Student Profile: Theresa

Student Academic and Social Circumstances

Theresa was in Grade 7 and throughout the academic year of 2008-2009 enrolled for Supplemental Educational Services (SES) in the New Salem Educational Initiative. Theresa began an association with the Initiative during the summer after her Grade 3 year, at which time she was enrolled in Cityview K-8 of the Minneapolis Public Schools. She has only one stable and authoritative adult family member in her life, an aunt who attends New Salem Missionary Baptist Church. This connection to New Salem became especially important as Theresa began to move through several different foster care situations and to find herself in changing school settings, all of which for several years were not eligible for SES and mostly outside the Minneapolis Public Schools that is the focus of the New Salem Educational Initiative. The importance of the connections mentioned above lies in the fact that when SES was not available to Theresa, she was able to come to the New Salem Tuesday Night Tutoring program, which is a non-SES, 15-year program that I also coordinate.

Theresa was thus able to stay connected to me throughout the years during which she was not available for Supplemental Educational Services. I was far from satisfied with her academic progress during these years, though. Her unstable living environment and life circumstances made her attendance on Tuesday nights undependable; she missed many of those Tuesday evenings and in fact would at times go through many weeks of nonattendance before her ever-faithful aunt was able to convince the reigning adults in her life to make her available for transport to Tuesday night tutoring. This made necessary the constant review of key concepts and skills in both math and reading, none of which Theresa seemed to be able to master in the regular school environment, which was ever-shifting and apparently not very flexible in its ability to respond to Theresa serious life challenges.

Blessedly, Theresa ended up back in North Minneapolis and enrolled in an SES-qualifying school for academic year 2008-2009. Her attentive aunt was able to keep in much better touch with Theresa’s residential circumstances and to maximize the chances that she would be available at the appointed time for me to pick her up for SES sessions. Even so, Theresa’s life circumstances were hardly stable by middle class standards. Her mother was making a real effort at the beginning of the academic year (September 2008) to get clean from her drug habit and to take responsibility for Theresa and her sister (Stephanie, also enrolled in the Salem, Inc., Educational Initiative and facing the same serious life challenges). But by October 2008 it became clear that her mother’s attempts to get her life together were collapsing and the girls went through three foster care situations before gaining some sense of residential stability by January 2009.

Theresa, though, became very distracted and moody as time wore on. Despite our years developing a teacher-student relationship, with increasingly rude and distracting behavior she easily presented my most serious academic challenge. In time, it became clear to me that the standard 3-5 student group setting was not going to work for Theresa; I decided to arrange a one-on-one with her late Tuesday evenings and at other times when I could fit additional sessions in. This was very difficult considering the work load that I have carried this year, but I was and am committed to saving this life if I can. By March, it was clear that Theresa was responding to my aggressive and logically sequenced academic program and to the love and concern that her attentive aunt and I constantly conveyed. She recovered considerably many of the math and reading skills that had atrophied during the times when I could not work with her as regularly.

But with the arrival of late March and the advent of spring, Theresa began to act out more frequently at school and to resume a seriously distracted and rude form of behavior during my sessions with her. I counseled her frequently, during sessions and in transport to and from those sessions. I made the pitch oft-heard by my students as to the importance of education, the need to secure certain academic skills as the high school years approach, and the absolute necessity in United States society of the 21st century to prepare for post-secondary training. I reminded her of the need to respond to the love and concern that her attentive aunt and I have for her and have expressed for her over the course of many years.

Still, Theresa arrived for two sessions in a row in May totally unprepared emotionally to take what I had to offer her in the way of academic instruction. She was rude to the point of grossness in her behavior. I have a strong sense as to the source of this acting out, but with bated breath decided that I had to make a strong statement. At the end of our session on May 19, I told Theresa that I would be seeking dedicated funding for her continued participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative for the 2009-2010 school year, since it seemed likely that her behavior at school was likely to land her in the SPAN program for students with serious behavioral difficulties at a school that would not qualify for SES as we looked to the 2009-2010 academic year. I told her that I had to be sure that she was going to respond appropriately, because I had other students in similar situations for whom funding had to be sought. And, though it tore me to pieces even as I spoke the words to her, I told Theresa that if she was not ready for me with a better attitude upon pick-up on Tuesday, May 26, I would forgo the request in her behalf and make the case for someone else instead.

The attentive aunt and I went into a private huddle to strategize. I confided to this auntie that much of this was a front on my part. I was not likely to forgo a funding request in Theresa’s behalf, but I thought that it was important for Theresa to think this and to know that even my much-enduring patience had been exhausted. I left the exact consequences open, but the auntie and I agreed that if Theresa did not present a better attitude on 26 May that that would be the end of the 2008-2009 sessions and would require expressions of contrition on her part before the resumption of academic sessions in the New Salem Educational Initiative summer program.

Lo and behold, Theresa showed up with a much improved, more mature, more respectful attitude on 26 May. She worked hard, as did I, toward her recovery of key math skills leading to mastery of various operations with fractions, decimals, and percents that are so vital to conduct many math operations in the courses that lay ahead for her.

We talked seriously during transport to and from the session. I reminded her how much her attentive aunt and I care about her, how much we want her to succeed, that this is a love and concern that has endured and will never go away. I told her how much her attitude on this particularly evening meant to us. I told her that as long as her responsiveness to what I have to offer continues, I will continue to request funding in her behalf.

One never knows for sure. But my experience working with inner city young people tells me that a life may have been saved and that an all too frequent cycle of poverty, dysfunction, street life, and all too often years wasted under incarceration may have been averted on this very night of May 26, 2009.

After I had delivered Theresa to her current residence, I called her auntie as to the night’s success and we exchanged tearful expressions of relief and joy.

Since Theresa will not be attending a school qualifying for Supplemental Educational Services under No Child Left Behind guidelines during academic year 2009-2010, it is imperative that funding for her continued participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative be found among private sources.