The aim of this article is to describe how the teaching of the Portuguese language to foreign students and/or refugees takes place, looking at each of them in free public schools in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. With 315 students per school, there were between 10 and 20 students from other countries. In this way, we analysed their schooling over the course of the school year, since those who left were enrolled in the basic and secondary education cycles left school in the first half of the school year. This data allowed us, based on qualitative methodology, to question each stage of the school term. By means of a descriptive, comprehensive and interpretive investigation into the teaching of Portuguese in Brazilian schools, the author initially sought to clarify challenging questions: I. Why do students not feel they belong at school? II. How do we deal with abandonment of the institution? III. And finally, if we could understand this, could we combat school failure? The research that is still going on, through observation of classes, student groups and teacher training, has led to the following conclusion: this scenario is the result of foreigners not feeling they belong to the school they are enrolled in because of legislation! From the repercussions of the first stage, it was possible to see that integration does occur through the teaching of the Portuguese language, which is diverse and has three distinct roots - indigenous, African and European. And after the period of observation and probing of the study procedures, the second stage would be through the textbooks. So we asked the teachers to bring in readings and interpretations of short fragments, so that the students could not only integrate with their peers in groups, but also learn the ‘Brazilian’ language. Since the language is multiple and has borrowed languages from the immigration process, foreign students realised that they were part of the same journey that our ancestors lived, and that this constitutes our identity. We conclude briefly, and not forever, that integration in the learning process as a teaching and research tool is continuous, because exchanges between Brazilians and foreigners are an opportunity to study and share cultures and values. Because this work is still going on, we realise that around 80% of foreign students drop out of school and after the integration project began, this figure was reduced to less than 30%. In other words, whereas before there were 11 to 15 dropouts out of 20 foreign students, with the start of the integration process, the schools declared that the school year went without any dropouts. As a result, there was a significant increase in both Brazilian and foreign students. As a partial result, we can say that integrating foreign students through language teaching means showing them that this means belonging to the same process lived by our ancestors and, at the same time, mirroring the language we speak as a phenomenon, a phenomenon that should bring people together and not distance them due to social differences. That said, the previous result affirms that analyses of the perception of language reveal it as a natural, dynamic and transformative demonstration.

Keywords: Teaching Portuguese; dropping out of school; integration; belonging; learning