Becoming Maestras

Abstract

This article describes through six brief stories or illustrative examples the impact of Patricia Carini’s work on the practice of two maestras bilingües at a large urban school in the Southwest. Carini supported the school’s community for several years in apprenticing descriptive inquiry, as they developed a stance of attending to children and families with care. The authors connect Carini’s vision of “human capacity widely distributed” with María Lugones’s ideas of “Playfulness, ‘World’-Traveling, and Loving Perception” and “Purity, Impurity, and Separation,” as well as lessons from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s work. These descriptive stories draw attention to a perspective of teaching as intellectual/philosophical and practical work. In addition, the authors contend that by taking a flexible, responsive descriptive stance, teaching can become civic, ethical, and critical work.