The school
Da Quebrada pro Mundo
A language school born in the outskirts of São Paulo that now teaches between Brazil and Europe. English, German and Portuguese through art, culture and real life — without asking anyone to erase where they came from.
Language is a tool for work and for freedom. It is not a trophy.
Da Quebrada pro Mundo (DQPM) is a social-impact language school. We teach English and German to Brazilians, and Brazilian Portuguese to people arriving from abroad — always starting from literature, music, film and real conversation.
What sets us apart is not a secret technology: it is where we start from. Every lesson assumes the learner already has a repertoire, an opinion, a story. The new language is there to widen that, never to replace it.
That is why the school is three things at once: a platform with structured courses at your own pace, live classes with real people, and a shelf of books turned into authorised teaching material.
Origin
It started with a number that did not add up.
Every survey repeats that very few Brazilians speak English. What those surveys did not show was who was being left out of the count: working-class families, favela residents, people who study in the hours left over from work. It was never a lack of will. It was a lack of access, of time, and of material that spoke the language of our own homes.
DQPM began as a practical answer to that: free classes, to test in the room whether the idea worked outside of theory. It did. It became an in-person class at Casa do Hip Hop in Diadema — the same neighbourhood where the school's founder grew up — and then a platform, taught by educators who came from the same peripheries as the students.
In time the crossing reversed. People in Europe needed Portuguese too: not textbook Portuguese, but the one spoken at the table, at the party and in the book. Today the school serves both sides of that bridge with the same care.
What we believe
Five principles that show up in every lesson, from the first “hello” to the last piece of writing.
- 01
FUBU — For Us, By Us
Lessons made by people who lived what the student is living. Representation here is not a photo on a banner: it is who writes the lesson, picks the example and marks the exercise.
- 02
The world's language, not the advertising one
More people speak English as a second language than as a first. We study that real language — including the English of Black communities in the United States — instead of chasing an accent that only exists in a course commercial.
- 03
Art is the content, not the decoration
Books, rap, poetry nights, cinema and photography are the text of the lesson. That is where the vocabulary, the grammar and the conversation come from.
- 04
Critical thinking alongside grammar
Migration, work, racism, mental health and freedom are not topics that are too advanced for beginners. They are the student's life — and that person deserves the words to talk about it.
- 05
A bridge, not an escape
Learning another language does not mean leaving the quebrada behind. It means moving through the world while staying whole.
Who we teach
Three audiences, one method: De Quebra, applied to each person's own starting point.
Brazilians learning English or German
From zero to real use: job interviews, exchanges, moving country, the internet and travel — with a teacher who understands your starting point.
Anyone who wants real Brazilian Portuguese
For people living in Europe, in love with Brazilian culture or with family in Brazil, who want the language as it is actually spoken — slang, accent and context included.
Schools, collectives and companies
Closed groups, teacher training and partnerships with organisations that take diversity, migration and access to education seriously.
The numbers, uninflated
We promise not to invent data — so here is the real size of the school, exactly as it is.
- 2021
The year of the first classes, still free, to test the method.
- 1,000+
People who have studied with us since then.
- 2
People on the team. Two: teaching, platform and content.
Recognition
Global Student Entrepreneur Awards 2023
With Da Quebrada pro Mundo, Alexandre came second in the Brazilian national round of GSEA and represented Brazil in the global final.
What we do not promise
Language schools have been selling miracles forever. We would rather agree on the rules before you pay for anything.
- Automatic fluency in 30 days.
- A certificate nobody accepts.
- Inflated student numbers or invented awards.
- Accent correction, as if an accent were a flaw.
- Memorised grammar in place of real conversation.
Where we are now
The school runs between Diadema and Berlin: a platform with Portuguese, English and German courses, private lessons online and in person in Berlin, a book club and a shelf of works that become lessons. Every new front starts from the same question: does this bring the people with least access closer, or push them further away?
The person who started this
About me
Alexandre Ribeiro · Writer, educator and founder of Da Quebrada pro Mundo
My name is Alexandre Ribeiro. I was born in 1998 and grew up in Favela da Torre, in Canhema, Diadema. My mother worked as a domestic worker, my father as a security guard. Between the books I read with him, the gatherings at Casa do Hip Hop and the rush of everyday life in the quebrada, I understood that words could be both shelter and passage.
I lost my father when I was 11 and started working young to help at home. I crossed the city for jobs in a shopping centre and a hotel. It was while cleaning hotel rooms, around the 2014 World Cup, that I really started learning English: listening to guests, writing down what I did not understand and repeating it to myself on the bus home.
I wrote in silence. In rap, in poetry nights and in literature I found a way to organise what I was living through — and, without knowing it, I was already building the method the school uses today.
Diadema ↔ Berlim
A bridge between Diadema and Berlin
In 2016, a scholarship to study community journalism at Énois steadied my writing. In 2019, another scholarship took me to Germany to work with children and young people with disabilities. Then came the scholarship to Bard College Berlin, where I finished my degree — a few years after that hotel where I had learned my first sentences in English. Distance did not erase my roots: it turned me into a bridge between places, languages and stories.
Chapters of a journey
- 2016
Writing meets the world
At Énois I turn childhood experiences into narrative and start working in community journalism. Later I write columns for Itaú Cultural and UOL Ecoa.
- 2019
Literature and crossing borders
I publish Inflorescência, a poetry collection, and Reservado, awarded by ProAC Prosas. That same year, a social-work scholarship brings me to Germany.
- 2020–2022
From the quebrada to the world
I sell and sign Reservado for Portuguese president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. Then I publish the novel Da Quebrada pro Mundo, with a foreword by Emicida.
- 2021–today
Education that gives opportunity back
I create Da Quebrada pro Mundo so that learning a language stops being a privilege. It starts with free classes, to test the method in practice, reaches Casa do Hip Hop in Diadema and today crosses the Atlantic.
- 2026
Querido Heinz
I release my first bilingual book, in Portuguese and German, deepening the artistic conversation between Brazil and Germany.
“Our place is wherever we choose to be.”
Learning a language does not mean leaving your origins behind. It means widening your ability to tell your own story, move through the world and build new bridges — while staying whole.
Featured by Duolingo
I told this story to Duolingo's global audience
In 2021, Duolingo invited me to share this journey at Duocon, the company's international event — for the same app I used to learn English and, later, German. That's where I told the world:
“Education is the only way we can transform our reality.”Watch my story at Duocon 2021
A writer first. An educator as a consequence.
Today in Berlin, I connect my books, my experiences and the De Quebra method in Portuguese, English and German lessons. Art is not course decoration: it is the starting point for conversation, reflection and real-life language. I write in the morning and teach in the afternoon — each one feeds the other.
Works
- 2019 · PoetryInflorescência
- 2019 · Prose · ProAC ProsasReservado
- 2021 · NovelDa Quebrada pro Mundo
- Aug 2026 · PT/DE — pre-launchQuerido Heinz
This story has also been told by
Articles, interviews and my own essays document different moments of this journey.
- Duolingo · Duocon 2021Meu depoimento sobre aprender idioma sendo favelado, contado no evento global da DuolingoRead article
- UOL EcoaDa Favela da Torre, ele foi para a Europa e criou curso de inglês para a quebradaRead article
- Agência MuralA realidade de um favelado em uma universidade na EuropaRead article
- Itaú CulturalA importância de contar históriasRead article