Thank you, Arnie!
Dr. Goldstein has served as honorary chairperson of our Center's board for many years. He came to St. Louis over thirteen years ago and helped us there establish one of the finest alternative programs in the country in the St. Louis area. Our experiment was to see if A.R.T. would work with kids permanently expelled from school. It worked with the kids with our research showing students achieving great academic and social gains. Arnie believed in our work and provided consistent support and training over many years. He actually sent our staff our to do our first trainings and continued to send us out to train the entire time we worked together. He was great at connecting us with each other.
Arnie always encouraged us to write, write, write. He would love to come to St. Louis and do his training and show his overheads that always included cartoons about current issues with kids. He would always reach out to us and involve us in his research and would call sometimes just to check in. He was very supportive as we developed our version of the A.R.T. curriculum as we added and expanded.
I remember one time Arnie visiting our program in St. Louis and playing basketball with our kids in the alternative school. They loved it and enjoyed his New York accent! He spoke to them from his heart about how he created programs for kids to get them off the street in spite of the fact that many of them didn't know what they wanted. He looked them in the eye and told them he hoped they learned the skills to live until they were l00!
We will miss him greatly not only for his charm and wit but mostly because he kept the arrogant, violent kid uppermost in all of our minds and constantly pursued new and better ways to help.
So, Arnie, you will be missed by all of us. But we will carry on and keep those often-forgotten kids right up there on top of the list! Thanks for your encouragement and support! And the times we had that were great fun! Our new addition in the Documents Section is the photo link to Arnie's new library. Please check it out and visit at www.behavioralinstitute.org Arnie, we'll always love you and appreciate you so very much. And as I write this, I can just hear you saying, as you did so many times over the years, "Back at ya, kid!" So there it is. Sara
Arnie in Malmo, 2001 Conference Session in Malmo Arnie's Pride and Joy-the Malmo,Sweden,
annual conference!
