Image from the Prospect Archive of Children's Work

Silver Special Collections houses the archives of the Prospect School and the Prospect Center for Research and Education. The Prospect School, located in North Bennington, VT, started in 1965 as a school for elementary, and later, middle school children. The school grew to encompass a variety of teacher education programs, research projects, and an archive of children’s work and transformed itself into the Prospect Center in 1979. Every summer, Special Collections welcomes educators to Prospect’s Practitioner Fellowship Program who spend a week studying the Prospect Archive of Children’s Work using the school’s Descriptive Processes as the method of inquiry.

Five fellows will be at UVM from July 29 to August 2 this year. Kate Colabella is a lead teacher in a 4's Headstart classroom at the Sugar Hill Museum Preschool in Harlem. Drew Kelly is the Director of Hiland Hall School, in Bennington Vermont. Abby Kibler is a Pre-K teacher and grade-level team leader at Horace Mann Nursery Division in Manhattan, New York. Emma Redden is a preschool teacher at The Family Room, a parent child center here in Burlington. Jaye Johnson Thiel is an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Studies at the University of Alabama. Joe Alberti, who has taught in the School District of Philadelphia for 14 years, will once again serve as the program mentor.

The Fellows will create and present detailed follow-up plans for implementing what they have learned in their own classrooms, schools, colleges, or other settings. The program mentor maintains supportive contact with the fellows as they implement their follow-up plans.