Grazie, Carla!
I was just reminded that today marks the first anniversary of my friend Carla Rinaldi’s untimely passing. There isn’t a day that passes without me thinking about something I learned from Carla or revisit a memory of how she navigated the world with grace and fierce determination on behalf of children. Without Carla, our event, The Language of Computation – Constructing Modern Knowledge in Reggio Emilia, would never have been possible. (A collection of videos and books by and about Carla may be accessed here.)
Carla Rinaldi was the guiding light of the Reggio Emilia approach. She was one of Loris Malaguzzi’s pedagogistas and played a major role in creating the infrastructure and institutions that spread his ideas and the Reggio Emilia Approach around the world. I was blessed to spend time with her and make some good trouble together.
Carla Rinaldi was an elegant force to be reckoned with. Her mission to honor, nurture, and serve the planet’s youngest children was achieved through certainty, morality, temerity, laser-like focus and deadly serious playfulness.
She could speak with an infant like Dr. Doolittle and also command the attention of The Pope. When you entered a cafeteria with Carla in Reggio Emilia, it was like traveling with Sinatra or a head of state. Yet for all that grandeur, she got up early to help us pack up CMK, adored eating fried fish on a sticky picnic table in a New Hampshire parking lot and went for ice cream with us, twice in one evening.
When two Grammy Award-winning jazz musicians performed an hour of improvisational music at Constructing Modern Knowledge, Carla reached for the Q&A microphone and commanded that “There must be jazz at this event every year.”
One of the great honors of my life was convincing Carla Rinaldi to speak at Constructing Modern Knowledge, not once, but twice. Despite her responsibilities at home and the inconvenience of international travel, Carla valued our desire to build a bridge between computation, constructionism, and the Reggio Emilia approach.
Not only that, but she also didn’t fly in, give a talk, and split. Carla was all-in. She participated in pre-institute electronics tinkering workshop, went on our bus trip to MIT and Boston, and spent four days interacting with the educators who gathered for CMK.
I will never forget showing programmable robots to Carla and our mutual friend Edith Ackermann. Carla immediately asked, “Are they friends?” followed by Edith inquiring, “Can they play together?” THAT is the work of two of the greatest epistemologists who ever lived.
One of my fondest memories involves getting back on the bus at midnight after a long day of learning-by-making in Manchester, NH, followed by a visit to the MIT Media Lab, and then a night on the town in Boston. Everyone was understandably exhausted, but as the host, I did a bit of cheerleading and asked random educators on our bus what they did during their 3-4 hours in Boston. I still choke up about the time one of the educators who attended CMK in consecutive years replied, “I went for soup dumplings at the place where Carla Rinaldi and I ate last year.” The ability to connect practicing educators with remarkable humans like Carla fills me with pride and justifies my career.
Last April, we realized a fifteen-year effort to organize an event for educators in Reggio Emilia. This would have been impossible without the trust, support, and effort of my friend Carla. Before we arrived in Reggio, we were informed that Carla had been ill. As luck would have it, Sylvia and I saw Carla on Tuesday (the second day of our event), but tragedy struck the next day when she passed away. We used the final day of our four-day institute to celebrate her brilliance and were blessed to attend the state funeral for one of the most brilliant educators who ever lived, in the city she loved so much. Thousands of her fellow citizens filled the piazza to pay their respects and four Mayors of Reggio Emilia presided over her funeral. It is a moment I will never forget.
