Aug 27, 2012
Toward an Overhaul of K-12 Education
My ultimate aim is to overhaul K-12 education in Minneapolis, the State of Minnesota, and the United States. I go about this in two different ways. The first is to follow through on the day to day implementation of a model for how K-12 education should be done, for students in general and for impoverished urban students in particular.
I. The Permanent Application of Love and Elbow Grease
Thus, the transformation of individual lives is my most important mission. I am a great believer, as you know, in “elbow grease”--- not just talking or planning or theorizing--- so as to get the job done. So much of what passes for discussion about K-12 education is just so much flapping of gums: It must make education professors and public policy wonks feel so very smart, but it doesn’t do a lick of good. Despite all the talk for lo these many decades of the crisis in the public schools, there isn’t much to indicate progress.
So my most important day to day endeavor is to follow through on those programmatic features that have made the New Salem Educational Initiative so successful as a model for how to educate the children of the very poor: identify, and by word of mouth accept, children from the poorest families, frequently of serous dysfunction; provide transportation and engage in lively banter that gets the kids to highly focused academic sessions while conveying a sense of caring, in all of this keeping attendance and retention high; move these students through a logical progression of assignments that lifts them from far below grade level achievement to status as the highest performers in their classes; put them on a college preparatory track with challenging materials and the highest level of instruction; convey and prove in action that the relationships forged are permanent and that students enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative will never lose the support that they have come to expect and treasure; and thus, in the most hands-on way imaginable, keep young people off the streets, away from drugs, and out of prison--- replacing these oft-expected outcomes with matriculation at first-rate colleges and universities.
II. Addressing the Systemic Impediments to Achieving High-Quality K-12 Public Education in the United States
There are three major impediments to the achievement of high-quality education in the United States:
1) Colleges and universities do not train high-quality teachers.
Schools and colleges of education feature academically flimsy coursework that do not give teachers the knowledge base that they need to transmit an authentic liberal arts curriculum to students. Very few teachers get master’s degrees in solid subject areas in math, science, history, economics, literature, and the fine arts; instead, they get a watered down curriculum for “masters of teaching” degrees that earn a lot of money for institutions of putative higher learning and allow teachers to move up in the “step and ladder” system of teacher remuneration. The latter fails utterly to reward excellence in teaching.
2) Curriculum is weak.
Schools at the K-5 level do not in most cases have curriculum in anything other than math and reading. Well-defined, grade-by-grade, logically sequenced curriculum that should include high-quality literature, science, history, economics, and the fine arts is missing. Our children get to middle school (generally Grades 6 through 8 these days), where the emphasis tends to be on developmental issues rather than academics, ill- prepared for subject area learning; because of the emphasis on socialization and personal development in middle schools, students leave 8th grade with not all that much more knowledge than when they entered middle school.
This leaves high school, just four years to cram in all of those things that should have been learned sequentially along the way. But getting a good high school teacher is hit or miss, entirely a matter of the dedication, intelligence, and self-acquired knowledge base of the individual teacher. Too often, teachers have never overcome the effects of their training in departments, schools, and colleges of education.
Thus does the typical student walk across the stage at graduation time to take a diploma that means far less than it should. Many of these students will need to take remedial classes before proceeding to credit-earning coursework toward a bachelor’s degree. Due to their poor knowledge base, young people are not trained for further education, for work, or for citizenship as they should be.
3) Central school district bureaucracies are ineffective.
School district personnel act to protect administrator and teacher wage and benefit interests, rather than articulating and implementing a program for properly educating K-12 students. Superintendents typically are overpaid and depart after two or three years. There is a surfeit of personnel doing unnecessary and duplicative tasks. School building principals tend to stay barricaded behind office walls and offer little genuine academic leadership. Young teachers tend to leave the profession within five years. Unions and education associations protect bad teachers. The few truly excellent teachers stay because they are unusually dedicated, self-motivated, and self-trained--- not because anything in the system rewards them for properly educating their students.
Hence, my friends, over the course of the next few months and years, in addition to my daily application of “elbow grease” in the high-quality academic training of my own students, I intend to engage in activities meant to pressure the K-12 public education system to be as effective as it should be. For this is the next stage of the Civil Rights Movement. We will not have a full democracy that offers the genuine opportunity for citizenship to all of our precious children until we have K-12 schools that properly educate every student, no matter what her or his descriptors of life circumstance.
And toward advancing the next stage of the Civil Rights Movement, please strive to understand the full range of activities to which I am dedicated and the importance of what you can do by reading these pages and taking action consistent with the principles articulated. I will to the end of my life be doing everything that I can to set a model for educating K-12 students, especially those from impoverished urban circumstances; and to work toward an overhaul of the system of public education that must educate students across the nation with that effectiveness that describes the New Salem Educational Initiative.
My hope is that by making you aware of the transformative power of education and thus the need to overhaul the K-12 system, you will take to heart the achievements of the remarkable students whose stories are revealed on these pages. By reading these pages and contemplating your own role, you advance a mission that lies right at core of an effort to bring full democracy to these United States.
The Remarkable Summer of 2012 in the New Salem Educational Initiative
Strong indication of my reasons for going about things as I do comes from this amazing summer of 2012 with my students. Many of you have seen the Star Tribune article (“One-Man Dynamo Has a Shining Record,” June 5, 2012) highlighting the successes of students in the New Salem Educational Initiative. In the photograph, two students and I can be seen discussing the life of Shakespeare, in the midst as we were of reading King Lear and discussing an accompanying biography of the great playwright himself.
Fresh from astonishing performances in which they delivered Shakespearean soliloquies at the June 2012 Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet, five students traveled with me in two different groups to the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona. Three of these students live on the most gang-ridden, drug-infested street of Minneapolis, but no matter: Having read King Lear with me line by line and taken roles along the way, these students hung on every word and understood the dialogue better than the great majority of well-educated, aesthetically inclined adults in the audience.
On the way back to Minneapolis, we stopped at my house in Northfield, where they talked to Barbara (my wife), looked through our ample book collection, ate the Chinese food I cooked for them, and then went on tours of the St. Olaf College and Carleton College campuses.
In the meantime, I ran numerous sessions with all of my students, keeping them academically fresh and moving them on ahead for high quality performance in 2012-2013. For students newer to the program, this meant continuing to work through the logically sequenced assignments that will move them to grade level in math and reading. For some of the younger students who have been with me for an extended time now, this meant doing things like already mastering multiplication (a conventionally Grade 3 skill) in anticipation of entering Grade 2 or Grade 3.
For students who will enter Grades 4 and 5, this meant reading material at the levels of Grade 6 or 7 and moving well along a course toward mastery of pre-Algebra mathematics skills (the four basic operations, decimals, fractions, percentages, proportions, ratios, and various applications in the use of graphs).
For students anticipating grades 6 through 8, this meant reading classic novels and plays, refining their pre-Algebra skills, and then acquiring skills in Algebra and Geometry that will have them fully prepared for excellent academic performance in high school.
For those Grade 9 through 12 students who have now been in the New Salem Educational Initiative for many years, their work with me this summer has featured intensive college preparatory experiences. They are moving through math curriculum fully preparing them in Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Calculus. They are reading practice ACT and SAT selections and engaging in explicit advanced vocabulary acquisition. They, even the Grade 9 students, are already taking practice ACTs and SATs, so that when they encounter the real thing, they will have prospects of aiming for scores that could yield National Merit Scholar status.
To a student, these young people greet me with smiles. They want to continue our sessions together in the summertime. The young ones leap into my arms and hurry into my car for transport to New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, where the sessions are held. It is really something to behold, the best way that I can imagine to spend my life. A few of you have yourselves been able to witness my interaction with my students and families. I hope that more of you can do so in the future, and you are welcome at any time that you can make the temporal space in your own busy lives.
In becoming interested in the New Salem Educational Initiative, you have become a part of something unprecedented, you should be very proud, and I want you to fully understand the phenomenon that is the transformation of young lives.
Fresh from astonishing performances in which they delivered Shakespearean soliloquies at the June 2012 Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet, five students traveled with me in two different groups to the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona. Three of these students live on the most gang-ridden, drug-infested street of Minneapolis, but no matter: Having read King Lear with me line by line and taken roles along the way, these students hung on every word and understood the dialogue better than the great majority of well-educated, aesthetically inclined adults in the audience.
On the way back to Minneapolis, we stopped at my house in Northfield, where they talked to Barbara (my wife), looked through our ample book collection, ate the Chinese food I cooked for them, and then went on tours of the St. Olaf College and Carleton College campuses.
In the meantime, I ran numerous sessions with all of my students, keeping them academically fresh and moving them on ahead for high quality performance in 2012-2013. For students newer to the program, this meant continuing to work through the logically sequenced assignments that will move them to grade level in math and reading. For some of the younger students who have been with me for an extended time now, this meant doing things like already mastering multiplication (a conventionally Grade 3 skill) in anticipation of entering Grade 2 or Grade 3.
For students who will enter Grades 4 and 5, this meant reading material at the levels of Grade 6 or 7 and moving well along a course toward mastery of pre-Algebra mathematics skills (the four basic operations, decimals, fractions, percentages, proportions, ratios, and various applications in the use of graphs).
For students anticipating grades 6 through 8, this meant reading classic novels and plays, refining their pre-Algebra skills, and then acquiring skills in Algebra and Geometry that will have them fully prepared for excellent academic performance in high school.
For those Grade 9 through 12 students who have now been in the New Salem Educational Initiative for many years, their work with me this summer has featured intensive college preparatory experiences. They are moving through math curriculum fully preparing them in Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Calculus. They are reading practice ACT and SAT selections and engaging in explicit advanced vocabulary acquisition. They, even the Grade 9 students, are already taking practice ACTs and SATs, so that when they encounter the real thing, they will have prospects of aiming for scores that could yield National Merit Scholar status.
To a student, these young people greet me with smiles. They want to continue our sessions together in the summertime. The young ones leap into my arms and hurry into my car for transport to New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, where the sessions are held. It is really something to behold, the best way that I can imagine to spend my life. A few of you have yourselves been able to witness my interaction with my students and families. I hope that more of you can do so in the future, and you are welcome at any time that you can make the temporal space in your own busy lives.
In becoming interested in the New Salem Educational Initiative, you have become a part of something unprecedented, you should be very proud, and I want you to fully understand the phenomenon that is the transformation of young lives.
Understanding the Power of the New Salem Educational Initiative through the Level of Student Skill and Talent on Display at the June 2012 Annual Banquet
I fervently hope that each of you reading this article has a chance to visit an academic session of the New Salem Educational Initiative. And I would be so honored if you could make our annual banquet, now held near the end of each academic year in late May or early June. The banquet is a chance to view the program in microcosm. There is strong indication in the performances and presentations at the banquet as to the rising skill levels of the students and the love that suffuses the room in reflection of my relationship with the students and their families. This was abundantly true at the Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet held on June 5, 2012.
So let me convey to you the flow of this year’s banquet and the feats of student skill, knowledge, and talent that were on display:
I honored students from the two programs (daily small-group program and Tuesday Tutoring) with certificates that included the following: Strong Performer (those who had not distinguished themselves in any unusual way but had risen steadily in skill and given a great effort from week to week); Outstanding Newcomer (to those for whom this was the first year in the New Salem Educational Initiative and who had gotten with the flow very quickly, grasping the opportunity for accelerated academic development right away); Great Enthusiasm (to four students who meet together on Friday evenings, led by a particularly enthusiastic Grade 5 boy who calls me every Friday afternoon just to make sure that we are having our academic session); Precocious Young Scholar (to very young students, mostly K-3 with one in Grade 4, who have risen quickly above grade level to display some impressive and in the case of three students truly astonishing skills given their tender years); Joyful Scholar (to a group of very good students with beautiful smiles and a particularly joyful zest for learning); Gentle Scholar (to three siblings who are very soft spoken but highly responsive to the goals set before them each week); Distinguished Alumnus (to three recent graduates from high school and the New Salem Educational Initiative who have gone on to success at the university level); Mighty English Language Learner (to an adult immigrant from Mexico who under my tutelage has become ever more adept at English); Promising Writer (to a Grade 8 student who already seems a sure bet to pass the Grade 9 Writing Test necessary for high school graduation in Minnesota); Perpetual Intellectual (to a student who is a never ending source of questions during our sessions and on the ride to and from the church: “Tell me in detail about the Shi’ites and the Sunnis”; “It’s sleeting: when does precipitation take the form of sleet as opposed to snow?”; “So Texas was its own republic at one time: please tell me about that.”); Tuesday Tutoring (to students in the Tuesday night program, with a particularly rewarding case of a Grade 9 student who was a real squirrel in Grade 7 but has done a complete turnaround and has locked on to me as his ticket to a better life); Dedicated Tuesday Tutor to my two great hearted assistants in the Tuesday Night Program who are such beautiful people, just want to take care of the world, truly those working to create the Village); Academic Royalty (to five students who would be perennial Student(s) of the Year but for whom I created an especially dignified award and presentation to make room for a student who rose precipitously during academic year 2011-2012; and Student of the Year (to the just aforementioned student).
There were a number of particularly special moments in the banquet. I have three very advanced Grade 9 students who are already training for their ACT and SAT and reading Shakespeare with a superior university student’s ease. Each of these students delivered a soliloquy from Hamlet, which we had fully read and discussed and then seen at The Jungle Theater in the Uptown area of Minneapolis. One did Hamlet’s father’s ghost (“I am thy father’s spirit…”), another did the part when evil Uncle/ King Claudius tries to repent before God but cannot muster a sincerity to match his words (“Oh, my offense is rank, it smells to Heaven… My word fly up, my thoughts remain below, words without thoughts never to Heaven go…”); and the third, a remarkable 4.0 GPA student who has been studying with me since she was in Grade 3, did the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy and also answered questions that I put to her about Shakespeare’s life, which we had also studied (beginnings in Stratford-on-Avon, marriage to Anne Hathaway producing an elder daughter and a set of twins, years as a hack writer in London, rise to prominence and founding of the Globe, 37 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems--- she knew it all and displayed her knowledge to my unrehearsed and spontaneous questioning).
Two students (Grade 5 [particularly impressive for one of such tender years] and Grade 7) acted as human glossaries while I personally did the soliloquy in which Hamlet explains to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that he has become exceedingly dispirited (“I have of late, wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth…”, despite knowing the amazing things of which life and human beings are capable (“What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty…”). These two late elementary and middle school students explained to the audience the meaning (in addition to aspects of the above quotations) of “most excellent canopy,” “brave o’erhanging firmament,” and “this majestical roof” as back to back metaphors meaning “the wondrous heavens or sky.”
And the Precocious Young Scholars all showed off some particularly advanced skill. A Grade 1 student showed that he already knew his multiplication tables through nine (9). A Grade 2 student stunned the crowd with her precocious vocabulary development (having overheard my work with older relatives on college preparatory items) in the knowledge of such words as nepotism, litigate, maladroit, malapropism, jocular, and quintessential. And three students read aloud from selections well above grade level, including a Grade K (kindergarten) student who read a selection written for students in Grade 2.
Thus did the banquet capture in microcosm the achievements and the remarkable rise of students who come from some of the meanest streets in North Minneapolis, itself the most economically challenged community of the Twin Cities.
I ask you again to consider the full power that is the story of student success in the New Salem Educational Initiative, and to strive for full understanding of the vital importance of the following statement:
Students in the New Salem Educational Initiative are on pathways, directed away from the life of the street and the penal institutions to which they lead, toward some of the best universities in the nation, where they will take their places alongside students from costly private and well-regarded suburban schools without feeling out of place in the slightest.
Reasons for Such Dramatic Student Success: How the New Salem Educational Initiative Works
My work in the New Salem Educational Initiative proceeds on a day to day basis in a way that draws upon my scholarship, my highly diverse teaching experiences, and my great love of young people to reach a level of effectiveness that results in the numerous success stories about which readers can learn in many other articles posted on this blog.
Garrison Keillor once said that his “Prairie Home Companion” evolved as a series of mistakes. If this be true, those mistakes have produced one of the best programs ever to find its way onto radio. But I understand that what he really meant is that at each point along the way, several of his highly unusual innovations could have well been seen by onlookers as almost certainly doomed to failure. It’s just that such “mistakes” have tended to be those of a kind that have produced the best of American enterprise, whether in business or the arts.
So I identify with my fellow Minnesotan’s (okay, I still love my Texas roots, but I’ve been in Minnesota for 30 years now) comments. There is no one else who does things the way that I do, no one else whom I know who keeps my pace, and there have been many people along the way who expressed doubt that I could keep it up. When I described what I do to keep my students’ attendance, participation rates, and academic results so high, a person from another organization providing supplementary academic services once replied: “But that’s not a job: That’s a life.”
And so it is, the life that I have evolved since I first began working in schools near the West Dallas projects as a sophomore at Southern Methodist University back in 1971. I have been the engine for the New Salem Educational Initiative for eight years now, intend to do so for at least another 15, and will in the meantime endeavor to train those who can provide high quality teaching and mentoring that can last beyond my own earthly sojourn: I am given to understand that I may not live on earth forever.
The Multiple Roles that I Perform in the New Salem Educational Initiative
The program has always been run on about $100,000 or less for a full 12-month period. That includes my remuneration for activities that would typically be defined into various administrative, clerical, and field jobs numbering seven or so. It includes cost of all academic materials, photocopying, and postage. And it includes all costs for fuel and maintenance in a program in which every single student is provided transportation to and from the weekly academic session. The latter is a hugely important part of the success of the New Salem Educational Initiative.
Transportation, together with my knowledge of the community and familial members and patterns (so that I can always track people down at alternative haunts if the student is not where she or he is supposed to be upon designated pick-up time) assures attendance rates very close to 100% and makes for much learning in conversational mode going to and from New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, where the sessions are held. If you think even for a few contemplative seconds about that $100,000 figure and consider the number of people put on the course to life success, you know that this must surely be the most cost effective program that one could find.
So for right now, I do it all. Most importantly, I work with students at all levels K-12, a few in college, and a few adults, seven days a week, in academic sessions that generally have three to five students. To meet escalating demand, I now run 20 such small-group sessions per week, in addition to the New Salem Missionary Baptist Church Tuesday Night Tutoring Program (which I started 18 years ago and in many ways has been the progenitor of the small-group program). I serve 65 students in the small group program and about 15 regular attendees in the Tuesday Night Program. The latter mainly serves kids from the church, and I have two tutors who work with me in this long-running strictly volunteer program. I also have a number of students with whom I work on an independent study basis, a few adults with whom I work on things like English as a Second Language (ESL) and GEDs, and at least five college students (graduates of the New Salem Educational Initiative) with whom I meet periodically to provide mentoring and academic assistance as necessary. In all, my numbers total well over 100 students, comprising a student body that is larger than some charter schools.
I do my actual teaching after school and on weekends. On weekdays, my instruction typically is rendered in three two-hour academic sessions (the Tuesday Night Program just leaves room for two small-group sessions on that day) that keep me occupied, including transporting students to and from sessions, from 2:00 PM until 10:00 PM. Mornings, early afternoons, and the wee hours of the next morning following thereupon, are spent on numerous details pertinent to administrative and clerical tasks. I generate all of the curriculum, write all grant proposals, and perform all of the tasks pertinent to the role of Development Officer (chief fundraiser).
Also, I do all of the fieldwork. I am effectively a social worker, personal and family counselor, and community resource liaison. This is a hugely important part of what I do. By doing these things in a low-key way, in the manner of a friend, sometimes so subtly that the individuals and families being counseled and assisted just think that we’re having a conversation, I build the kind of relationships that last forever.
Can you imagine how powerful this is to young people and families whose lives so often feature evanescent relationships with people, telephone numbers, residences, and institutions moving constantly through the revolving door? My students, their parents, and other family members come to feel in their guts that I am not going away, that I will be there for them just as I have been there every step of the way for my beloved son, Ryan, for every one of his 23 years. If it takes a village, isn’t this what is necessary?
The Response and Achievements of the Students
Please give full attention to and read the following statement two or three times, because like many things of unique and enduring impact, this circumstance of high importance is stated simply but carries dramatic consequences:
All students participating in the New Salem Educational Initiative are on the path to inevitable success.
So you do understand why that statement is so important? This means that so many problems that you have read about that seem intractable have been resolved in the approach that I have formulated and implemented in the New Salem Educational Initiative. The achievement gap is no more. Children who come into the program with familial and social problems so grave that they are at high risk for failure are at risk no more. Young people who once might have been on the streets and on a path to a life in prison instead find themselves in a setting of security, love, and academic instruction of such high quality that they are assured success.
To be sure, I studied through to my Ph. D. (Chinese [really Taiwanese] history, University of Minnesota, 1993). I have pursued mathematics, literature, and subjects across the broad spectrum of the liberal arts with a burning desire to know. I have been teaching now for over 40 years (mainly K-12 but also at the university level, in Taiwan as an English-as-a-Second Language [ESL] instructor, and even in a Missouri prison [teaching a GED curriculum]) and thus have acquired great formal professional experience. I have written eight published books, most of which can be found on Amazon (don’t forget the “Marvin” in the Gary Marvin Davison [I adopted the usage in my first publication to honor my dad, who bequeathed his given name as my middle name]). And I have created state academic standards through participation in the Minnesota Department of Education committee generating those, arguing successfully for them before the Minnesota State Legislature.
So yep, I bring academic credibility into each session with my students. But I also just plain love kids. I love the fact that they are at a stage in which they have potential, hope, and the promise to be whatever they, their parents, and I can work toward their being. I love inner city people, their struggle, their endurance, their ability to achieve at the full grasp of their dreams when given the proper assistance. And I love the supreme opportunity to restructure K-12 education and show how we can reach the full democratic potential of this very wonderful nation.
And in the end, none of this could be done without the most important ingredient always extolled by my West Texas pappy (grew up in McCaulley [population 100 {when those quadruplets finally arrive}], close to Hamlin [population 2,000], close to Abilene [and ya’ll know where that is]) called, “elbow grease.” So often, big ideas founder on the lack of application of elbow grease, so I have always been determined to apply this necessary ingredient for success in abundance.
So all of my students, even those thought to be intellectually slow, rise at least one grade level per year until they have caught academically up to their grade level of enrollment in school. Many students of average intelligence and above rise two and three grade levels during one academic year in both math and reading. Once a student has been with me for three years, she or he is generally performing academically above peers (of any social and economic class) and have embarked on a full-scale college preparatory track.
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To connect with my students I am shameless, in the manner of Lucille Ball or Steve Martin. With the young kids (K-5), I say things like, “Good snob!!!” (“That’s job, man!!!”) Or, “Okay, let’s snow to the jar.” (That’s “~~~ go to the car, man!!!”) Or I’ll pretend to bang my hand so hard on the table to make a point, or to put down a multiplication card that I hurt myself and ask, “Does anyone know of a hand shop where I can get this thing fixed?” (“Yeah, man, there’s one in Chicago!!!”) Young kids just completely buy this schtick, and it gets their attention for the serious academic tasks that I place before them.
Which is to say that they move through an arithmetic sequence that has young children doing multiplication long before they are asked to do so at school. They move on to take on purportedly difficult algebraic tasks in Grade 6, Grade 7 and Grade 8, sometimes earlier. They continue to get full academic support for high achievement through geometry, trigonometry, and calculus.
The students read a variety of fiction and nonfiction materials and undertake a great deal of explicit vocabulary instruction. For poor kids whose parents may not have finished high school, this can be the difference between their performance and that of students of middle and upper middle class provenance. They can read, they just haven’t heard those more difficult words, they haven’t seen very many people reading stuff with those words in them, so they are at a huge disadvantage when they go to take state achievement tests, and the disadvantage becomes magnified to a level that no democracy should allow when economically impoverished students go to take the ACT or the SAT. Again, within three years, they have turned vocabulary deficits into academic assets, using words in conversation and on essays that befuddle their classmates (and unfortunately, some teachers).
To get the level of achievement from my students that I do, I mostly use a yellow pad, occasionally an old-fashioned chalkboard, a ton of knowledge, and deep and abiding love. And I commit to them permanently. They know that I will never go away. I will still be looking in on them when they are in college and when they are adults. They have seen the evidence in students who have graduated from the program. They know that I am for real and will not fade away like so much has faded away from them in their prior lives. The academic quality of the program is absolutely essential, but it is the permanency of this commitment that allows me to make the statement that I asked you to read carefully and in repetition:
All students participating in the New Salem Educational Initiative are on the path to inevitable success.
Garrison Keillor once said that his “Prairie Home Companion” evolved as a series of mistakes. If this be true, those mistakes have produced one of the best programs ever to find its way onto radio. But I understand that what he really meant is that at each point along the way, several of his highly unusual innovations could have well been seen by onlookers as almost certainly doomed to failure. It’s just that such “mistakes” have tended to be those of a kind that have produced the best of American enterprise, whether in business or the arts.
So I identify with my fellow Minnesotan’s (okay, I still love my Texas roots, but I’ve been in Minnesota for 30 years now) comments. There is no one else who does things the way that I do, no one else whom I know who keeps my pace, and there have been many people along the way who expressed doubt that I could keep it up. When I described what I do to keep my students’ attendance, participation rates, and academic results so high, a person from another organization providing supplementary academic services once replied: “But that’s not a job: That’s a life.”
And so it is, the life that I have evolved since I first began working in schools near the West Dallas projects as a sophomore at Southern Methodist University back in 1971. I have been the engine for the New Salem Educational Initiative for eight years now, intend to do so for at least another 15, and will in the meantime endeavor to train those who can provide high quality teaching and mentoring that can last beyond my own earthly sojourn: I am given to understand that I may not live on earth forever.
The Multiple Roles that I Perform in the New Salem Educational Initiative
The program has always been run on about $100,000 or less for a full 12-month period. That includes my remuneration for activities that would typically be defined into various administrative, clerical, and field jobs numbering seven or so. It includes cost of all academic materials, photocopying, and postage. And it includes all costs for fuel and maintenance in a program in which every single student is provided transportation to and from the weekly academic session. The latter is a hugely important part of the success of the New Salem Educational Initiative.
Transportation, together with my knowledge of the community and familial members and patterns (so that I can always track people down at alternative haunts if the student is not where she or he is supposed to be upon designated pick-up time) assures attendance rates very close to 100% and makes for much learning in conversational mode going to and from New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, where the sessions are held. If you think even for a few contemplative seconds about that $100,000 figure and consider the number of people put on the course to life success, you know that this must surely be the most cost effective program that one could find.
So for right now, I do it all. Most importantly, I work with students at all levels K-12, a few in college, and a few adults, seven days a week, in academic sessions that generally have three to five students. To meet escalating demand, I now run 20 such small-group sessions per week, in addition to the New Salem Missionary Baptist Church Tuesday Night Tutoring Program (which I started 18 years ago and in many ways has been the progenitor of the small-group program). I serve 65 students in the small group program and about 15 regular attendees in the Tuesday Night Program. The latter mainly serves kids from the church, and I have two tutors who work with me in this long-running strictly volunteer program. I also have a number of students with whom I work on an independent study basis, a few adults with whom I work on things like English as a Second Language (ESL) and GEDs, and at least five college students (graduates of the New Salem Educational Initiative) with whom I meet periodically to provide mentoring and academic assistance as necessary. In all, my numbers total well over 100 students, comprising a student body that is larger than some charter schools.
I do my actual teaching after school and on weekends. On weekdays, my instruction typically is rendered in three two-hour academic sessions (the Tuesday Night Program just leaves room for two small-group sessions on that day) that keep me occupied, including transporting students to and from sessions, from 2:00 PM until 10:00 PM. Mornings, early afternoons, and the wee hours of the next morning following thereupon, are spent on numerous details pertinent to administrative and clerical tasks. I generate all of the curriculum, write all grant proposals, and perform all of the tasks pertinent to the role of Development Officer (chief fundraiser).
Also, I do all of the fieldwork. I am effectively a social worker, personal and family counselor, and community resource liaison. This is a hugely important part of what I do. By doing these things in a low-key way, in the manner of a friend, sometimes so subtly that the individuals and families being counseled and assisted just think that we’re having a conversation, I build the kind of relationships that last forever.
Can you imagine how powerful this is to young people and families whose lives so often feature evanescent relationships with people, telephone numbers, residences, and institutions moving constantly through the revolving door? My students, their parents, and other family members come to feel in their guts that I am not going away, that I will be there for them just as I have been there every step of the way for my beloved son, Ryan, for every one of his 23 years. If it takes a village, isn’t this what is necessary?
The Response and Achievements of the Students
Please give full attention to and read the following statement two or three times, because like many things of unique and enduring impact, this circumstance of high importance is stated simply but carries dramatic consequences:
All students participating in the New Salem Educational Initiative are on the path to inevitable success.
So you do understand why that statement is so important? This means that so many problems that you have read about that seem intractable have been resolved in the approach that I have formulated and implemented in the New Salem Educational Initiative. The achievement gap is no more. Children who come into the program with familial and social problems so grave that they are at high risk for failure are at risk no more. Young people who once might have been on the streets and on a path to a life in prison instead find themselves in a setting of security, love, and academic instruction of such high quality that they are assured success.
To be sure, I studied through to my Ph. D. (Chinese [really Taiwanese] history, University of Minnesota, 1993). I have pursued mathematics, literature, and subjects across the broad spectrum of the liberal arts with a burning desire to know. I have been teaching now for over 40 years (mainly K-12 but also at the university level, in Taiwan as an English-as-a-Second Language [ESL] instructor, and even in a Missouri prison [teaching a GED curriculum]) and thus have acquired great formal professional experience. I have written eight published books, most of which can be found on Amazon (don’t forget the “Marvin” in the Gary Marvin Davison [I adopted the usage in my first publication to honor my dad, who bequeathed his given name as my middle name]). And I have created state academic standards through participation in the Minnesota Department of Education committee generating those, arguing successfully for them before the Minnesota State Legislature.
So yep, I bring academic credibility into each session with my students. But I also just plain love kids. I love the fact that they are at a stage in which they have potential, hope, and the promise to be whatever they, their parents, and I can work toward their being. I love inner city people, their struggle, their endurance, their ability to achieve at the full grasp of their dreams when given the proper assistance. And I love the supreme opportunity to restructure K-12 education and show how we can reach the full democratic potential of this very wonderful nation.
And in the end, none of this could be done without the most important ingredient always extolled by my West Texas pappy (grew up in McCaulley [population 100 {when those quadruplets finally arrive}], close to Hamlin [population 2,000], close to Abilene [and ya’ll know where that is]) called, “elbow grease.” So often, big ideas founder on the lack of application of elbow grease, so I have always been determined to apply this necessary ingredient for success in abundance.
So all of my students, even those thought to be intellectually slow, rise at least one grade level per year until they have caught academically up to their grade level of enrollment in school. Many students of average intelligence and above rise two and three grade levels during one academic year in both math and reading. Once a student has been with me for three years, she or he is generally performing academically above peers (of any social and economic class) and have embarked on a full-scale college preparatory track.
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To connect with my students I am shameless, in the manner of Lucille Ball or Steve Martin. With the young kids (K-5), I say things like, “Good snob!!!” (“That’s job, man!!!”) Or, “Okay, let’s snow to the jar.” (That’s “~~~ go to the car, man!!!”) Or I’ll pretend to bang my hand so hard on the table to make a point, or to put down a multiplication card that I hurt myself and ask, “Does anyone know of a hand shop where I can get this thing fixed?” (“Yeah, man, there’s one in Chicago!!!”) Young kids just completely buy this schtick, and it gets their attention for the serious academic tasks that I place before them.
Which is to say that they move through an arithmetic sequence that has young children doing multiplication long before they are asked to do so at school. They move on to take on purportedly difficult algebraic tasks in Grade 6, Grade 7 and Grade 8, sometimes earlier. They continue to get full academic support for high achievement through geometry, trigonometry, and calculus.
The students read a variety of fiction and nonfiction materials and undertake a great deal of explicit vocabulary instruction. For poor kids whose parents may not have finished high school, this can be the difference between their performance and that of students of middle and upper middle class provenance. They can read, they just haven’t heard those more difficult words, they haven’t seen very many people reading stuff with those words in them, so they are at a huge disadvantage when they go to take state achievement tests, and the disadvantage becomes magnified to a level that no democracy should allow when economically impoverished students go to take the ACT or the SAT. Again, within three years, they have turned vocabulary deficits into academic assets, using words in conversation and on essays that befuddle their classmates (and unfortunately, some teachers).
To get the level of achievement from my students that I do, I mostly use a yellow pad, occasionally an old-fashioned chalkboard, a ton of knowledge, and deep and abiding love. And I commit to them permanently. They know that I will never go away. I will still be looking in on them when they are in college and when they are adults. They have seen the evidence in students who have graduated from the program. They know that I am for real and will not fade away like so much has faded away from them in their prior lives. The academic quality of the program is absolutely essential, but it is the permanency of this commitment that allows me to make the statement that I asked you to read carefully and in repetition:
All students participating in the New Salem Educational Initiative are on the path to inevitable success.
Aug 25, 2012
Student Success in the New Salem Educational Initiative: Franco Martin
Franco Martin has an unusual history in the New Salem Educational Initiative, inasmuch as he first enrolled as a Grade 2 student during the 2009-2010 academic year but did not begin his second year of participation in the Initiative until his Grade 4 year. I provide transportation to all weekly academic sessions of the program and interact with families of students in the program on an ongoing basis. Thus, I am able to keep abreast of changing residences, telephone numbers, and schools of enrollment. But in the case of Franco and his family during the 2009-2010 academic year, the switch of residence and phone number came so swiftly in the midst of a busy period that I could not catch up with Franco until many months had passed.
The interruption in attendance was unusual. My students have near-perfect attendance, and they overwhelming continue from one year to another. Franco had his attendance interrupted after just a few sessions, and he missed all of his Grade 3 year (2010-2011) before I could track him down. But I did track Franco down, a testimony to my vow never to give up on a single student once she or he is enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative.
Franco reenrolled as a Grade 4 student along with his brother Juan (Grade 2) for the 2011-2012 academic year. By this time, Franco had fallen two grade levels below that of school enrollment in reading and one year below grade level in math. Franco is a good and willing student but not as intellectually nimble as his younger brother, Juan. The fact that Juan is such an adept student, in many ways functioning academically above Franco, proved to be an emotional burden on the latter. Under these conditions, I considered as more important than ever the careful sequencing of assignments in very manageable chunks so as to maximize the chance of successful performance by Franco.
Steadily, Franco’s successful completion of assignments gained momentum. He gained two grade levels in reading and one grade level in math, so that by the end of academic year 2011-2012 he was functioning fully at grade level in both key skill areas. At the June 2012 Annual Banquet of the New Salem Educational Initiative, Franco received the “Most Improved” award; I carefully explained to all of those assemebled that this was one of the most prestigious awards earned at the banquet.
Miguel beamed. His confidence had returned. He no longer stood in the academic shadow of his younger brother. Franco Martin is now eagerly anticipating academic year 2012-2013, positioned for a level of continued accomplishment that will be transformative for this child of an immigrant family from Mexico.
The interruption in attendance was unusual. My students have near-perfect attendance, and they overwhelming continue from one year to another. Franco had his attendance interrupted after just a few sessions, and he missed all of his Grade 3 year (2010-2011) before I could track him down. But I did track Franco down, a testimony to my vow never to give up on a single student once she or he is enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative.
Franco reenrolled as a Grade 4 student along with his brother Juan (Grade 2) for the 2011-2012 academic year. By this time, Franco had fallen two grade levels below that of school enrollment in reading and one year below grade level in math. Franco is a good and willing student but not as intellectually nimble as his younger brother, Juan. The fact that Juan is such an adept student, in many ways functioning academically above Franco, proved to be an emotional burden on the latter. Under these conditions, I considered as more important than ever the careful sequencing of assignments in very manageable chunks so as to maximize the chance of successful performance by Franco.
Steadily, Franco’s successful completion of assignments gained momentum. He gained two grade levels in reading and one grade level in math, so that by the end of academic year 2011-2012 he was functioning fully at grade level in both key skill areas. At the June 2012 Annual Banquet of the New Salem Educational Initiative, Franco received the “Most Improved” award; I carefully explained to all of those assemebled that this was one of the most prestigious awards earned at the banquet.
Miguel beamed. His confidence had returned. He no longer stood in the academic shadow of his younger brother. Franco Martin is now eagerly anticipating academic year 2012-2013, positioned for a level of continued accomplishment that will be transformative for this child of an immigrant family from Mexico.
Student Success in the New Salem Educational Initiative: Candace Anderson
Candace Anderson is a member of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, where I have been a member for 19 years. She had occasionally attended the New Salem Tuesday Night Tutoring program, a program of multiple students and tutors that I also oversee, but her attendance was erratic, and her academic performance suffered accordingly.
So during academic year 2011-2012, Candace's’s mother, Brenda, sought my focused attention for improving Candace's’s math and reading skills in the small-group setting. When Candace entered the Initiative, she was functioning one full level below that of school enrollment in both of those major skill areas. But I quickly assessed Candace as having no impediments to rapid skill acquisition, so I launched her on a very aggressive program in both math and reading.
By spring 2012, Candace was functioning at grade level in both math and reading. I picked her up at school each Tuesday afternoon; since her school Jenny Lind (a K-5 school in Minneapolis) operates on a schedule of late arrival and late dismissal, Candace would be hungry when she entered my vehicle after 4:00 PM. I therefore would provide a sandwich and orange juice at the beginning of each session, and I would also give Candace a granola bar accompanied by another small bottle of juice at the end of each small-group session. At about 5:45 PM each week, Candace would take a short break and then stay for the Tuesday night program that runs from 6:00 until 7:30 PM. In this manner, I drew upon the availability of both tutoring programs for which I serve as director to maximize Candace’s progress in the New Salem Educational Initiative.
Thus, Candace thrived in her first year of enrollment. She proved to be an avid reader when given challenging assignments taken from various books, including the Core Knowledge series edited by E. D. Hirsch. She also delighted in her math progress, proving especially responsive to assignments involving place value for both whole numbers and decimals. She beamed brightly on the day that she first correctly read the number 564,245,231, 852,627,983.987 from its beginnings in the hundred quadrillions to its ending in the thousandths position.
Candace thus anticipates the 2012-2013 academic year with joy and pride. With the academic weight and ballast that comes with at least one full year of participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative, she is on course to begin the school year functioning fully at grade level in both math and reading, poised to enter the fast track toward a college preparatory program. Candace’s continued academic ascent will be a joy to witness for Brenda and those at New Salem who have marveled at the remarkable success that she manifested in academic year 2011-2012.
Aug 24, 2012
Student Success in the New Salem Educational Initiative: Gifford Blake
Gifford Blake lives in a crumbling frame building in an area of North Minneapolis that has known too much violence in recent years. I pick Gifford up every week at his apartment, located up rickety stairs to a unit where a small bedroom, living room, and kitchen are shared by five people in the family: Gifford, his mother (Marcia), sisters (Shawna [Grade 1] and Brenda [Grade 6]), and an infant brother.
Gifford was in Grade 4 during academic year 2011-2012, when he first enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative. He was functioning two levels below that of school enrollment in both math and reading. This is a typical case for my students, who are generally functioning below grade level upon enrollment. Gifford was receiving special education services at Sheridan K-8 school during that year, as he had in all of his school environments since kindergarten. Gifford had received diagnosis for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), also a common assessment in the Minneapolis Public Schools, especially for African American males.
Never trusting these assessments, I immediately put Gifford on an aggressive program of skill acquisition that saw him quickly rise toward grade level in math and improve dramatically in reading. Gifford did evidence a tendency to get distracted, but he latched quickly onto me as a teacher and confidante, and he generally stayed focused when well-engaged with manageable, carefully sequenced assignments. Gifford, who frequently complained that there was not enough food at home, also gained significant focus by putting his hunger at bay while munching on sandwiches and granola bars that I brought for him.
Gifford had not been properly challenged in the school environment. But as a student in the New Salem Educational Initiative, Gifford fully mastered his multiplication tables 0 through 10, learned to perform multi-digit operations in multiplication and division, and worked through challenging word problems in the manner of a full-fledged Grade 4 student. Similarly, Gifford moved through sequential verbal skills assignments that built his vocabulary and reading comprehension much closer to the Grade 4 level.
Gifford is on his way to academic success after just one year in the New Salem Educational Initiative. Marcia will revel as Gifford demonstrates full grade level mastery during academic year 2012-2013, moves onto a college preparatory track of study, and anticipates a future somewhere other than a shabby three-room apartment encompassed by purveyors of violence and drugs.
Gifford was in Grade 4 during academic year 2011-2012, when he first enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative. He was functioning two levels below that of school enrollment in both math and reading. This is a typical case for my students, who are generally functioning below grade level upon enrollment. Gifford was receiving special education services at Sheridan K-8 school during that year, as he had in all of his school environments since kindergarten. Gifford had received diagnosis for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), also a common assessment in the Minneapolis Public Schools, especially for African American males.
Never trusting these assessments, I immediately put Gifford on an aggressive program of skill acquisition that saw him quickly rise toward grade level in math and improve dramatically in reading. Gifford did evidence a tendency to get distracted, but he latched quickly onto me as a teacher and confidante, and he generally stayed focused when well-engaged with manageable, carefully sequenced assignments. Gifford, who frequently complained that there was not enough food at home, also gained significant focus by putting his hunger at bay while munching on sandwiches and granola bars that I brought for him.
Gifford had not been properly challenged in the school environment. But as a student in the New Salem Educational Initiative, Gifford fully mastered his multiplication tables 0 through 10, learned to perform multi-digit operations in multiplication and division, and worked through challenging word problems in the manner of a full-fledged Grade 4 student. Similarly, Gifford moved through sequential verbal skills assignments that built his vocabulary and reading comprehension much closer to the Grade 4 level.
Gifford is on his way to academic success after just one year in the New Salem Educational Initiative. Marcia will revel as Gifford demonstrates full grade level mastery during academic year 2012-2013, moves onto a college preparatory track of study, and anticipates a future somewhere other than a shabby three-room apartment encompassed by purveyors of violence and drugs.
Aug 19, 2012
Moving on to the Second Stage of the Civil Rights Movement: Toward an Overhaul of K-12 Education
Participants in the Civil Rights Movement from the middle 1950s into the late 1960s, and those involved in the Women’s Movement from the 1960s into the early 1970s, took us much farther toward the reality of democracy in the United States than had been the case before. Until the advent and numerous successes of those great socio-political movements, the United States offered the advantages of citizenship to a minority, white men, and arguably offered the full advantages of citizenship only to an economic elite within the male population. Due to the victories of the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Movement, African Americans (and by extension, other people of color) and women came much closer to equity with the male elite in access to educational, political, and residential opportunity.
These gains were won, though, in the courtroom and were at their core legal victories. Schools, colleges, and corporations could no longer as a matter of policy deny equitable access to the historically excluded majority of the population. Significant as the gains were for women, who now dominate in many of the professions, the Women’s Movement stalled at a stage of essential parity in educational and professional opporunity; there remained a double standard at home and in community, loaded with traditional assumptions about women’s domestic roles and cosmetic presentation. But the double standard is strategically assailable and will fall when enough women care enough to pressure their male counterparts into forging equitable domestic partnerships and to force institutions (such as television news departments, for example) to allow females to decide how they will present themselves cosmetically and sartorially.
As to the Civil Rights Movement, that also stalled, in this case at a stage of enormous advance into the middle class for African Americans and other people of color who were in a position to seize the new opportunities inherent in legal parity. These populations took their places at institutions of higher learning and business enterprise as never before; with the achievement of rising economic status, these populations also with great frequency exercised their right to move to areas of urban and suburban residence from which they had historically been barred. But left behind was an urban underclass, poorly educated, unemployed or low-paid, facing dangerous community conditions stemming from historical factors that have never been adequately addressed.
The second stage of the Civil Rights Movement must feature above all else a total overhaul in K-12 education. Most especially, we must completely revamp departments, schools, and colleges of teacher training. We need to examine fully how money is allocated from central school district offices. And we must make sure that every child, at every level throughout the K-12 years, is properly instructed in a rich liberal arts curriculum from a well-defined body of knowledge at each grade level; and thereby walks across the stage at the time of high school graduation possessing a rich intellectual inheritance in math, science, history, economics, literature, and the fine arts.
We must have full faith that such a walk is possible for all of our precious children across ethnicity and economic class. The institutions of teacher training and K-12 curriculum delivery must be thoroughly overhauled if, following in the footsteps of the courageous participants in the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Movement of decades past, we are to recommit ourselves to full democracy in the United States of America.
These gains were won, though, in the courtroom and were at their core legal victories. Schools, colleges, and corporations could no longer as a matter of policy deny equitable access to the historically excluded majority of the population. Significant as the gains were for women, who now dominate in many of the professions, the Women’s Movement stalled at a stage of essential parity in educational and professional opporunity; there remained a double standard at home and in community, loaded with traditional assumptions about women’s domestic roles and cosmetic presentation. But the double standard is strategically assailable and will fall when enough women care enough to pressure their male counterparts into forging equitable domestic partnerships and to force institutions (such as television news departments, for example) to allow females to decide how they will present themselves cosmetically and sartorially.
As to the Civil Rights Movement, that also stalled, in this case at a stage of enormous advance into the middle class for African Americans and other people of color who were in a position to seize the new opportunities inherent in legal parity. These populations took their places at institutions of higher learning and business enterprise as never before; with the achievement of rising economic status, these populations also with great frequency exercised their right to move to areas of urban and suburban residence from which they had historically been barred. But left behind was an urban underclass, poorly educated, unemployed or low-paid, facing dangerous community conditions stemming from historical factors that have never been adequately addressed.
The second stage of the Civil Rights Movement must feature above all else a total overhaul in K-12 education. Most especially, we must completely revamp departments, schools, and colleges of teacher training. We need to examine fully how money is allocated from central school district offices. And we must make sure that every child, at every level throughout the K-12 years, is properly instructed in a rich liberal arts curriculum from a well-defined body of knowledge at each grade level; and thereby walks across the stage at the time of high school graduation possessing a rich intellectual inheritance in math, science, history, economics, literature, and the fine arts.
We must have full faith that such a walk is possible for all of our precious children across ethnicity and economic class. The institutions of teacher training and K-12 curriculum delivery must be thoroughly overhauled if, following in the footsteps of the courageous participants in the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Movement of decades past, we are to recommit ourselves to full democracy in the United States of America.
Aug 15, 2012
Student Success in the New Salem Educational Initiative: Manuel Espinosa
Manuel Espinosa first enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative as a Grade 3 student during the 2009-2010 academic year. At the time, he was functioning only at the Grade 2 level in math and just the Grade 1 level in reading. His mother (Gloria) and sister (Felicia) were very worried that Manuel had gotten off to the wrong start at school and that in the future academic failure would prevent him from breaking the pattern of familial poverty that described their own lives as struggling immigrants from Mexico.
I began to lay out a carefully sequenced program of skill acquisition for Manuel. Week followed week in that first academic year of enrollment as Manuel made a remarkable ascent to grade level in math and near grade level in reading. He began to take pride in his performance in school, bringing his papers and report cards to me so that I could see the steady progress that Manuel was making in that context. This mirrored the progress that Manuel was making in his weekly two-hour sessions under my direction, and in conversations that we had going to and from each session (I personally transport each student).
In these conversations, Manuel showed an enhanced interest in vocabulary, asking the meaning of words that he read on street and interstate (I-94 and I-35) signs. As we road, read the signs, and defined words, I would take the opportunity to introduce words that rhymed with the ones that we were saw on the signs, or logically fit into sentences with these words. Thus was the learning that had taken place in the classroom joined with that which occurred in transport to improve the verbal skills of a young boy who at the beginning of the school year had borne the label of an English Language Learner (ELL).
By the end of academic year 2009-2010, Manuel had recovered one full grade level in math and nearly two full grade levels in reading. During his second year of enrollment in the New Salem Educational Initiative, (academic year 2010-2011) Manuel rose to the top of his Grade 4 class at school, and he was again a top student in his Grade 5 class during academic year 2011-2012. Manuel’s rise to academic prominence and his personal responsiveness to my instruction make a convincing case for the permanency of the relationship that I have forged wsith Manuel and his family, the ongoing nature of which will allow this young man to stay on a course to defy the odds that attend the descriptors of his life circumstances.
I began to lay out a carefully sequenced program of skill acquisition for Manuel. Week followed week in that first academic year of enrollment as Manuel made a remarkable ascent to grade level in math and near grade level in reading. He began to take pride in his performance in school, bringing his papers and report cards to me so that I could see the steady progress that Manuel was making in that context. This mirrored the progress that Manuel was making in his weekly two-hour sessions under my direction, and in conversations that we had going to and from each session (I personally transport each student).
In these conversations, Manuel showed an enhanced interest in vocabulary, asking the meaning of words that he read on street and interstate (I-94 and I-35) signs. As we road, read the signs, and defined words, I would take the opportunity to introduce words that rhymed with the ones that we were saw on the signs, or logically fit into sentences with these words. Thus was the learning that had taken place in the classroom joined with that which occurred in transport to improve the verbal skills of a young boy who at the beginning of the school year had borne the label of an English Language Learner (ELL).
By the end of academic year 2009-2010, Manuel had recovered one full grade level in math and nearly two full grade levels in reading. During his second year of enrollment in the New Salem Educational Initiative, (academic year 2010-2011) Manuel rose to the top of his Grade 4 class at school, and he was again a top student in his Grade 5 class during academic year 2011-2012. Manuel’s rise to academic prominence and his personal responsiveness to my instruction make a convincing case for the permanency of the relationship that I have forged wsith Manuel and his family, the ongoing nature of which will allow this young man to stay on a course to defy the odds that attend the descriptors of his life circumstances.
Student Success in the New Salem Educational Initiative: Damon Peters
Damon Peters first enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative as a Grade 3 student during the 2009-2010 academic year. At the time, his mother, Maxine, expressed deep concern at the indications of teachers that Damon was reading far below grade level and that his math skills lagged behind those of his peers who were functioning fully at Grade 3. She did not want to see her son fail in school and get caught in the cycle of poverty that typified so many people around her.
This was a familiar situation for me, since I typically observe students from challenged backgrounds functioning two grade levels or more below that of school enrollment when they first enroll in the New Salem Educational Initiative. This frequently results in an entire academic year of intensified instruction in both math and reading, at which point most students have risen to grade level in both key skill areas.
In Damon’s case, though, the ascent was even more rapid. He had witnessed three other family members go off each week to academic sessions with me, and upon his enrollment was primed and ready to exert full effort. I quickly noticed that Damon is naturally very bright, so that all he needed was a logically sequenced program of skill remediation quickly to close the gaps to grade level that had been present in both math and reading. By the end of his Grade 3 year, Damon had not only attained full grade level performance; he in fact was already moving on to skill acquisition assignments typical for Grade 4 students.
During Damon’s second year (academic year 2010-2011) of enrollment he had mastered all math and reading material pertinent to his Grade 4 level of school enrollment by November 2010. By February 2011, he had mastered Grade 5 material in both key skill areas, and by the end of May 2011, Damon had passed math and reading tests indicating mastery of Grade 6 material. At the end of his Grade 5 academic year (2011-2012), Damon was taking on many challenges at the high school and collegiate levels.
At the 2011-12 Annual Banquet, Damon demonstrated his mastery of Shakespearean (Elizabethan) English, an interest he pursued during summer 2012 by reading King Lear with me and attending a staging of this great play with several other students at the Great River Shakespeare Festival (Winona). Damon is a student who started below grade level but in just three years of participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative is functioning far above his Grade 6 status in school. His continued progress along a college preparatory track will be a joy to observe.
This was a familiar situation for me, since I typically observe students from challenged backgrounds functioning two grade levels or more below that of school enrollment when they first enroll in the New Salem Educational Initiative. This frequently results in an entire academic year of intensified instruction in both math and reading, at which point most students have risen to grade level in both key skill areas.
In Damon’s case, though, the ascent was even more rapid. He had witnessed three other family members go off each week to academic sessions with me, and upon his enrollment was primed and ready to exert full effort. I quickly noticed that Damon is naturally very bright, so that all he needed was a logically sequenced program of skill remediation quickly to close the gaps to grade level that had been present in both math and reading. By the end of his Grade 3 year, Damon had not only attained full grade level performance; he in fact was already moving on to skill acquisition assignments typical for Grade 4 students.
During Damon’s second year (academic year 2010-2011) of enrollment he had mastered all math and reading material pertinent to his Grade 4 level of school enrollment by November 2010. By February 2011, he had mastered Grade 5 material in both key skill areas, and by the end of May 2011, Damon had passed math and reading tests indicating mastery of Grade 6 material. At the end of his Grade 5 academic year (2011-2012), Damon was taking on many challenges at the high school and collegiate levels.
At the 2011-12 Annual Banquet, Damon demonstrated his mastery of Shakespearean (Elizabethan) English, an interest he pursued during summer 2012 by reading King Lear with me and attending a staging of this great play with several other students at the Great River Shakespeare Festival (Winona). Damon is a student who started below grade level but in just three years of participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative is functioning far above his Grade 6 status in school. His continued progress along a college preparatory track will be a joy to observe.
Student Success in the New Salem Educational Initiative: Bonnie Mathews
Bonnie Mathews first enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative as a Grade 4 student during the 2010-2011 academic year. At the time, her father, Brandon, expressed concern that Bonnie was not reading well enough for her grade level, and that teachers continually indicated that she had trouble focusing her attention on that task of the moment. Given these parental and teacher concerns, I scheduled a one-on-one two-hour weekly academic session for Bonnie and launched her on an aggressive program of skill development.
Bonnie proved herself to be a very bright girl who responded eagerly to the focused attention that she was getting from me. She rose with great speed to full grade level performance in both math and reading, proving quickly that she had all of the latent and manifest academic skills necessary to excel in her grade level assignments at school. The problem of focus was in evidence at times, even under one-on-one conditions. I could see that the problem as it occurred in my own sessions with Bonnie revealed itself not because of any academic disinterest on Bonnie’s part, nor because of any intractable skill deficits, but variously 1) because of certain life concerns and 2) because of certain flights of imagination revealed in the context of the moment.
I drew upon my experience with other such apparent attention deficit cases to direct Bonnie’s attention back to the task at hand. I would first of all discuss any concerns that Bonnie had as to her life at school or at home. I would offer an empathetic ear and advice as appropriate, give her a chance for further comment, allow enough (but not excessive) time for full venting of frustrations and discussion of solutions--- then bring the session back into focus upon the math or reading skill designated for acquisition. Similarly, I would give serious attention to Bonnie’s flights of fancy, treating them as creative observations of and interaction with the world around her; then attention would be directed back to the task at hand.
Bonnie came to appreciate the validation that came from this approach. By the end of that first year of enrollment in the New Salem Educational Initiative, her Grade 4 year at school, Bonnie was performing math operations and reading assignments typically associated with students at Grade 5. Bonnie continued on that trajectory as an enrolled student in Grade 5, making A’s and B’s in her first year of middle school.
Bonnie's rise to academic success has been very rapid. Her case provides ample evidence for an approach that treats each child as a unique person with particular physiology, personality, and parental circumstances--- but holds each child to the same set of very high acdemic standards.
Bonnie proved herself to be a very bright girl who responded eagerly to the focused attention that she was getting from me. She rose with great speed to full grade level performance in both math and reading, proving quickly that she had all of the latent and manifest academic skills necessary to excel in her grade level assignments at school. The problem of focus was in evidence at times, even under one-on-one conditions. I could see that the problem as it occurred in my own sessions with Bonnie revealed itself not because of any academic disinterest on Bonnie’s part, nor because of any intractable skill deficits, but variously 1) because of certain life concerns and 2) because of certain flights of imagination revealed in the context of the moment.
I drew upon my experience with other such apparent attention deficit cases to direct Bonnie’s attention back to the task at hand. I would first of all discuss any concerns that Bonnie had as to her life at school or at home. I would offer an empathetic ear and advice as appropriate, give her a chance for further comment, allow enough (but not excessive) time for full venting of frustrations and discussion of solutions--- then bring the session back into focus upon the math or reading skill designated for acquisition. Similarly, I would give serious attention to Bonnie’s flights of fancy, treating them as creative observations of and interaction with the world around her; then attention would be directed back to the task at hand.
Bonnie came to appreciate the validation that came from this approach. By the end of that first year of enrollment in the New Salem Educational Initiative, her Grade 4 year at school, Bonnie was performing math operations and reading assignments typically associated with students at Grade 5. Bonnie continued on that trajectory as an enrolled student in Grade 5, making A’s and B’s in her first year of middle school.
Bonnie's rise to academic success has been very rapid. Her case provides ample evidence for an approach that treats each child as a unique person with particular physiology, personality, and parental circumstances--- but holds each child to the same set of very high acdemic standards.
Student Success in the New Salem Educational Initiative: Blake Bradford
Blake Bradford first enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative as a Grade 2 student in the 2009-2010 academic year. At the time, Blake was functioning below grade level in both math and reading, the typical situation for Minneapolis Public Schools students whose families face significant economic and life challenges. I designed a highly aggressive program of skill remediation for Blake that by the end of the academic year found him ascending to grade level in math and near grade level in reading.
I was sufficiently pleased by Blake’s progress to place before him select skill acquisition assignments more typical of a Grade 3 curriculum. Thus, by the end of his Grade 2 year, Blake had mastered most of his multiplication tables through 9 and had knowledge of a number of vocabulary items not generally understood until Grade 3. Blake eagerly looked forward to his two-hour weekly small-group academic session, highly abetted by the relationship that I was forging with his family. Every week, Blake’s mother (Rebecca) and grandmother (Sara) would tell me what a liking Blake had taken to me, how he got so excited about each weekly academic session, and how much they thought this had to do with the academic progress that they could see and that was observed by Blake’s teachers at school.
During his Grade 3 academic year (2010-2011), as Blake completed one logically sequenced assignment after another, his pride in accomplishment grew accordingly, his academic focus became more and more acute, and his performance both in his small-group sessions with me and in his school setting gave evidence of a young man who had recovered to grade level and was poised to rise above his level of school enrollment in both math and reading.
At the beginning of Grade 4, Blake encountered a host of personal and familial problems that seemed to impede his proper concentration in school and threaten to undercut the remarkable progress in both math and reading that he had sustained during Grade 2 and Grade 3. But I worked with Blake’s family, serving directly as counselor and acting as community resource liaison when the need arose. Blake’s attitude steadily improved, and the winning smile that accompanies his natural disposition began to spread widely on his face again as he began each session with me. By the end of Blake’s Grade 4 year, he was functioning fully at grade level in math and reading and was once again poised to take on tasks above level of school enrollment.
Thus, Blake now looks forward to academic year 2012-2013 with the prospects of great academic achievement. My ability to forge strong relationships with Blake and his family, while providing the highest quality academic instruction, has been instrumental in keeping Blake on this path to success.
Student Success in the New Salem Educational Initiative: Melvin Gifford
Melvin Gifford first enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative as a Grade 1 student during the 2009-2010 academic year. He enrolled late in that academic year, in March, by which time his teachers were expressing concerns that Melvin was having problems reading material appropriate to his grade level, thinking that a speech impediment was exacerbating his reading difficulties. His teachers also indicated that Melvin’s math skills had not reached full grade level development by that point in the school year. Melvin’s mother (Karla) and male friend (Anson) had just moved to Minneapolis close to the beginning of that academic year, in August 2010. They lived in one of the cheapest rental units in the city, on Newton Avenue North, just south of Glenwood. Karla and Anson were seeking to make a fresh start in Minneapolis, and they both fervently wanted Melvin to get the kind of education that would allow him to break the cycle of poverty that Karla and Anson had witnessed in their own families.
A variety of factors influence poor school performance, most essentially those rooted in environment and familial circumstances, and those rooted in the natural aptitude of the child. I am always braced for those frequently occurring challenges whereby moving a student to grade level performance requires particularly stringent effort over a period of months and, in a few cases, a year or two. But possessed of a keen natural intelligence, Melvin did not as it turned out present problems so grave that they could not be quickly addressed with an aggressive program of skill remediation.
With strong support from Karla and Anson, garnered from the firm relationship that I built with the family,
Melvin responded with alacrity to the academic program, and he latched onto me as a mentor as well as teacher. By the end of academic year 2010-2011 (in just three months time) he rose quickly to grade level in both reading and math. During academic year 2010-2011 Melvin attained Grade 3 performance levels (one grade level above that of school enrollment) in both math and reading. At the annual banquet he impressed attendees with his knowledge of his multiplication tables, having completely mastered this Grade 3 skill.
Melvin continued his strong academic performance during his Grade 3 academic year 2011-2012. Despite significant familial challenges and a very challenged home economy, Melvin responded to my instruction and mentorship so enthusiastically as to perform above grade level in both math and reading. Melvin's participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative has had a transformative impact on his life, and his ongoing participation gives him prospects for life success that he would not have otherwise.
A variety of factors influence poor school performance, most essentially those rooted in environment and familial circumstances, and those rooted in the natural aptitude of the child. I am always braced for those frequently occurring challenges whereby moving a student to grade level performance requires particularly stringent effort over a period of months and, in a few cases, a year or two. But possessed of a keen natural intelligence, Melvin did not as it turned out present problems so grave that they could not be quickly addressed with an aggressive program of skill remediation.
With strong support from Karla and Anson, garnered from the firm relationship that I built with the family,
Melvin responded with alacrity to the academic program, and he latched onto me as a mentor as well as teacher. By the end of academic year 2010-2011 (in just three months time) he rose quickly to grade level in both reading and math. During academic year 2010-2011 Melvin attained Grade 3 performance levels (one grade level above that of school enrollment) in both math and reading. At the annual banquet he impressed attendees with his knowledge of his multiplication tables, having completely mastered this Grade 3 skill.
Melvin continued his strong academic performance during his Grade 3 academic year 2011-2012. Despite significant familial challenges and a very challenged home economy, Melvin responded to my instruction and mentorship so enthusiastically as to perform above grade level in both math and reading. Melvin's participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative has had a transformative impact on his life, and his ongoing participation gives him prospects for life success that he would not have otherwise.
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