Much can be accomplished by the adroit teacher and the receptive student in a short period of time. Teacher knowledge is crucial, and almost all students become receptive when explanations are clear, the love of learning on the part of the teacher is apparent, and the relationship between teacher and student is warm and joyful.
Damon has been a student in the New Salem Educational Initiative since his Grade 1 academic year. I have therefore known him for about four years. At this point, as Damon prepares to enter Grade 5 fully at grade level in both math and reading, with some sense on his part that he has needed my knowledgeable and loving assistance to overcome the life descriptors that have placed him at-risk, he trusts me and is always an open portal for the knowledge that I can pour into his bountiful brain.
While I was on a trip to visit family in Texas and New Mexico at midsummer 2013, I left a Grade 5 reading book with Damon. When I connected with him on 13 August 2013, I found that he had thoroughly read seven selections from the book and demonstrated generally good comprehension on these. As always, though, generally good comprehension is not enough for the level of content knowledge and vocabulary development that I want my students to have.
So, in a session that lasted about an hour and fifteen minutes at the occasion of this rather ad hoc meeting in August 2013, Damon and I went to work on a selection that read as follows:
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Phillis Wheatley was a former slave who in the late 1700s became the first published African American poet. Born in 1753, she was kidnapped from her village in Senegal, Africa, at seven years of age and taken by slave traders to the British colonies in what would become the United States. She eventually was sold in Boston to Susannah and John Wheatley.
Slaves were by law not supposed to learn to read and write. Phillis Wheatley, though, yearned for knowledge. She began to try to read the Bible on her own, and to copy words down with a piece of coal in the Wheatley home. Susannah and John were kinder than most slave owners. Rather than punish Phillis for her efforts to learn to read and write, the Wheatleys encouraged her and taught her to read the Bible in Greek and Latin.
Phillis read everything that she could on the well-stocked book shelves of the Wheatley home. She loved to write poetry, and in time she successful published a book of poems in Boston. In 1776, Phillis sent one of her poems to George Washington. He was very impressed with her work. In return for her thoughtfulness in dedicating a poem to him, Washington invited Phillis to his home. Phillis used the opportunity of knowing such a famous person to write him a strong antislavery letter.
Susannah and John Wheatley made clear in their wills that Phillis would be free at the end of their own lives. So after they died, Phillis was no longer a slave. She married a free African American man and moved away from Boston. She continued to write poems, but her popularity declined. Her marriage was not happy, and eventually she returned to Boston.
Phillis Wheatley died in that city in 1784. Later, more people read her poems, her fame grew again, and today her work can be found in many books.
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To begin to understand what a poor knowledge base students enrolled in K-12 (in this case, Grade 5) public education inevitably have, consider just the first paragraph, given above. I had myself never gotten around to asking Damon about how centuries are calculated, and I know that this is rarely explained in the Minneapolis Public Schools. So I asked Damon what century the 1700s cover, to which he predictably but erroneously replied, “seventeenth.” I went through multiple examples covering the 1700s, 1300s, 1500s, 1800s, 1900s, and the years thus far of the new millennium to demonstrate that, for example, Phillis Wheatley was born in the 18th century, the century covering the years from 1701 through 1800.
I explained that the ending year of 1800 gives identity to that group of one hundred years as the 18th century, but that all other years running from 1701 through 1799 would be the 1700s. We discussed the 20th century with special care and noted that his own 2004 year of birth is in the 21st century and the third millennium A. D. Making reference to the latter necessitated an explanation of the terms B. C. and B. C. E. as referring to the years before Christ or the Common Era, while the traditional classification of “A. D.” means Anno Domino (“The year of our Lord”) or the years, decades, centuries, and millennia after the birth of Jesus.
I then asked Damon if he knew where Senegal is, and how it differs from Africa. I sketched out a map for him on my yellow pad and showed him where the nation of Senegal in West Africa, and we reviewed the seven continents and where these are on the globe. My next query, necessitating more explanations, concerned the British colonies, the British, Spanish, and Portuguese slave trade to the Americas, and the role of Boston as a key port for the arrival of slaves in the 18th century.
That was just the first paragraph, which will give you an idea of just what knowledge deficits most public school students bring to the task of reading. My mission in the New Salem Educational Initiative is to ensure that students get a good liberal arts education at the same time that they attain grade level and above skills in math and reading. Any notion that making sure that students are fluent readers with good vocabularies denies teachers the opportunity to teach other subjects is just so much muddled thinking. Reading is a skill but also the key vital conduit through which knowledge flows. When students are asked to read content-rich material, explained by a teacher with a keen grasp of knowledge from across the liberal arts curriculum, reading abets (and by all means does not impede) the acquisition of subject area knowledge.
So as we read together the other four paragraphs, I continued to explain any unfamiliar words, historical references, and other content-specific matters. Hence, we discussed subjects related to conditions of slave life, Greek and Latin as languages often used to render the Bible, George Washington’s roles as head general for the American revolutionary army and as president of the United States, and the difference between poetry and prose. We also discussed the terms “antislavery” and “abolition,” and in the course of our discussion Damon learned the meaning of the prefix, “anti.” And as we covered the final few sentences, Damon also learned what the terms, “free African American” and “free black” meant; and we discussed Phillis Wheatley’s place among African American poets to follow in her footsteps.
Discussion naturally turned then to poets who flourished during the Harlem Renaissance. I identified the heyday of that period of cultural flowering as lying in the 1920s, which gave me an opportunity to review the system of classifying centuries by asking Damon to identify the century encompassing the 1920s. He correctly responded with, “the 20th century.”
The book that I had bought for Damon cost only $4.00. All of my explanations were given orally or written on a yellow pad that cost about $2.00. On the latter inexpensive item, I included as vocabulary items the words “published” and “decline,” along with terms already mentioned for their historical, geographical, or topical importance. I also did a quick math review, generating four-digit additive and subtractive problems necessitating regrouping (carrying and borrowing). And just with spoken words alone, I ran Damon through his multiplication tables involving the numbers one through nine, a task that he performed to perfection.
Careful readers will understand just how rich and monumentally important this just over one hour academic session was for Damon. Whether one poses as a criticizer or a defender of public school systems, one must grasp the weakness of the knowledge base that most all students (especially those of poverty and familial challenge) bring from a public school education. I know that I must provide most of the real education that a student is going to receive, and toward that end, and in the service of that mission, I will follow my students wherever they go to make sure that they receive the education that they deserve.
On this Tuesday, 13 August 2013, it was of immense importance that the economically impoverished, residentially mobile Damon Preston gained even more confidence that when I say I will never go away, I mean just that. It was enormously important that he advanced his subject area education and learned words that he will never learn around the familial dinner table or, apparently, at school. When one embraces the sacred mission of educating a precious young student, it is incumbent upon the teacher not to make excuses but to offer solutions. Damon has known only solutions under my guidance. He knows that I will always find him, wherever he goes. He knows that I will appear consistently, dependably, forever. He has, after four years of participation in the New Salem Educational initiative, a growing confidence in himself as a person who, for all of his life challenges, will live a life of satisfaction and success.
Consider the power of Damon’s confidence and his certain success for himself, his current family, future generations who will no longer be stuck in cyclical poverty, and for a society that can observe a probable severe liability become a major asset.
Consider the power of Damon’s experience week in and week out, throughout his K-12 years, in the New Salem Educational Initiative.
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