Part Five: Another Illustrative Case to Consider in Observng the Principles of the New Salem Educational Initiative in Motion

Interaction with Ezekiel Jefferson, Melinda Parks, and Family on 19 August 2013

Note:  Data privacy pseudonyms are used for all people and schools cited in this five-part series of articles.

Part Five: Concluding Thoughts

My interaction with Ezekiel Jefferson and his family on 19 August 2013 serves as another microcosmic representation of the key features of the New Salem Educational Initiative. Ezekiel Jefferson is now approaching his Grade 6 year. He has been enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative for four entire academic years and the subsequent summers. He knows that when I first told him that this program never ends, I am serious. He knows that I care.

 I demonstrate this concretely by coming by his house just to check how things are going, even on days when we do not have an academic session scheduled, and by showing up time after time when he has messed up at school and conferences are called. Ezekiel knows that I have a close relationship with the key adults in his family and in his life. Ezekiel knows that Rolanda, Rebecca, Drake, and I constantly communicate. We talk face to face, we talk on the phone, we text, and we occasionally send emails. 

Ezekiel knows that I have met and interacted with personnel at his school, that I understand their strengths and their weaknesses, can discern when Ezekiel himself is at fault and when those at school have let him down. He grasps the fact that I make these differentiations, and that I can tell when a teacher such as the superb Linda Hubbard has the skill to help him through his troubles while the maladroit Marsha Keller means well but is ineffectual time after time.

Ezekiel knows that I am an abiding presence in his life and the reason that he is as far as he is academically. He feels some remorse over the fact that he has not always made my mission easy, and that during his Grade 5 year he claimed a great abundance of my time that could have gone to other students, other families, my own family, other endeavors.

So with this proven credibility and unconditional love did I show up on the remarkable afternoon of 19 August 2013. Ezekiel could tell how far his little sister had advanced under my instruction. He was nearby listening as I conducted my session with her. He remembered his own promising beginning. And he wanted to show me that the ability was still there. Thus Ezekiel had worked diligently while I was away in the Southwest and was able to show me that he had read beyond expectations.

Having fallen short so many times during his Grade 5 year, he beamed at my praise for having completed his book of readings, for reading so mellifluously and fluently, for comprehending so well, for deriving from context a number of unfamiliar words as he built on the advanced vocabulary that had had built through his years of study with me. And he even showed that he was ready to get back into the swing of things in math, a subject that he once ruled but that had ruled him during his Grade 5 year.

Ezekiel, therefore, who could have dropped disastrously behind during his Grade 5 year and started down an all too frequent path of failure that can lead to many dangerous places in the middle school years and beyond---- has recovered his footing o a pathway that viably leads to success. His mom is proud and grateful. His grandmother is lavish in her praise for her grandchildren, and for me. Drake looks on and observes the possibilities in male attentiveness and strives to keep evolving as a role model.

In my ear resound all of the kind articulations of gratitude, and I can feel the great amount of love given to me for the love that I have given, as I walk away and get back into my old ’96 Honda.

I think about the unorthodox approach that I take to sustain the New Salem Educational Initiative seven days a week. I think about the academic quality transmitted, the love exuded, the relationships formed, the lives (very much including my own) enriched. I think about transporting the students, conversing with families, counseling troubled people, doing the necessary fundraising, writing curriculum and preparing materials that will challenge fertile young brains and ending cycles of poverty that have previously endured through many generations.

Then I cast my eyes back at Ezekiel, waving and beaming from the door of the family home. I feel the impact of another microcosmic day. And I am seized with the sense of the opportunity that exists in every single day of interaction with my students and their families, with this particularly affecting episode on 19 August 2013 just one of many that I have experienced and just a fraction of those yet to come.