Becoming Maestras Learning to Attend with Care

This article describes through six brief stories or illustrative examples the impact of Patricia Carini's work on the practice of two maestras bilingues 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 Maria 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.