Initial teacher training for action in Youth and Adult Education: the story and a short experience report

The Youth and Adult Education (EJA in Portuguese) aims to eradicate illiteracy, improvement of the hand labor and consolidation of citizenship for excluded people of the schools. Youth and adult come to schools with professional experience and seeking professional growth, which requires differentiated teaching methodologies. However, teachers use the same methodologies used to regular education. This may be a result of lack of supervision and investment of the Ministry of Education (MEC) on universities and the poor training offered by universities on teacher formation. Thus, it is urgent the need of discussions on EJA, especially for teachers in training. Here, I do an overview of the EJA history and teacher formation in Brazil; I report and discuss my experience lived in the course of degree in Biological Sciences at the Federal University of Uberlândia and teaching in state schools in Uberlândia. I conclude: (i) the supervised training are important for undergraduates know the reality of the EJA, although they are considered insufficient for professional practice in this modality; (ii) it is required greater production of studies on universities, aiming to provide more theoretical basis to the EJA, and (iii) who chose to be a teacher must adapt their practice to reality of students