This ethnographic research resulted from my interest, as an exploratory teacher, in searching for deeper understandings of the sense of pleasure and success, which I share with a group of learners, about our EFL classes held in a private language institute in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Working within Exploratory Practice (Allwright, 2001, 2002), my learners and myself engaged in a variety of potentially exploitable pedagogic activities to reflect on our beliefs about the EFL teaching/learning process and on our classroom lives. Content analysis of the data allowed me to organize thematically my teacher beliefs, my learners´ beliefs and the convergence between these belief systems. Theoretically, I support this search for understanding on the different dimensions of a classroom (Prabhu, 1992) and on the concept of communities of practice (Wenger, 1998). I highlight five aspects of classroom life: the social (Allwright, 2002, 2003), the interpersonal (Stevick, 1998, 1999), the affective (Arnold, 1999), the linguistic (Halliday, 1973) and the pedagogic (Richards & Rodgers, 1972). As an exploratory practitioner, I interpret the sense of pleasure and success I share with my learners as being related to affect and to our constant puzzlement about what happens in our classroom. I understand that positive affect, motivation, safe classroom atmosphere, task negotiation and a reflective attitude towards these aspects contribute to make learners responsible for their learning and to create an atmosphere which enhances and facilitates learning and living in an exploratory practice community.