This research aims at presenting understandings generated from some stumbles on my Exploratory Practice path. It is important to mention that I had to deal with some obstacles when I tried to put into practice the theory I had studied about Exploratory Practice. I carried out the exploratory work during 2008 in two different classes (8th year of Middle School and 2nd year of High School) at a private school in the south zone of Rio de Janeiro. Using my students’ and my own classroom puzzles expressed as a starting point, I designed some potentially exploitable pedagogic activities (PEPAs), which had language learning objectives but whose main purpose was to fundamentally help us understand the quality of our classroom lives. The discourse produced during this work for understanding was analyzed to unearth my students beliefs about their experience as foreign language learners. Although the word stumbles, used in the title and in the beginning of the present abstract, carries a negative connotation, my intention is by no means to consider the activities presented here as mistakes or flaws. On the contrary, my ultimate goal is to reflect upon examples of real activities that, even though did not happen as expected, were able to generate several understandings about my students, myself as a professional, the institution and our educational context. With this dissertation, I intend to motivate other teacherresearchers, who might not have obtained a satisfactory outcome following the path of Exploratory Practice, to keep on this track despite the occasional obstacles they may find.