This paper builds on the research project "The early years of work at school: effects on identity, autonomy and teacher training in physical education" that deals with construction of the professional identity of physical education teachers during their early career years in the state schools of the metropolitan area of Porto Alegre, Brazil. From a hermeneutic approach, sustained in ethnographic procedures and teachers’ accounts, we explored the research problem, summarized as follows: how novice physical education teachers identify in the micro-politics of the school shortcomings, contradictions and conflicts they should confront to be able to teach and learn? What kinds of strategies do they develop to meet the challenges of their early career stages? Physical and social aspects of the school culture influence the constitution of teachers’ identity, the way they organize teaching and learning practices and their interpersonal relationships at school. The municipalities do not have a public policy to welcome and support beginning teachers. Thereby teachers lack a defined a priori protocol to address these challenges and conflicts. It is dialogue with the local community which helps them to cope with the emerging situations and has an effect on the way they learn to become teachers.