The mission of K-12 public education holds no room for excuses. Children and adolescents from impoverished or dysfunctional families bring challenges to school that the genuine educator will embrace.
There is much in the design of the New Salem Educational Initiative from which the public schools can extrapolate for purposes of meeting the challenges. When eight years ago I started this program of total academic support for inner city young people, I knew that I would be providing transportation. I knew that I would go right up to the doorstep of the household wherein the student dwelled, talk with members of the family, get a sense of any current familial concerns, walk the student to the car, hold the academic session, then return the student in like manner--- checking in again with the family.
The advantages of proceeding in this way are multiple, most notably the high likelihood of near perfect attendance that this routine allows. The approach reduces the parental forgetfulness or distractedness factor in failing to get a student to a session. Even if the parent has forgotten that the day and time is that designated for the academic session, a relationship properly cultivated allows me to locate the student, articulate the reminder, and eventually transport the student to the session. In a significant number of cases, students may actually live or stay frequently in more than one household. So in many instances I have arrived at a designated address only to find that the student is currently staying somewhere else, so off I go to find the student at that place. This is the kind of on-the-ground, take no chances quality that pervades the approach of the New Salem Educational Initiative. In this instance it virtually guarantees perfect attendance; even if the rare instance occurs in which I don't get the student in the car for transport on the designated day, I reschedule on the spot and no session is missed. All of this is again abetted by the excellent relationships that I develop with the families of my students, so that one feature of the program strengthens another feature, and all features coalesce around the all-important objective of getting the student into a classroom wherein a teacher of excellence presides.
So two of these mutually reinforcing programmatic features are 1) the provision of transportation and 2) the development of strong relationships with the families of students. A third feature has to do with my knowledge of inner city communities in general and North Minneapolis in particular. I am comfortable with people of every walk of life and in many international outposts, and on one level I insist that my students eventually learn the linguistic conventions and mores of mainstream middle class society in the United States; but I am also able to converse and relate to children and adolescents in the vernacular of people living at the urban core, children often operating upon inner city African American linguistic conventions, or other ethnic groups heavily influenced by ebonics. But I also draw upon my experience in Hmong, Hispanic, and other cultures to make what other linguistic adjustments are necessasry.
And this ability to communicate across many cultures and ethnicities involves more than just words that are actually spoken. It also involves the tone and cadence of the voice, body language, and sheer comfort with the culture of reference. This is not easily taught; it is best acquired through deep experiences, across as many years as possible, on the ground and in the homes of people with mores similar to those from which a student population is drawn.
People write long tomes on what it takes academically to reach and teach inner city young people and thus close the achievement gap. But here again, the matter is best reduced to simply stated features that are difficult to achieve, but which require more in the way of action than discussion. The public schools very well may never go about the task of reaching the inner city child and adolescent in the exact same manner as I do, but the fundamental successful features are there for extrapolation and application by the public schools.
To fully embrace the challenges of reaching urban youth from impoverished or dysfunctional life circumstances, institutions of education must adapt the following interlocking features: 1) get students into the classroom by going with assertive transportational intent right where the student lives; 2) communicate with families about their own concerns, even as the importance of attendance to academic achievement is impressed upon them; 3) ensure that the teacher in the classroom to which the student is being transported has both command of the academic knowledge base and the cultural nuance to reach the student in her or his brain and heart.
The public education of K-12 students allows for no excuses. It is fundamental to a democracy. All students, from the many backgrounds that the word "all" suggests, must be provided with a high quality public education. Thus it is incumbent on public systems of education to adapt the principles that have proven so successful in imparting an excellent education to students from impoverished and dysfunctional familial situations.
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