In my compact book, Just Another Day at the Office, I have chronicled the remarkable academic rise of children from a family living on one of the most gang-ridden, violence-prone streets of Minneapolis--- 6th Street North, enveloped by 26th Avenue North to the north, West Broadway to the south, Lyndale Avenue North to the west, and I-94 to the east. These students demonstrate another promise inherent in the tenet of enduring commitment and permanency of relationship. Their family has known me so long, and these young people have been participants in the New Salem Educational Initiative for so many years, that they will have the academic weight and ballast, and the sense of life ethic, to succeed brilliantly in anything that they do. With students who have been enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative for five years or more as K-12 students, life prospects are especially favorable. Some members of the family of reference are now in their eighth year of participation. On Saturday mornings we move together as if extensions of a common body.
This group consists of Belinda (data privacy names here and to follow), Grade 8; Darnel (Grade 6); Robin (Grade 3), and Walter (Grade 1). Belinda has been a participant in the New Salem Educational Initiative since she was in Grade 1; Darnell began when he was in Grade 3; Darnel’s brother Walter began in Grade K (kindergarten); Robin also began in Grade K.
Belinda had not had a good kindergarten experience and was perceived as being academically below the average prevailing in her class at the beginning of the 2005-2006 academic year, when she first enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative. But she was so eager to advance her skills, that in her group of four she completed tasks quickly and a tear would be forming in her eyes before I could get back to her, so eager was she for the next assignment. Once, after Belinda hurt her right leg, she spurned my offer to carry her to the car for transport to our weekly academic session at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, instead hopping on her left leg down more than a dozen steps to the car, declaring: “Okay, let’s go learn some stuff!”
Darnel defies any claptrap from the “developmentally appropriate” crowd in the education establishment and those that would make generalizations about the ability of Grade 4 boys to sit quietly and focus on academic tasks. Darnel has always taken on tasks far above his “developmentally appropriate” stage, and he has magnificent powers of seated concentration. There were mystifying junctures in Darnel’s early years in school when teachers would tell his mother (I’ll call her Bonnie) that Darnel was behind in either reading or math. I just smiled at the errant evaluations often dispensed by K-12 teachers in the public schools, reassuring Bonnie that Darnel was not only not behind, he was moving rapidly to the status of a near-genius in observable academic production. In Grade 5 he read King Lear (as did Belinda) with me in full and traveled during summer 2012 to the Great
River Shakespeare Festival in Winona to see a production of Shakespeare’s great work. This spring 2013, in Grade 6, Darnel (and Belinda) will read both King Henry V and Twelfth Night with me. Meanwhile, Darnel is soaring three grades above school enrollment in math.
Robin is now, in her Grade 3 academic year, doing Grade 4 and Grade 5 math; she masters college preparatory words such as “malapropism,” ‘truculent,” and “quintessential.” Walter, now in Grade 1, can perform any task in mental addition and subtraction that I give him and is well on his way to mastering his multiplication tables (typically a Grade 3 skill). Similarly, he reads with the fluency of a Grade 3 student.
Belinda, Darnel, Robin, and Walter; together with fabulous Sunday evening participant Monique (sister to Robin and cousin to the others); represent the full power and potential of the New Salem Educational Initiative. These students know what I am going to say before I say it. They anticipate my every move. Belinda, Walter, and Monique can easily slide into teaching roles if I call upon them. They flash multiplication cards like I do. They show their younger family members how to compile vocabulary lists from reading material, as they have done so many times for me. They demonstrate tenacity in sticking to a task, even as they exercise unflagging patience in explaining a concept until it is mastered; they are following a model that in the cases of Belinda and Monique they have witnessed for eight years.
These young people are my family in the fullest sense of the term. They are close to me in the manner of the lights of my life--- precious son Ryan Davison-Reed and treasured wife Barbara Reed. They know that I would do anything for them, and I know that when I ask them they will do anything for me.
This is the full power and potential of the enduring commitment and permanence of relationship that undergirds the programmatic dedication of the New Salem Educational Initiative.
Mar 4, 2013
Part IV: The Power of Enduring Commitment as Revealed in the Lives of Students in the New Salem Educational Initiative
Some students ride a longer arc to academic success than do others. The key to advancement is found in the faith that success will be achieved and that there will be an enduring commitment to make academic achievement a reality.
Hispanic students, for example, frequently present the challenges inherent in the circumstances of the nonnative English speaker who hears only Spanish spoken in the home. Children of impoverished and frequently dysfunctional families all face huge challenges that children of the middle and upper classes do not face. Their parents tend to have limited education. They do not hear as many sophisticated vocabulary terms being spoken. They are not privy to as many discussions ranging around important domestic and international issues. These disadvantages are magnified when a student also hears most discussions in a language other than that which prevails at school and which will be employed in postsecondary educational experiences and in the workplace.
Even academically engaged and talented students can reveal stunning academic deficits while reading new material or engaging in discussions. Rosa Martinez (data privacy name), one of the participants in my Sunday evening college preparatory class attended by advanced Grade 10 students, has a huge vocabulary and excellent reading comprehension when all relevant terms are within her understanding. Still, even she can reveal vocabulary deficits for topics that we have just not discussed. I have warned her not to be complacent as she anticipates the Grade 10 Reading Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) necessary for graduation. She must be very careful not to be blindsided by terms sprung on her that, despite her academic sophistication and advanced training, are unfamiliar. She must be prepared to read very carefully and derive the meaning for unfamiliar words from context.
This is even truer for students who are not as advanced as is Rosa. For example, I have two enthusiastic Grade 6 boys with whom I meet on Friday evenings. Enrique (so I’ll name him here) is a highly adept student at mathematics, but I work long and hard with him to read word problems carefully so that he can let that math ability shine. Since enrolling in the New Salem Educational Initiative in Grade 2, Enrique has become an ever more engaged reader, and he has made up huge vocabulary deficits. But his struggle will be ongoing as he strives to keep up with students who hear only English in the home, especially those whose parents make utterances associated with avid readers or people who in one way or another have become fairly well educated.
His buddy (I’ll call him Antonio) presents a less challenged case of verbal development, but he has his moments of surprising vocabulary deficits, as well. And Antonio is not as mathematically gifted as Enrique, so I have to work hard to build his confidence and provide the kind of motivation that comes from the expectations and the behavior modeling of ambitious middle and upper class parents. Additionally, Antonio lost a year of education in the United States during one sojourn back to Mexico, and he was made to repeat an academic year upon return. So Antonio is 12 years-old going on 13, rather than the 11 years-old going on 12 that is typical for a Grade 6 student. He is experiencing some of the social dislocations and struggles of early adolescence. I have forged a strong relationship with Antonio, so he ultimately listens to me, but under the challenges posed by his array of personal and life stage issues, the fact that he knows that I will always be in his life to support him looms large in his ability to make the right decisions.
So for students who need ongoing support to overcome particular obstacles, such as those faced by nonnative English speakers, a vital feature promoting student success in the New Salem Educational Initiative is that emphasizing an enduring commitment and a permanent relationship with student and family. Rosa, Enrique, and Antonio are on a secure path to success in the knowledge that they have entered my universe and I will never let them go.
Hispanic students, for example, frequently present the challenges inherent in the circumstances of the nonnative English speaker who hears only Spanish spoken in the home. Children of impoverished and frequently dysfunctional families all face huge challenges that children of the middle and upper classes do not face. Their parents tend to have limited education. They do not hear as many sophisticated vocabulary terms being spoken. They are not privy to as many discussions ranging around important domestic and international issues. These disadvantages are magnified when a student also hears most discussions in a language other than that which prevails at school and which will be employed in postsecondary educational experiences and in the workplace.
Even academically engaged and talented students can reveal stunning academic deficits while reading new material or engaging in discussions. Rosa Martinez (data privacy name), one of the participants in my Sunday evening college preparatory class attended by advanced Grade 10 students, has a huge vocabulary and excellent reading comprehension when all relevant terms are within her understanding. Still, even she can reveal vocabulary deficits for topics that we have just not discussed. I have warned her not to be complacent as she anticipates the Grade 10 Reading Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) necessary for graduation. She must be very careful not to be blindsided by terms sprung on her that, despite her academic sophistication and advanced training, are unfamiliar. She must be prepared to read very carefully and derive the meaning for unfamiliar words from context.
This is even truer for students who are not as advanced as is Rosa. For example, I have two enthusiastic Grade 6 boys with whom I meet on Friday evenings. Enrique (so I’ll name him here) is a highly adept student at mathematics, but I work long and hard with him to read word problems carefully so that he can let that math ability shine. Since enrolling in the New Salem Educational Initiative in Grade 2, Enrique has become an ever more engaged reader, and he has made up huge vocabulary deficits. But his struggle will be ongoing as he strives to keep up with students who hear only English in the home, especially those whose parents make utterances associated with avid readers or people who in one way or another have become fairly well educated.
His buddy (I’ll call him Antonio) presents a less challenged case of verbal development, but he has his moments of surprising vocabulary deficits, as well. And Antonio is not as mathematically gifted as Enrique, so I have to work hard to build his confidence and provide the kind of motivation that comes from the expectations and the behavior modeling of ambitious middle and upper class parents. Additionally, Antonio lost a year of education in the United States during one sojourn back to Mexico, and he was made to repeat an academic year upon return. So Antonio is 12 years-old going on 13, rather than the 11 years-old going on 12 that is typical for a Grade 6 student. He is experiencing some of the social dislocations and struggles of early adolescence. I have forged a strong relationship with Antonio, so he ultimately listens to me, but under the challenges posed by his array of personal and life stage issues, the fact that he knows that I will always be in his life to support him looms large in his ability to make the right decisions.
So for students who need ongoing support to overcome particular obstacles, such as those faced by nonnative English speakers, a vital feature promoting student success in the New Salem Educational Initiative is that emphasizing an enduring commitment and a permanent relationship with student and family. Rosa, Enrique, and Antonio are on a secure path to success in the knowledge that they have entered my universe and I will never let them go.
Part III: The Power of Enduring Commitment as Revealed in the Lives of Students in the New Salem Educational Initiative
“Gary, this is Denise.”
“Hey, Denise, wassup?”
“I just had a meeting with an academic adviser at St. Kate’s because I’m on probation. Now she’s telling me that I can’t move forward with occupational therapy because I can never get my GPA high enough to qualify for the program. I’ve wanted to be in nursing or some kind of high-level health care job ever since I was a little girl. What am I going to do?”
Denise Drummond (data privacy appellation) has been a student of mine in the New Salem Educational Initiative since academic year 2008-2009, when she was a Grade 10 student at Henry High School. Denise had always been in the Minneapolis Public Schools, and therefore came to me as academically damaged as do most of that district’s victims. And if the truth be told, although my students come overwhelming from the Minneapolis Public Schools and specifically the schools of North Minneapolis, I find that no public school student from any district comes to me with the skill and knowledge sets that would have them on a track to become an educated person.
Denise is a genuine academic talent, though, especially in subjects requiring verbal skills. She had passed her Grade 9 Writing Test (necessary for graduation), so that we could concentrate on getting her ready for her Grade 10 Reading Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA), also necessary for graduation, that she would take in April of that 2008-2009 academic year. Even though Denise is naturally talented in verbal matters, there were many vocabulary terms that she did not understand on the Grade 10 MCA Item Sampler that gives students an idea of what to expect on the actual reading assessment. We went to work on vocabulary-building exercises and challenging assignments requiring diverse knowledge of vocabulary in various fields. By mid-April 2009, I perceived that Denise was ready to demonstrate grade level performance on the Grade 10 Reading MCA. And so she did, on her first try.
This meant that we could now focus even more on math, which was Denise’s true academic challenge. It was a shame that Denise had not been properly challenged during her tenure as a Minneapolis Public Schools student, and therefore that we had needed to spend so much of our academic session time further developing Denise’s naturally strong verbal skills. We were able to give enough time to math to allow her to earn “B’s” and “C’s” in geometry and algebra II, but with grade inflation those grades are often questionable, and I was never quite satisfied.
Denise moved on through her Grade 11 and Grade 12 academic years, training with me in college preparatory skills across the spectrum. She did not graduate in June 2011 with the academic weight and ballast that comes with participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative from the elementary school years; but she was a viable college candidate and gained entry into St. Catherine’s, a very good liberal arts institution in St. Paul.
Denise’s coursework earned her a 3.5 Grade Point Average (GPA) for her first semester at St. Catherine’s, but during her second semester her study habits slackened at just the wrong time. She was now taking science courses central to her aspirations as a medical professional. During the first semester of this 2012-2013 academic year, Denise made an “F” in anatomy, the main entry on her transcript that sent her to academic probation and called forth her academic adviser’s dire predictions.
Shortly after Denise’s call to me, we had lunch to discuss her situation and strategize for improvement. Denise admitted to me that she had been overly confident after her encouraging start at St. Catherine’s. She had allowed herself to be distracted by old friends who had none of her own ambitions and aspirations. She would find herself even on her own time in her apartment (located in Brooklyn Park, just beyond North Minneapolis) to be distracted by all manner of things. She is vowing to spend more time in the library, where she will not face such distractions. She knows now that she is in an environment very different from that of the public schools of North Minneapolis and that she must adjust accordingly.
I went thereafter to talk with Denise’s academic adviser. We agreed that Denise has dug a deep hole for herself, but it is at least possible that she can climb out with stellar performances in her science courses from this point forward. In the meantime, I am encouraging Denise to consider a backup plan that would have her shifting to a major more consonant with her natural verbal gifts. I have told her that I think, for example, that she would make a good attorney and that her ability at sophisticated writing, reading, and critical analysis would stand her in good stead in law school. She smiled, as if the idea had appeal, beaming because I had expressed admiration for ability in this direction.
Whether Denise is able to pursue her lifelong dream of being a health care professional, or whether she shifts to another course, she will graduate from St. Catherine’s. I have been properly alerted to her need for my more intensive academic assistance and mentorship during her college years. My relationship with Denise is permanent. She will succeed. I will have it no other way.
“Hey, Denise, wassup?”
“I just had a meeting with an academic adviser at St. Kate’s because I’m on probation. Now she’s telling me that I can’t move forward with occupational therapy because I can never get my GPA high enough to qualify for the program. I’ve wanted to be in nursing or some kind of high-level health care job ever since I was a little girl. What am I going to do?”
Denise Drummond (data privacy appellation) has been a student of mine in the New Salem Educational Initiative since academic year 2008-2009, when she was a Grade 10 student at Henry High School. Denise had always been in the Minneapolis Public Schools, and therefore came to me as academically damaged as do most of that district’s victims. And if the truth be told, although my students come overwhelming from the Minneapolis Public Schools and specifically the schools of North Minneapolis, I find that no public school student from any district comes to me with the skill and knowledge sets that would have them on a track to become an educated person.
Denise is a genuine academic talent, though, especially in subjects requiring verbal skills. She had passed her Grade 9 Writing Test (necessary for graduation), so that we could concentrate on getting her ready for her Grade 10 Reading Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA), also necessary for graduation, that she would take in April of that 2008-2009 academic year. Even though Denise is naturally talented in verbal matters, there were many vocabulary terms that she did not understand on the Grade 10 MCA Item Sampler that gives students an idea of what to expect on the actual reading assessment. We went to work on vocabulary-building exercises and challenging assignments requiring diverse knowledge of vocabulary in various fields. By mid-April 2009, I perceived that Denise was ready to demonstrate grade level performance on the Grade 10 Reading MCA. And so she did, on her first try.
This meant that we could now focus even more on math, which was Denise’s true academic challenge. It was a shame that Denise had not been properly challenged during her tenure as a Minneapolis Public Schools student, and therefore that we had needed to spend so much of our academic session time further developing Denise’s naturally strong verbal skills. We were able to give enough time to math to allow her to earn “B’s” and “C’s” in geometry and algebra II, but with grade inflation those grades are often questionable, and I was never quite satisfied.
Denise moved on through her Grade 11 and Grade 12 academic years, training with me in college preparatory skills across the spectrum. She did not graduate in June 2011 with the academic weight and ballast that comes with participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative from the elementary school years; but she was a viable college candidate and gained entry into St. Catherine’s, a very good liberal arts institution in St. Paul.
Denise’s coursework earned her a 3.5 Grade Point Average (GPA) for her first semester at St. Catherine’s, but during her second semester her study habits slackened at just the wrong time. She was now taking science courses central to her aspirations as a medical professional. During the first semester of this 2012-2013 academic year, Denise made an “F” in anatomy, the main entry on her transcript that sent her to academic probation and called forth her academic adviser’s dire predictions.
Shortly after Denise’s call to me, we had lunch to discuss her situation and strategize for improvement. Denise admitted to me that she had been overly confident after her encouraging start at St. Catherine’s. She had allowed herself to be distracted by old friends who had none of her own ambitions and aspirations. She would find herself even on her own time in her apartment (located in Brooklyn Park, just beyond North Minneapolis) to be distracted by all manner of things. She is vowing to spend more time in the library, where she will not face such distractions. She knows now that she is in an environment very different from that of the public schools of North Minneapolis and that she must adjust accordingly.
I went thereafter to talk with Denise’s academic adviser. We agreed that Denise has dug a deep hole for herself, but it is at least possible that she can climb out with stellar performances in her science courses from this point forward. In the meantime, I am encouraging Denise to consider a backup plan that would have her shifting to a major more consonant with her natural verbal gifts. I have told her that I think, for example, that she would make a good attorney and that her ability at sophisticated writing, reading, and critical analysis would stand her in good stead in law school. She smiled, as if the idea had appeal, beaming because I had expressed admiration for ability in this direction.
Whether Denise is able to pursue her lifelong dream of being a health care professional, or whether she shifts to another course, she will graduate from St. Catherine’s. I have been properly alerted to her need for my more intensive academic assistance and mentorship during her college years. My relationship with Denise is permanent. She will succeed. I will have it no other way.
Part II: The Power of Enduring Commitment as Revealed in the Lives of Students in the New Salem Educatiional Initiative
In late December 2012 I got a call from a student I’ll call Magdalena, asking me if I would work with her son (to whom I’ll give the data privacy name of Mario). I get calls and requests to work with the offspring of economically impoverished families every day, so as far as that went, there was nothing new in Magdalena’s entreaty. But in many details, Magdalena’s case was very special, indeed.
Magdalena is the only student of mine who has ever gotten pregnant. I tell my female students with great frankness and regularity not to do that at any time in their high school and (I go so far to say) their college years. Magdalena was just a few months into the program when the precipitating event and the conception occurred. The precipitating event apparently happened at a party that Magdalena’s mother (Penelope) and I had gone to great lengths to dissuade her from attending, inasmuch as she would miss her regularly scheduled weekly academic session with me. But she went, and several months later she found out that human life was unfolding in her uterus. She was just 14 years old, a Grade 8 student.
Magdalena continued in the New Salem Education Initiative, becoming one of my most enthusiastic students, building a solid skill and knowledge base. She lived in North Minneapolis but rode the bus first to Edison High School in Northeast Minneapolis and later (in Grade 10) to Southwest High School in the area suggested by the latter school’s name. She eventually graduated from Southwest, but during her Grade 12 (senior) year, Magdalena and her family moved to West St. Paul, so that our communication and contact became more difficult. I did not have the opportunity to work with Magdalena in the run-up to her graduation in spring 2011.
Magdalena started attendance at Augsburg College, but she found the multiple roles as mother, student, and employee difficult. Mario’s father had always stayed on the periphery and has never been much help. Magdalena soon dropped out, something that I found out through one of her friends who continued weekly attendance with me. I felt terrible. My vow is to always stay close even when students move far away (some call after moving to cities far removed from Minneapolis, even in other states). I thought about her frequently and very much wanted to provide what instruction and mentorship I could to get her back on the promising academic track that she had traversed in her heyday of participation in weekly academic sessions of the New Salem Educational Initiative.
Then came that call. She went long on how much she regretted losing close contact. She wanted so much better for Mario. She knew, she said, that I was the one who could make the most difference in his life. He was doing okay in school, but she wanted the higher level of challenge that she knew I provided, in a way that had been absent in her own life since she had been my fulltime student. At a juncture when I really had no space, I made some. Furthermore, the logistics seemed to work better if I traveled to the apartment that Magdalena shares in West St. Paul with Mario, Penelope, her sister (Gloria, Grade 8) and brother (Felipe, high school graduate as of spring 2012).
In going to this apartment on a weekly basis, I have thus recently added four students to my weekly schedule. I’ll be working in spring 2013 most intensely with Mario, but I am also leaving assignments with Magdalena, Gloria, and Felipe, as well. Magdalena is working on algebra, geometry, and trigonometry skills that have atrophied during her time out of school. Felipe has resumed the promising college preparatory track that he was on as a participant in the New Salem Educational Initiative--- but from which he wandered when the family moved to West St. Paul, so that he graduated from one of those degree mills known as alternative schools. Gloria is a different case. She mercifully stayed focused on her education and is now doing writing and reading assignments with aplomb, preparing for her Grade 9 Writing Test and her Grade 10 Reading Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA), both needed for graduation.
Gloria’s academic talent, scholarly seriousness, and participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative as a young child position her to gain the academic weight and ballast that will predict a successful and rewarding experience in postsecondary study. Felipe and Magdalena now have a chance that they would not otherwise have. Mario’s future is hugely promising.
The power of the enduring commitment and the permanency of the relationships forged in the New Salem Educational Initiative are illustrated in these four cases of a family that left for awhile but has now returned in force. Penelope thanks me profusely every week for coming all the way to West St. Paul and coming back into the lives of her children.
But I consider myself the fortunate one. The permanency of the relationships that I build with my students is among my greatest blessings, an opportunity to help the United States become the democracy that our nation has the potential to be.
Magdalena is the only student of mine who has ever gotten pregnant. I tell my female students with great frankness and regularity not to do that at any time in their high school and (I go so far to say) their college years. Magdalena was just a few months into the program when the precipitating event and the conception occurred. The precipitating event apparently happened at a party that Magdalena’s mother (Penelope) and I had gone to great lengths to dissuade her from attending, inasmuch as she would miss her regularly scheduled weekly academic session with me. But she went, and several months later she found out that human life was unfolding in her uterus. She was just 14 years old, a Grade 8 student.
Magdalena continued in the New Salem Education Initiative, becoming one of my most enthusiastic students, building a solid skill and knowledge base. She lived in North Minneapolis but rode the bus first to Edison High School in Northeast Minneapolis and later (in Grade 10) to Southwest High School in the area suggested by the latter school’s name. She eventually graduated from Southwest, but during her Grade 12 (senior) year, Magdalena and her family moved to West St. Paul, so that our communication and contact became more difficult. I did not have the opportunity to work with Magdalena in the run-up to her graduation in spring 2011.
Magdalena started attendance at Augsburg College, but she found the multiple roles as mother, student, and employee difficult. Mario’s father had always stayed on the periphery and has never been much help. Magdalena soon dropped out, something that I found out through one of her friends who continued weekly attendance with me. I felt terrible. My vow is to always stay close even when students move far away (some call after moving to cities far removed from Minneapolis, even in other states). I thought about her frequently and very much wanted to provide what instruction and mentorship I could to get her back on the promising academic track that she had traversed in her heyday of participation in weekly academic sessions of the New Salem Educational Initiative.
Then came that call. She went long on how much she regretted losing close contact. She wanted so much better for Mario. She knew, she said, that I was the one who could make the most difference in his life. He was doing okay in school, but she wanted the higher level of challenge that she knew I provided, in a way that had been absent in her own life since she had been my fulltime student. At a juncture when I really had no space, I made some. Furthermore, the logistics seemed to work better if I traveled to the apartment that Magdalena shares in West St. Paul with Mario, Penelope, her sister (Gloria, Grade 8) and brother (Felipe, high school graduate as of spring 2012).
In going to this apartment on a weekly basis, I have thus recently added four students to my weekly schedule. I’ll be working in spring 2013 most intensely with Mario, but I am also leaving assignments with Magdalena, Gloria, and Felipe, as well. Magdalena is working on algebra, geometry, and trigonometry skills that have atrophied during her time out of school. Felipe has resumed the promising college preparatory track that he was on as a participant in the New Salem Educational Initiative--- but from which he wandered when the family moved to West St. Paul, so that he graduated from one of those degree mills known as alternative schools. Gloria is a different case. She mercifully stayed focused on her education and is now doing writing and reading assignments with aplomb, preparing for her Grade 9 Writing Test and her Grade 10 Reading Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA), both needed for graduation.
Gloria’s academic talent, scholarly seriousness, and participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative as a young child position her to gain the academic weight and ballast that will predict a successful and rewarding experience in postsecondary study. Felipe and Magdalena now have a chance that they would not otherwise have. Mario’s future is hugely promising.
The power of the enduring commitment and the permanency of the relationships forged in the New Salem Educational Initiative are illustrated in these four cases of a family that left for awhile but has now returned in force. Penelope thanks me profusely every week for coming all the way to West St. Paul and coming back into the lives of her children.
But I consider myself the fortunate one. The permanency of the relationships that I build with my students is among my greatest blessings, an opportunity to help the United States become the democracy that our nation has the potential to be.
Mar 1, 2013
Part I: The Power of Enduring Commitment as Revealed in the Lives of Students in the New Salem Educational Initiative
So many times, discussion about issues of education reform is done in the absence of referents to lives as lived on real streets, in actual homes, by human beings striving for a better path. For me, even my more theoretical and issue-oriented tracts are written with images of people about whom I care deeply flashing on my mental screen. I see a large selection of these people on any given day in the New Salem Educational Initiative. I am a unity of theory and action sort of guy. The students and families connected to me through the program spur my action and spawn my theory.
One of the chief tenets of the New Salem Educational Initiative concerns the permanent commitment made to every student once she or he enters the program. The week that began on Sunday, 24 February 2013 (near the end of which I write this on 1 March 2013) provides several examples of the action that drives the theory of the program.
On Sunday evening I met, as I always do at this time in the week, with three students who have been participants in the New Salem Educational Initiative for at least six years. One of the students (I’ll call her Yemisi) is a Yoruba Nigerian immigrant who enrolled as a Grade 5 student struggling to achieve grade level performance in reading and math. Among many other feats, she can now (as a grade 10 student) do the “Oh, my offense is rank…” soliloquy in Hamlet better than any professional actor I have seen do this in the role of Claudius; her rendition of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is just as riveting.
Another student (I’ll give her a data privacy name of Rosa) speaks only Spanish at home with a family that emigrated from El Salvador. She was similarly striving for grade level accomplishment when she entered the program in Grade 5; she has now passed her Grade 9 Writing Test (necessary for graduation), reads sophisticated material in preparation for the ACT, and can perform a speech from Frederick Douglas and the major soliloquy of the elder Hamlet’s ghost with equal aplomb.
The third student (I’ll call her Monique) in this Sunday powerhouse of a group has been studying with me for eight years. She is the best student I have ever seen--- anywhere, anytime. You would never know that she hails from one of the meanest streets in North Minneapolis when you hear her lead our Sunday evening discussions on Sequestration; the case of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who survived a vicious attack by Muslim extremists to continue her fight for the rights of females; the intricacies of the history and the functioning of the electoral college; the contending views in debate concerning the Keystone Pipeline; or the contrasting melting pot and pluralism conceptualizations of immigrant lives with reference to ethnic diversity in the Minneapolis Public Schools. Oh, yeah, and she can do the “To be or not to be” Hamlet soliloquy, proceed to a rendering of a speech by Ida B. Wells Barnett on the atrocities of lynching, and then explain to you that John Locke conceptualized the fundamental rights of “life, liberty, and property” but Thomas Jefferson changed these to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence.
If I had contracted only to get these initially low achievers up to grade level and then released them to fend for themselves, they would never be primed for college and university attendance the way they are today. I am not satisfied with merely closing the achievement gap by getting these students to grade level in math and reading. I want them to have all of the advantages that middle, upper middle, and upper class kids can often claim as a matter of natal circumstance. I want them to have the benefit of a superior college preparatory education. My goal is to put them in a position at high school graduation to take their places in the best institutions of post-secondary education in the nation (or in another country, if they so choose). And they know that even then I will be checking on them to see how they are doing.
Children from households of poverty and familial dysfunction must have this kind of enduring commitment in order to envision the higher educational experience and the fulfilling life that can flow from it. As we look toward an overhaul of K-12 education that does democratic justice to all of our precious children, the public schools must convey this sense of permanency to students. The tenet of enduring commitment may be extrapolated from the theory of a program that is revealed in action and put into practice every day. All of our children deserve to be embraced by the human family, and as institutions charged with the duty of serving the entire public, the public schools must let each child know that educators will be there at every step along a path leading to success in citizenry and vocation.
One of the chief tenets of the New Salem Educational Initiative concerns the permanent commitment made to every student once she or he enters the program. The week that began on Sunday, 24 February 2013 (near the end of which I write this on 1 March 2013) provides several examples of the action that drives the theory of the program.
On Sunday evening I met, as I always do at this time in the week, with three students who have been participants in the New Salem Educational Initiative for at least six years. One of the students (I’ll call her Yemisi) is a Yoruba Nigerian immigrant who enrolled as a Grade 5 student struggling to achieve grade level performance in reading and math. Among many other feats, she can now (as a grade 10 student) do the “Oh, my offense is rank…” soliloquy in Hamlet better than any professional actor I have seen do this in the role of Claudius; her rendition of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is just as riveting.
Another student (I’ll give her a data privacy name of Rosa) speaks only Spanish at home with a family that emigrated from El Salvador. She was similarly striving for grade level accomplishment when she entered the program in Grade 5; she has now passed her Grade 9 Writing Test (necessary for graduation), reads sophisticated material in preparation for the ACT, and can perform a speech from Frederick Douglas and the major soliloquy of the elder Hamlet’s ghost with equal aplomb.
The third student (I’ll call her Monique) in this Sunday powerhouse of a group has been studying with me for eight years. She is the best student I have ever seen--- anywhere, anytime. You would never know that she hails from one of the meanest streets in North Minneapolis when you hear her lead our Sunday evening discussions on Sequestration; the case of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who survived a vicious attack by Muslim extremists to continue her fight for the rights of females; the intricacies of the history and the functioning of the electoral college; the contending views in debate concerning the Keystone Pipeline; or the contrasting melting pot and pluralism conceptualizations of immigrant lives with reference to ethnic diversity in the Minneapolis Public Schools. Oh, yeah, and she can do the “To be or not to be” Hamlet soliloquy, proceed to a rendering of a speech by Ida B. Wells Barnett on the atrocities of lynching, and then explain to you that John Locke conceptualized the fundamental rights of “life, liberty, and property” but Thomas Jefferson changed these to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence.
If I had contracted only to get these initially low achievers up to grade level and then released them to fend for themselves, they would never be primed for college and university attendance the way they are today. I am not satisfied with merely closing the achievement gap by getting these students to grade level in math and reading. I want them to have all of the advantages that middle, upper middle, and upper class kids can often claim as a matter of natal circumstance. I want them to have the benefit of a superior college preparatory education. My goal is to put them in a position at high school graduation to take their places in the best institutions of post-secondary education in the nation (or in another country, if they so choose). And they know that even then I will be checking on them to see how they are doing.
Children from households of poverty and familial dysfunction must have this kind of enduring commitment in order to envision the higher educational experience and the fulfilling life that can flow from it. As we look toward an overhaul of K-12 education that does democratic justice to all of our precious children, the public schools must convey this sense of permanency to students. The tenet of enduring commitment may be extrapolated from the theory of a program that is revealed in action and put into practice every day. All of our children deserve to be embraced by the human family, and as institutions charged with the duty of serving the entire public, the public schools must let each child know that educators will be there at every step along a path leading to success in citizenry and vocation.
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