Part One/ Interaction with Damon Preston on Tuesday, 13 August 2013: The New Salem Educational Initiative in Microcosm

Part One/  Introduction:  The Microcosmic Nature of My Interaction with Damon Preston and His Family on 13 August 2013

On the afternoon of 13 August 2013, I was struck by the microcosmic nature of my interaction with one of my students, Damon Preston (data privacy pseudonym, as all are all names in this five-part series). I have detailed one amazing day in the life of the program in the compact book, Just Another Day at theThe  Office/ A Day in the Life of the New Salem Educational Initiative: The Remarkably Unremarkable Day of 29 September 2012.  The book relates a series of events so varied as to have left my brain abuzz as, having begun interactions with my students at 10:00 AM on that Saturday, I turned my car toward home at 10:00 PM. The day was “remarkably unremarkable” inasmuch as each day in the life of the seven-day-a-week program that is the New Salem Educational Initiative unfolds with such substance as to fill a book.

The Tuesday afternoon of 13 August 2013, though, more clearly than any other day since the one that impelled me to record events in the compact book, resounded with powerful impact and presented a multiplicity of themes that struck me as particularly representative of the program from several different vantage points. In the three substantive parts ahead as you scroll down on my blog, you will read of my specific interactions with Damon, his mom (Evelyn Patterson), his de facto stepdad (Marcel Gifford), and his five year-old brother (Javon). These interactions are varied and illustrate in microcosm the essential features of the New Salem Educational Initiative.

You will read about the challenges faced by Damon and his family and get a sense of what life is like for a young person born to poverty whose parents nevertheless fervently desire a better life for their offspring. And as you read about the specifics of a residentially mobile family seeking to cope with immediate poverty and trying to find a way out, you will find out what makes my efforts in the New Salem Educational Initiative so successful.

With reference to the latter, you will gain a better understanding of the key programmatic features of the New Salem Educational Initiative: the enduring nature of the relationships that I form with my students and their families; my propensity to root my program in North Minneapolis but follow my students wherever they go; the high quality of academic content, with the first task to guide the student to grade level but from there move forward on a college preparatory course of study across the liberal arts curriculum; the exceptionally strong relationships that I form with the families of my students; the ongoing stream of students possessed of a strong desire to continue their study and their relationships with me, followed by multiple younger children in the family in line to participate in the New Salem Educational Initiative, as well.

Part Two of this series (next as you scroll down the blog) begins an account of the remarkable day of 13 August 2013, with an emphasis on how my interaction with Damon Preston and his family illustrates the enduring nature of my relationships with students and their families, and how I track them down as necessary and follow them anywhere they go.