Patricia Carini, Prospect School, and the Ordinary Extraordinariness of Human Persons

In this narrative, combining elements of autobiography and of argument, I set out to do three things. First, I tell a story of one young person’s journey into teaching (and, in due course, into teacher education). It’s my story of my journey, but I hope it can shed a little light on others’ journeys and on the possibilities for such journeys. Second, I provide sketches of and homage to Patricia Carini and the Prospect School. The sketches are from particular vantage points (mine, during the events recounted, and, to a degree, retrospectively) at a particular place and period in time (Prospect, in North Bennington, Vermont, during the mid-1970s and well into the 1980s). Finally, I am writing about, and making an argument for, a particular conception of teaching. This conception is rooted in fascination with children in particular and more broadly with any person encountered in the course of their learning, growing, and questing. The conception I mean is one of teaching as a form or mode and movement of thinking and as gestures of or toward love.