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.