How the New Salem Educational Initiative Works: The History, Principles, and Day to Day Life of the Program

In the course of the last several weeks, as I have written a number of opinion pieces for the Star Tribune and become ever more active in efforts to overhaul k-12 education, more and more people have become interested in the New Salem Educational Initiative and inquired as to its origins and as to the day to day functioning of the program. Many blog articles back, I posted a program summary and funding request, and all of my articles give a strong idea as to the principles, love, and dedication that undergird the Initiative. Since several years or so have passed, though, since I last gave an overall summary, herein lies a description of the history, principles, and day to day life of the program. And before I get to the program itself, I give a brief description of my own background and life as a teacher in K-12 education.

Personal Background, Training, and Life as a Teacher

I attended Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas, from the autumn of 1969 through the spring of 1973. Prior to entering SMU, I had already become intensely interested in the social revolutions (feminist, civil rights) that were taking place in the late 1960s and early 1970s; my interest quickened and my activism expanded during my years at SMU. I did not march for causes very much; although I have never shied away from confrontation, I have always wanted any confrontations that I initiate to have a very specific impact, and my ongoing commitment has been and continues to be to practical action meant to advance the common good.

By the spring (1971) of my sophomore year, I had decided to be a teacher. I became active in SMU Volunteer Services and soon took on the position of coordinator for services rendered at institutions for the mentally challenged and in the Dallas Independent School District (DISD). I majored in political science and had near-majors in history and psychology. I took math through calculus and pursued a broad and deep liberal arts education. I also endured the excruciatingly terrible education courses to gain certification in the teaching fields of government and history; in time, in Minnesota, that certification would come to include all of those subjects considered part of social studies.

During my junior year, I served a semester internship at L. G. Pinkston High School in West Dallas, a heavily African American ghetto. This experience solidified my dedication to the education of urban youth. I did my student teaching at another inner city school but returned to Pinkston for my first two academic years (1973-1974 and 1974-1975) as a regular classroom teacher.

During the years from 1976 through 2003, I traveled throughout the United States and most of East, Southeast, and East Asia; got an M. A. (University of Iowa, 1979) and Ph. D. (University of Minnesota, 1993) in Chinese and Taiwanese history; lived in Taiwan for a total of three and a half years, becoming fluent in Mandarin Chinese and acquiring some Taiwanese (the Minnan dialect similar to that of Fujian Province on the Chinese mainland); and teaching in almost every type of situation: English as a Second Language (Taiwan); prison (Missouri Eastern Correctional Center); college/ university setting (two years as a T. A. at the University of Iowa;  instructor at the University of Minnesota for two years teaching courses in East Asian history in the late 1980s as I pursued my doctorate;  a semester teaching a course in modern Japanese history at St. Olaf College); a rural high school, a suburban alternative high school, and two different alternative high schools in Minneapolis.

This is to say, too, that my wife, Barbara Reed, and I moved to Minnesota in the late summer of 1982 as she took a position at St. Olaf College in Northfield, where she still is a professor of Asian religions with dual appointments in the Department of Religion and the Department of Asian Studies. Our son, Ryan Davison-Reed, was born in 1989 in Taipei (Taibei), Taiwan, during one of our stints (1988-1990) doing research and living in Taiwan.

I have been active in K-12 education in North Minneapolis since 1991, became a member of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in 1993, and for 20 years have coordinated and taught in the New Salem Tuesday Night Tutoring Program, which currently includes five tutors in addition to myself. Over the years from 1988 forward, I have written eight books, including a co-written book with Barbara. I researched and wrote two books for the Minneapolis Urban League (The State of African Americans in Minnesota, 2004 and 2008 editions). From the very beginning of my academic career, I have always wanted to be a K-12 teacher who trained like a university scholar.

In addition to continuing to run the New Salem Tuesday Tutoring Program, for the last ten years I have coordinated the New Salem Educational Initiative, which incorporates the Tuesday night program but also includes a seven-day-a-week small-group program, my written output of articles on K-12 education, and activist efforts to overhaul K-12 education.

The Day to Day Functioning of the New Salem Educational Initiative

Through the Tuesday night program, the small-group program, individual studies, and continued mentorship once students start matriculating at colleges and universities, I now have 125 students in my New Salem Educational Initiative network. My most time-consuming efforts go to serving the 65 students in the seven-day-a-week small-group academic sessions. Students now typically enter the small-group program of the New Salem Educational Initiative in Grade K (kindergarten), following older family members who have been in the program. I perform all functions in the service of these students. I generate the curriculum and compile the materials for study, do the initial enrollment, attend to all office details, write grants and raise funds. Most importantly, I talk with and counsel family members of students, transport students to and from each academic session, and teach each two-hour session personally.

The relationships that I form with students are permanent. Once students are enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative, they remain under my academic instruction and personal mentorship forever. Students who enter after a few years in school typically are functioning below grade level in math and reading when they enroll in the New Salem Educational Initiative. My first effort, then, goes toward bringing a student up to grade level in these two key skill areas. This generally happens within an academic year or two. Once a student attains grade level competency in math and reading, she or he moves on to a college track course of study, reading and hearing about subjects across the liberal arts curriculum. Reading at that point becomes not so much a skill as a portal for advanced learning.

Students in the New Salem Educational Initiative acquire full grasp of mathematics skills pertinent to the four basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division), fractions, decimals, percentages, graphs, tables, proportions, and ratios; and they learn all skills necessary for algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus.

Students also acquire strong verbal skills, learning how to write cogent essays and to read complex material with acquisition of advanced vocabulary and ever ascending levels of college preparatory reading comprehension. They read a generous number of selections from the Core Knowledge books edited by E. D. Hirsch, and they move in logical sequence through additional material chosen to impart strong knowledge sets across the liberal arts curriculum (math, natural science, history, economics, psychology, fiction and poetry, and the fine arts). Students use this strong liberal arts background in reading material from newspapers and journals, in both hard copy and online. Middle school and high school students read Shakespearean plays such as Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear, and Twelfth Night.

Students enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative all come from low-income families with multiple challenges. Currently, all of my students are African American and Hispanic. In the early years, students tended to enroll after having spent a number of years at the Grade K-5, Grade 6-8, and even the Grade 9-12 level in the Minneapolis Public Schools--- and had to make up significant and often severe academic deficits. Now, with so many younger students following older family members into the program, they tend to enroll at the Grade K (kindergarten level), and thus are always advanced for their grade levels. Either way, the economically challenged students of the New Salem Educational Initiative end up on a college track course of study far more typical for students at the middle and upper economic levels.

Principles Undergirding the New Salem Educational Initiative

Implicit in the above and more explicitly stated here, the principles undergirding the New Salem Educational Initiative, in accord with my views on K-12 education, are as follows:

For the United States to claim full democracy, all students should receive high quality education across the core subjects of the liberal arts curriculum. This is the same kind of education envisioned for good citizenship and high quality life by Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann, who wrote of “common schools” for all. The abiding assumption in the New Salem Educational Initiative is that the logical acquisition of strong skill and knowledge sets promotes rich intellectual and cultural life, creates good citizens, and prepares the way for high professional and life satisfaction.

Students in the New Salem Educational Initiative come alive in the world of knowledge. They don’t think twice about whether they can achieve at a high level. They can tell that I have full confidence in their academic abilities. They move through challenging material in logical sequence. They work on a task until mastery is achieved, and then they move on to the next, higher skill. They witness their own success and they want more of the same. Just a few days into their participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative, students see themselves as successful learners, and they take off toward ascending heights of skill and knowledge. Whatever challenges of material poverty they bring into the program, students gain a wealth of knowledge and they do not see poverty of any sort in their futures.

Students know that I will never go away. They see me week after week. They feel my love. Their families feel my love. I feel the love of these wonderful people in return. We all understand that we have entered into relationships that are permanent, that endure beyond the K-12 stage, that continue through attendance at excellent colleges and universities, that will endure into the stage of adulthood.

Students in the New Salem Educational Initiative succeed, because they have all of the ability to do so, and because I will have it no other way. I care about my students as if they were my own, and in the manner of excellent parents and teachers, I do anything necessary to assure that my students, my children, are successful. Mainly, I teach up a storm. I exert heavy-duty effort, in the application of what my West Texas pappy called “elbow grease.”  The parents of students in the New Salem Educational Initiative care deeply, as all parents do, either in manifest expression or latent potential. I guide them either productively to apply the former or to tap and activate the latter.

The overhaul of K-12 education constitutes the next stage of the Civil Rights Movement. High quality K-12 public education will end cycles of poverty and turn societal liabilities into economic and cultural assets. Through my conducting of 17 two-hour academic sessions for groups of three to five students each, I ensure that my students will become productive and happy citizens.

From 6:00 AM until midnight on most days, I am working at tasks relevant to advancing the academic talent of my students or overhauling K-12 education.  Through my writing, speaking, and activism, I am fully dedicated to inducing the Minneapolis Public Schools to become a model for how centralized public school systems can do the same.