Student Profile: Raul

Student Academic and Social Circumstances

Raul is one of sixteen students who enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative late in the 2008-2009 academic year, beginning only in March. His mother expressed deep concern over the state of Raul’s performance in math at school, indicated by an ongoing series of “F” grades on progress reports and report cards. I immediately started Raul on our logically sequenced math assignments, which revealed that Raul has at least average math ability for his Grade 6 status, although many skills had gone seriously underdeveloped. Raul’s mother asked if we might be able to work him into more than the typical two hours per week.

Given our high enrollments, this took considerable logistical maneuvering over about two weeks before we could accede to the request, but in time we found a way to offer Raul up to eight (8) hours per week. With this aggressive program of intervention, Raul rapidly improved his reading as well as math, with the latter having been given particular emphasis. He achieved a “C-“ in math for the final quarter marking period of the 2008-2009 academic year and was reveling in his ability to understand and not feel lost. He is very proud of the expressions of approval over his greatly enhanced performance that he received from his math teacher at school.

Raul is the child of parents who were born in Ecuador. Raul was born in the United States but is still considered an English language learner and undergoes special English as a Second Language support at school. His mother speaks virtually no English, and the English language capability of his father is severely limited. Thus, although I work through elder siblings and other adept family members as interpreters for more nuanced communications, my Spanish language capability is appreciated for basic conveyance of information as to Raul’s weekly performance and other routine matters.

Raul’s linguistic challenges lie mainly in his attachment to concrete interpretations of reading matter. He comprehends very straightforward, informational material reasonably well, but anything resembling abstract verbal expression is a challenge for him. This can include word problems in math, something to which we have given considerable attention. Raul’s improving ability to deal with abstract reading material has in part accounted for Raul’s enhanced performance in mathematics.

During his tenure as a student in the Minneapolis Public Schools, Raul has at times acted out his academic frustrations in such ways as to gain an Emotionally and Behaviorially Disordered (EBD) label. At the time that Raul enrolled in the Initiative, teachers, counselors, and social workers at Emerson were recommending that he undergo further evaluation for possible enrollment in an anger management program. One of the extended discussions that I had with Raul’s mother, for which I utilized the interpretation services of a linguistically adept uncle, focused on my own interaction with Raul and my perspective on Raul’s behavior and anger management problem. I was able to convey to Raul’s mother and other family members that Raul has never been anything remotely resembling a behavioral problem in his sessions with me. In fact, his behavior has been just the opposite: respectful, disciplined, and responsive to instructions. We have good conversations during transport to and from New Salem.

My interpretation of Raul’s acting out, conveyed to his mother and others, is that Raul has often been deeply frustrated in school, particularly in math, leading him to express frustration as anger, aimed at people who may themselves be tangential to the real problem. But, while many of these individuals are not themselves the problem, the educational system that they represent does have some culpability. The rapidity of Raul’s improvement under my instruction and his excellent demeanor as a student in the New Salem Educational Initiative serve as strong indicators that the educational system has not been tapping into Raul’s talents or bringing out his best behavioral self.

Raul is in fact a highly inquisitive young man who asks persistent and perceptive questions on a range of topics. He has been fascinated in my authorship of a number of books and has inquired with great sophistication as to the process for writing manuscripts, getting them accepted for publication, and carrying forth with the myriad details necessary to bring the book at last before the reading public. At one point I lent Raul my A Concise History of African America (2008), of which he read several chapters. Then, when he became even more interested in my Tales from the Taiwanese (2004), I promised him that I would give him a signed copy with inscription if he would read and write detailed summaries of five of the stories. The very next time that I picked Raul up at his home for transport to New Salem, he opened a folder to reveal five neatly written two-page summaries of each of the tales that he selected. These summaries contained a few errors both of detail and composition, but in general they revealed a grasp of the essential characters and plot description, and they certainly revealed Raul’s keen interest in the stories that he had read.

Raul’s mother has understandably not been pleased with her son’s experiences at school and talks about switching him to another school. Some of the schools under consideration are charter schools that are not in the Minneapolis Public Schools system. Should she follow through with one of the latter options, Raul’s status in the New Salem Educational Initiative, funded during the academic year through the Minneapolis Public Schools under No Child Left Behind/Supplemental Educational Services guidelines, would be tenuous. We would maintain as much connection to Raul as we can, and we would always welcome him to New Salem’s longstanding Tuesday Night Tutoring program, which sometimes draws as many as 25 students and cannot offer the level of individual attention under which Raul has thrived.

For Raul to maintain, therefore, the kind of progress that he has made, as described above, at the level of sensitive individual attention that he has received in small-group sessions and in transport to and from his home for these sessions, it is imperative that private sources step forward to ensure that Raul's continued participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative is possible.