Education, dialogue, responsibility: what do adults and children tell about community life? sought to know stories, narratives, practices and interactions of adults and children who participate in schools that have community education in their proposals, to reflect on the questions: What is, for them/them, community life?; What do they understand about the concept of community?; How are relationships established in this context?; What do they tell about their interactions?; Are the narratives of participants from these different institutions similar? The research was carried out in two private schools in the city of Rio de Janeiro: Escola da Luz and Escola da Ciranda 3. Both schools have community education in their proposal. 12 adults were interviewed, professionals from the institutions - teachers, coordinators and directors - and family members who are active of the Parent Boards/Committe of the schools 4. The children, students of these schools, also told what they understood about the word community in four workshops, two in each school, with the 1st and 4th grade classes of Elementary School I. The narratives of adults and children and the look at their practices enabled the perception and understanding of community life for these subjects. Martin Buber is the author of reference for the thesis with his discussion on the differences between community and collectivity/society, the debate regarding an education for the community, dialogic relationship and genuine exchange with the other. Walter Benjamin, Mikhail Bakhtin and some authors of the Sociology of Childhood were relevant for the construction of theoretical-methodological strategies and the constitution of the researcher s perspective. Narrative, experience and the child s unveiling gaze were important concepts coming from Benjamin; the theoretical contributions in the field of research in human sciences, in addition to his perspective of language and dialogic utterance, were important productions by Bakhtin for the elaboration of the thesis; and also from some authors of the Sociology of childhood, research with children was a much debated topic. From the field with the adults, the categories emerged: availability for the community, the community listens, the challenges of community life, the disagreements and differences within these institutions, the desire for change and community, and to existing ambiguities. The community as a space for being together with the other and the differences existing in these groups were narratives shared by the children in the workshops, in addition to the communion and love present in these spaces, and the sense of belonging.