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.
...................................................................................
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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment