Marés que me habitam: práticas educacionais territorialmente referenciadas em uma escola localizada no Conjunto de Favelas da Maré

Abstract

This research emerged as a concern provoked by the work and experience of teaching at a public school in the city of Rio de Janeiro, located in the Maré favela complex. When talking to the school community, I realized that when people talked about the surrounding territories, the feeling of belonging to Maré only applied to certain contexts, that is, only certain territories bordering the school, whose contexts were plagued by violence and fear. The school I am referring to is made up of “invisible borders,” created based on the social imaginary and according to territorial characteristics, delimiting its physical spaces to the detriment of multidimensional experiences constructed in daily life and that, in a certain way, encourage the denial of belonging to Maré. The subjects’ feeling of non-belonging penetrates the school walls, generating a series of visions that deny the belonging to Maré of certain border territories. Acting as a teacher and researcher, I propose to reflect on the multiple territorialities that permeate everyday school life, contributing to overcoming stereotypes that awaken the feeling of uprootedness of the Mareense being, collectively aggregating practices that promote sociability, the deconstruction of negative associations directed at this territory, loaded with multiple histories and experiences, which are silenced by the historical denial of its importance. The research will unfold from a qualitative and critical interpretative perspective, using the territory of Maré as a study tool, dialoguing with the school community, providing an epistemic approach to the spatial, moving towards the symbolic. Thus, the concept of territory will be taken beyond the spatial dimension, highlighting its symbolic dimensions, since affective relationships are established between individuals, groups and spaces in particular in these territories. From what is proposed to be researched on the subject in question, two central questions arise: what situations contribute to students not feeling like they belong to Maré? What factors interfere in the construction of this process? Are armed conflicts the main factor in denying belonging to Maré? The educational product was constructed based on Educational Mapping, where social cartography brings elements that trace the place of belonging in Maré, starting from the territory where they live until reaching the school where they study. The product was developed to be applied to a fifth-grade class of Elementary School I, in the Municipal Network of Rio de Janeiro. The applicability of the product was aligned to inspire meaningful and territorialized practices, intertwining curricular knowledge with territorial knowledge, strengthening the identity of its subjects and the place to which they belong.