Student Profile: Stephanie

Student Academic and Social Circumstances

Stephanie first enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative during the summer of 2005, between her 2nd and 3rd grade years in school. She entered the Initiative with significant academic deficits in both math and reading but, as is typical for students enrolled in the Initiative who have completed just the K-2 sequence in school, she was able to make up these deficits quickly during that summer of 2005 and enter her 3rd grade year at grade level performance in both key skill areas.

Three years went by, though, before Stephanie was able to enroll for New Salem Educational Initiative small-group academic sessions during the regular school year. This was the result of two main factors: an itinerant residential pattern for Stephanie and her sister Theresa, engendered by their mother’s instability and drug abuse; and the limited capacity of the New Salem Educational Initiative to serve students enrolled at schools not eligible for Supplemental Educational Services/No Child Left Behind funding. The latter became all the more true as some of the schools at which Stephanie found herself were in the Greater Metro outside the Minneapolis Public School System.

An attentive aunt, Carlotta Madison, did bring Stephanie and Theresa, as often as she could work things out with various guardians, to the Tuesday Night Tutoring Program at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, a program closely associated with the Initiative and for which I also serve as director. Stephanie’s attendance in this program, which on a given night may attract 25 students in the large room where I and my staff of five additional tutors offer academic assistance, was able to maintain much of the progress that she had made. The Tuesday night program cannot offer the level of personal individual attention that I can offer in the small, 3-5 person groups that I instruct professionally, but Stephanie’s attendance on Tuesday evening was more regular than that of Theresa, and much of her progress in math continued. Most of our attention on those Tuesday evenings, though, had to be given to math, so that I was never satisfied with the forward movement that I could observe in Stephanie’s reading skills during these years when the Tuesday program was the only option.

Stephanie also was able to attend small-group sessions that I conducted during summers when the Initiative was funded by the General Mills Foundation (2005 and 2006) or when in summer 2007 I was able to donate my fee for writing a book under contract with the Minneapolis Urban League (summer 2007). But neither funding source was available during summer 2008, so that Stephanie’s skills languished, making especially fortunate her arrival in autumn 2008 back in Minneapolis at Anwatin Middle School, which qualified during academic year 2008-2009 for Supplemental Educational Services/No Child Left Behind funding.

Of the 65 students who were enrolled for small-group academic sessions in the New Salem Educational Initiative during school year 2008-2009, Stephanie was second only to her sister Theresa in presenting me with my biggest teaching challenge. The severe familial dysfunction and life setbacks that Stephanie has experienced has made her wary of failure, so that it takes a great portion of the session just to get her beyond the “I can’t do this” stage. With great patience, I remind her that she has faced new and challenging material many times before and mastered skills that she has thought she could not. I show her step by step how a math operation or reading passage can be mastered, she sees that she can perform the skill successfully, confidence is gained and, after much energy exertion and verbal exhortation on my part (and hers), she continues her movement toward grade-level performance.

There is no other program that can connect with Stephanie right where she lives as does the New Salem Educational Initiative. There is no other program in which the instructor himself knows her familial background so thoroughly; communicates continually with the few stable people in her life (and the many unstable ones, as well); picks her up at school; transports her to a quiet academic setting; gets her into a proper frame of mind to receive instruction; delivers carefully sequenced, adroitly delivered, appropriately challenging academic material; offers counsel and encouragement on the way home; and communicates with family members after every session.

Because Stephanie is likely in any year or part thereof to find herself in a different home, under shifting guardianship or foster care, and in a new school that will not qualify for Supplemental Educational Services funding, it is imperative that private funders step forward to ensure that Stephanie continues to receive the academic support that only the New Salem Educational Initiative can offer. Even with this support, Stephanie is struggling as she enters Grade 7 to maintain grade level performance. The seventh and eight grades are years where lives are won or lost on the ability to succeed in school. When a young person is not successful in the most important area for future success (the academic life) during her or his early teen years, the adolescent will seek baser rewards where they may be found. Very often success is either won or lost forever during these years on the treacherous sands of academic life. If the ground can be secured and the foundation built, the chance for a life of economic independence and personal happiness is maximized. If such ground cannot be made stable and the foundation constructed, the alternatives for inner city young people frequently lead to mean streets that are precursors to incarceration.

In the interest of seeing a face, taking interest in a particular case when that case is presented, and of availing oneself of the opportunity to witness the ongoing result of one’s generosity in promoting success and averting failure, the case of Stephanie should be embraced and financially supported by those willing to offer the funds and personally witness a life that hangs in the balance unfold successfully.