Student Profile: Maria

Student Academic and Social Circumstances

Maria first enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative in September 2007, at the beginning of the 2007-2008 academic year. She was an enthusiastic student from the start, but she gave evidence of serious academic deficits. At that point, Maria was functioning two academic levels below her Grade 5 level of enrollment at Cityview K-8.

When I introduced Maria to the logically sequenced math and reading curricula of the New Salem Educational Initiative, she dove into the materials with alacrity. She quickly gained mastery of her multiplication tables, secured her skills in all four basic arithmetic operations, applied these to calculation in problems with decimals, learned the relationship between fractions, decimals, and percentages, and used these latter skills in a variety of real-world applications. Maria would now tell me, “I love math!”

Reading at first was another matter. She declared early on that “I don’t like to read.” Upon entrance into the New Salem Educational Initiative, Maria was still considered an English language learner and took ESL classes at school along with regular classroom curriculum. She read English slowly, with limited comprehension, and with the weak foundation of a very limited vocabulary. But her confidence built as we worked to strengthen her vocabulary and to entertain the kinds of conceptual questions asked by an instructor sitting side by side with the student that can efficiently build reading comprehension.

A revolution took place in Maria’s life when I introduced her to the Core Knowledge materials produced by E. D. Hirsch and associates. The What Your Fifth Grader Needs to Know edition contained the usual rich variety of readings that this series presents in the academic areas of math, science, literature, fine arts, and history. Maria demonstrated deep concentration in her sessions reading from the Fifth Grader edition. It was as if, indeed it was truly that, a previously unexplored world of knowledge now unfolded before her eyes. She couldn’t get enough. She was enchanted. Her eyes lit up each new session when I brought this book out. She answered my questions with great enthusiasm and asked me even more. When she would look at me as I answered her questions, her gaze seemed at times as if it would bore a hole in my face, so eager was this remarkable young person for knowledge. She was now declaring unabashedly, “I love to read.”

In time Maria came to know that I have written several books and to ask to read these. She enjoyed my Tales from the Taiwanese (2003) but took particular interest in my A Concise History of African America (2008). I signed a copy of the latter book and wrote an inscription exhorting her to explore the world of knowledge as far as her great interests would take her. This book is written for college students and sophisticated adult readers. This erstwhile English language learner immersed herself in the book and within three weeks had read three chapters, saying that her favorite was the chapter detailing the horrors of the slave trade and the journey through the Middle Passage.

When Maria returned to the New Salem Educational Initiative during her Grade 6 year at Cityview, I gave her a personal copy of What Your Sixth Grader Needs to Know. I do this with many of my students in whom I have witnessed particular academic engagement, and whom I think will really explore the book in detail as a matter of driving intellectual interest. Maria came to our weekly two-hour session each week with some new and astute observation concerning something that she had read. I noted that she was never more enthusiastic than when she had encountered material on African America history. Among the rich literary materials in Sixth Grader is a section reprinting the “I Have a Dream” speech of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I asked Maria if she would be interested in memorizing and delivering this speech at the annual banquet of the New Salem Educational Initiative. She paused not one second in saying, “Oh, yes!”

We practiced week after week, spinning numerous vocabulary assignments off of this amazingly poetic and metaphor-rich speech. We got in a long Saturday evening session in late May, by which time Maria had exhausted her official Supplemental Educational Services (SES) hours. She gave the speech to perfection at that annual banquet on June 1, 2009, bringing tears to many an eye, none more prominently than my own.

Fittingly, this former English language learner, now a sophisticated reader of adult works of history and fiction alike, this master of one of the most highly literate speeches in the English language, was designated “Student of the Year” and given the appropriate certificate of accomplishment at this academic year 2008-2009 banquet of the New Salem Educational Initiative.

During the 2009-2010 academic year, Maria's school of attendance will be in the “restructuring” stage under No Child Left Behind regulations, having failed to achieve Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for several years in a row. Heretofore when this has happened in the Minneapolis Public Schools, such a school undergoes a more than 50% staff overhaul and gets a new principal. Ironically, at that point the institution is considered a new school and ineligible to receive No Child Left Behind funding until failing to make AYP for several more years. Since the New Salem Educational Initiative is dependent on No Child Left Behind funding as a Supplemental Educational Services provider during the academic year, the status of students such as Maria becomes threatened.

This cannot happen. One of the major reasons for the stunning success of the New Salem Educational Initiative is our ability to retain students at least until the end of their K-12 experience once they enroll in the Initiative: We endeavor to hold on to every single child with whom we establish a relationship. Maria needs to retain her position in the New Salem Educational Initiative to continue her trajectory of success, and it is thus one of my key priorities to secure dedicated private funding for her continuance in the program.