We continue to remember and pay tribute to Pat Carini, co-founder of the Prospect School, member of the Prospect board, author, speaker, independent educator, friend and teacher to many of us, who was pivotal to the development of Descriptive Inquiry.
“Where is courage found to hold firm to the conviction that education and schools can be revolutionized, that teaching can be an art, that minds and hearts and heads can be turned around?
Where is courage found to stand firm against the degradation of teaching, of education?
Where is courage found to hold firm to relatedness to children in the knowledge that absent that relatedness, teaching degrades to empty busy work?
Where is courage found to accept … that forced compromises, like mistakes, are not the end of the story – that it is possible to continue, to stand firm, to remain even so a seer of children, alert to every opportunity for choice, for play, for story telling, for pursuit of passions?"
'A Tribute to the Art of Teaching': from thoughts shared at the 25th Anniversary Tribute to the Art of Teaching Program at Sarah Lawrence College, November 8, 2011
Gina Ritscher, IDI Board member and longtime friend of Pat, offers this tribute.
Additionally, the Prospect Archives at the University of Vermont is collecting recollections and memories of Pat, to be archived along with the records of the Prospect School and Center. To participate in this ongoing project, please visit The University of Vermont's Digital Collections here.
Sunset at Bennington College, former home of the Summer Institutes and alma mater of Patricia Carini.