery. It is undoubtedly useful to plan excavations methodically. Yet no less indispensable is the cautious probing of the spade in the dark earth. And the man who merely makes an inventory of his findings, while failing to establish the exact location of where in today’s ground the ancient treasures have been stored up, cheats himself of his richest prize (^{BENJAMIN, 1995}, p. 229).

Digging up and recalling memories based on the dialogues established with the children requires, as Benjamin proposes, to highlight them in today's terrain. Drawing on the memory of the past to speak of the present locates the place of experience we are looking at, and shows that the place of research is not far from the researcher. Narrating what occurred together with the children throughout my experience of being a teacher is related to my life experience, to what makes me a teacher, to the moments when they surprised me, in a relationship that left marks in my history.

In this respect, the narrative goes beyond the individual dimension of the teacher's work. And why narrate and register? For ^{Josso (2004)}, teachers’ biographical narratives can be considered a way to understand the training process, by promoting:

[...] The self-reflexive process, which requires a retrospective and prospective look, has to be understood as an activity of critical self-interpretation and awareness of the social, historical, and cultural relativity of the referents internalized by the subject and, therefore, constitutive of the cognitive dimension of subjectivity (^{JOSSO, 2004}, p 60).

Telling about an experience enables a double movement: thinking about praxis, teachers’ work in the school's daily routine, but also from the research perspective, producing knowledge, making it public, collective, strengthening the school’s political dimension.

The recalled fragments, in Benjamin's work, are not just about a particular experience. Benjamin's focus is on what the narratives can evoke in those who relate to them: “his intention is not to fix the content of what is said in his own life, but to make it communicable in the broad and complex sphere of culture” (^{PEREIRA, 2012}, P. 43.

When emphasizing that an era does not allow itself to be captured by its contemporaries from the great movements, but that they are the intrinsic fragments of daily life, the small details, the shrapnel of great transformations, ^{Benjamin (1994)}, without worrying about making use of what it is considered valuable to develop his concept of history, brings the residues of history and applies the principle of assembly to it; “that is: to erect large buildings from tiny elements, cut with clarity and precision. And, even, discover in the analysis of the small individual moment the crystal of the total event” (^{BENJAMIM, 2006}, P. 503.

For ^{Pereira (2012, p. 29)}, the meaning present in Benjamin's philosophy of moving between the different dimensions, “the small and the big; the fragment and the whole; the individual and the social; the instant and the era; the childhood experience and life experience”; is a consistent study methodology. The author ponders “that the concepts of 'small' and 'large' are designed and defined from ethical, aesthetic and epistemological relationships” (^{PEREIRA, 2012}, p. 29).

In this sense, the narratives dealt with in this text show residues, deviations, escapes from a training process that understands the importance of dialogues that did not start with the teacher, and the questions that she did not ask. The belief on otherness between the children and the teacher as a possibility to retrieve the faculty to exchange experiences and thus, dialogically, produce knowledge, authorizes the adult, teacher and researcher, to tell about what was possible to experience and hear from them in this relationship. The notebook with the registers of these narratives thus becomes empirical research. The concerns and inquiries; experiences and stories; the teacher's voice and the voices of several others were kept. Considering the discussions that involve ethical issues in research with children, their names are fictitious and, to guide the reader, dialogues used as empirical material appear in the text always followed by the contexts in which they were produced. The children’s age in the events is indicated in the body of the text, and deals with the context of early childhood education when referring to those aged four and five, and elementary school for those aged six to nine.

The narratives demanded the challenge of looking from the outside, but also from the inside. In Buber's words, “start with yourself, but don't end with yourself; starting from yourself, but not having yourself as an end” (^{BUBER, 2011}, p. 38). The end must be the world, and what we can contribute to it. In this sense, it is possible to think of the teachers' narratives as being more than an individual perspective of work, but also being collective, social.

For ^{Clandinin and Connelly (2011, p. 18)}, “true narrative research is a dynamic process of living and telling stories, and reliving and retelling stories, not only those that the participants tell, but also those of the researchers”. For the authors, the work of the narrative as a study methodology considers oral or written narrative to be empirical material.

Thus, different authors have pointed out the importance of teachers' registers in their notebooks and diaries as a possibility for investigative work on daily life.

[...] the records are the carriers of the stories - stories of the practices (failures, successes) and the theories that underlie them (even if they are not explicit, as the record allows this view at what is behind the practices). Stories of affections and partnerships, marked by the people who form and complement our training; stories of a time and space lived (^{FUJIKAWA, 2007}, p. 250).

When writing about the experiences, the teacher reconstructs their understanding of knowledge by analyzing it, now, from another place and with different views. For ^{Mendes (2007)}, the experience of the writing course teacher in his own practice is not solely restricted to the structure of the text: “narrating what one does, in the sense of saying, revealing oneself, exposing oneself, comprises a process of self-knowledge” (^{MENDES, 2007}, p. 20). For Cunha and Nunes, “the teacher's writing can be a tool for biographical reflection on initial and continuing education, a time when the challenges, difficulties and crises of professional life are exposed, based on memories of the school history and reflections on the present and the future” (^{CUNHA; MENDES, 2017}, p. 9).

Thus, saved registers, when revisited, can produce new meanings, and reflections that were never made. Writing keeps the place of memory, but it also offers other possibilities.

It seems that in this encounter between the “infinitely small” and the “finitely large” between the “general” and the “particular”, between the “objective” and the “subjective” that this theoretical/methodological tendency presents itself more and more as an interesting resource for thinking about teacher training, especially continuing education in teaching. Why is reflecting on my past and present important for the future of my profession? (^{CUNHA; MENDES, 2017}, p. 9).

The narrative presents itself as a way of recovering the memory in the sense of revealing a significant experience, allowing the resignification of the experience in the present. Writing about oneself favors an exercise in understanding, interpreting and reflecting on the teacher's practice, as it allows:

To explain the singularity and, with it, glimpse the universal, perceive the procedural character of training and life, articulating spaces, times and the different dimensions of ourselves, in search of life wisdom (^{JOSSO, 2004}, p. 9).

The writing exercise allows the place of teachers’ authorship. The organization of memories in the text gives the experience a new meaning, enhances the look at the past memories based on the analysis in the present. In this sense, for the organization of the narratives, it was possible to find contributions in ^{Benjamin’s work (1994)}, especially when the author presents one of his central characters: the collector. When bringing the concept of knowledge as a collection, he affirms the need to decontextualize an object so that it works as a text. The collector is able to decontextualize the object and, in this case, decontextualize the narratives, giving them different possible meanings, to then bring them together based on what they had in common from a theme. What makes the collection effect possible is the convergence, which is based on what they have in common. In this way, the narratives in the following item were organized into two collections in a Benjaminian sense: “Dialogues that invite one to look at the other” unites small gestures, subtleties, in the school routine; the collection “Dialogues of teaching and learning”, on the other hand, deals with deviations, ruptures, in the pedagogical praxis.

Dialogues between the teacher and the otherness of childhood

Looking at the child as another, implies in establishing a dialogue with them. However, for ^{Benjamin (1995, p. 23)} “the freedom of dialogue is being lost”. People talk more and more about superficialities; concerns and needs are secondary. Each one is committed to “the optical illusions of their own isolated point of view”; trapped in their own world, they “lose looking at the human beings’ outline” (^{BENJAMIN, 1995}, p. 24).

Superficiality in the dialogue, which does not allow us to talk about ourselves, preventing the construction of a relationship that confronts, alters, which Buber calls “verbosity”: the opposite of genuine conversation, set up by the authenticity that surpasses appearance and is free of “every desire to show off” (^{BUBER, 2009}, p. 155). In his work, the author presents three types of dialogue: the authentic, the monologue disguised as a dialogue and the technical.

In authentic dialogue, “each of the participants actually has the other or the others in mind in their presence and in their way of being and turns to them with the intention of establishing a living reciprocity between them and themselves” (^{BUBER, 2009}, p. 54). There is an intention to listen to the other and not just speak. For the author, this dialogue is rare.

The monologue disguised as a dialogue occurs when two or more people are together and talk to themselves (^{BUBER, 2009}). There is no listening to the other, this is not considered as being present in the dialogue.

[..] a conversation, which is determined neither by the need to communicate something, nor by the need to learn something, nor to influence someone, nor to contact someone, but is determined solely by the desire to see one's self-confidence confirmed, deciphering in the other the impression left, or having it reinforced when indecisive; a friendly conversation, in which each one sees oneself as absolute and legitimate and the other as relativized and questionable (^{BUBER, 2009}, p. 54).

The technical dialogue is “driven by the need for objective understanding” (^{BUBER, 2009}, p. 54). The participants in this dialogue have a conversation in order to have an explanation about something. This dialogue is necessary and there is nothing wrong with it. However, it is necessary to think about how we, teachers, fit in, when the child breaks the technical dialogue.

Dialogues that invite you to look at the other

Feelings

While reading a story, Jordana interrupts and asks:

Jordana (8 years old): I am feeling something that I think is a feeling. Teacher, does everyone have feelings? Does everyone feel what I'm feeling?

Teacher: People can feel many things, but I don't know if everyone feels what you are feeling.

Jordana: It's a different thing (^{SCRAMINGNON, 2017}).

Human beings have feelings; they reside in human beings (^{Buber, 2003b}). And, in a receptive hour of life, “find me a man in whom there is something, which I cannot capture in an objective way, who says something’something” to me”. And that something can be a question: “Does everyone feel what I am feeling?“” This in no way means that this thing tells me what this man is like, what is going on in him or something” (^{BUBER, 2009}, p. 42).

Only Jordana knew what she was feeling, and me, what I felt when I heard her. It was not possible to know if we felt the same way, but what I felt choked up my voice and almost prevented the reading from continuing. The girl was able to hear what she was feeling and spoke about the human possibility of undergoing the experience of listening to ourselves. What the other says to me “transmits something to me, transmits something that is introduced into my own life. It can be something about this man [...] but it can also be something about me” (^{BUBER, 2009}, p. 42). At school, when reading a story, the child helps to remember that institutions are also alive and dynamic, especially humanized by the feelings and encounters that occur there. Life, even within the school, can be humanized with practices that may have other outlines.

Dialogues for teaching and learning

Considerations

The debate proposed in this text mentioned the children's invitation to the teacher to address issues related to daily work at school. In the narratives presented, the impulse of the word of others - of children - triggered dialogues to think about teaching. The questions they asked provoked the teacher’s replies, the need to ask what they were doing and how they were doing it, answers that required positioning.

In the narratives, the reframed past imposed itself showing how children ask questions that help teachers to find themselves again. The dialogue with them mobilized memories allowing me to hear my own story: as an adult, teacher, researcher. During this process, writing, by catching the unknown senses, showed how much reflection, apart from talking about the children in the present, also speaks of curiosity for the way children give meaning to the world, and a peculiar teacher work dimension: the discovery of the child as another that challenges and provokes us. More than a report, the narrative reflects on the experienced process and makes the meaning that is not discovered, but remade, explicit: the place of teaching is formed in the relationship with the social, historical, cultural context, with the subjects, in the formative processes.

It was in the dialogue with my own memories that I was provoked to ask myself: how could the investment in the training process have helped to build registers as the production of other knowledge of one's own praxis? Why did written memories take a certain direction in my career as a teacher? Did what was written always have the same meaning? How, in the present, could the exercise of analyzing the collection of memories allow a different understanding of fragments that are a part of becoming a teacher? How can one learn to write about one's own practice, to narrate, making the experience shared? When does my story match the story of other teachers? In this sense, it is important to think about whether the training projects have made it possible for teachers to rise above superficiality, understanding fundamental aspects of this profession in order to focus on their praxis. It is worth emphasizing the need to invest in spaces and times in which they can narrate their experiences, tell their stories, register, say, make the experience collective, shared. Understanding that the temporal dimensions seem decisive in this process has to do with the opportunities for teachers to produce these narratives, defended in this discussion as a right.

It is necessary to debate the political function of training, considering that the way teachers are perceived may or may not guarantee the achievement of the right to be narrators of their stories, which, in turn, bring new ways of looking at what we are accustomed to. For ^{Benjamin (1994)} the narrative is not to inform. In the story of a children's teacher, the experience with them was fundamental to educate. “A man listening to a story is in the company of the storyteller; even a man reading one shares this companionship. (^{BENJAMIN, 1994}, p. 213). In this meeting lies the possibility of making the ‘new within always the same’. But for that, you need a bond, a presence. You must have someone to listen!