With the aim of understanding the social, professional, and emotional effects of the emergency
political arrangements implemented by the Government of the State of Pará in the state public
education during the COVID-19 pandemic, based on the experience of teachers from the State
Public Education Network in the Municipality of Ananindeua, in the metropolitan region of
Belém, this dissertation brings an analysis of the memories that the 24 teachers I interviewed
shared with me about their professional experiences. As I listened to them, I was also reliving
my memories, and thus, I take on the position of a native/ethnographer (Peirano, 2014) in the
text. I also analyze the main documents that regulated public education in the State of Pará in
2020 and 2021, relating them to the decisions of the federal government. Guided by what I
heard in the field in January and February 2022, this study focuses on the period during the
pandemic when the government of the State of Pará implemented "remote teaching" in the state
public network, specifically from January to June 2021. The analysis of these experiences is in
dialogue with anthropological and sociological perspectives on the topic. In Chapter I, I show
how the state government managed basic education during the pandemic period when face-to-
face classes were suspended in the public network. In Chapter II, I show how teachers
experienced the changes resulting from the new standardization and regulation of basic
education established by the state government. By analyzing the teachers' experiences, I
realized that besides the contradiction between professionals and the State, other contradictions
emerged as teachers practiced their profession from the domestic environment, elements to
which I dedicate Chapter III. As results of this research, I argue that the pandemic deepened
pre-existing crises and inequalities while producing new dynamics of crisis. According to the
data, I show that as the state's educational public policies proved insufficient to contain the
effects of the pandemic on basic education in Pará, teachers' lives became marked by a process
of worsening precariousness of teaching work, expressed in the total flexibilization of the
workday and physical and mental illness resulting from labor activities. Additionally, I
highlight that in the case of women teachers who are mothers, daughters, and/or wives, there
was also an endless workload of caregiving tasks, which was multiplied by the suspension of
public services offered by the State, making the period one of overlapping labor and class
inequalities with gender inequalities.
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