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.