A Note to My Readers on a Series of Articles Concerning the MPS-MFT 2013 Contract Negotiations

A Note to My Readers>>>>>

The following six posts concern a compact book, running thirty (30) or so pages in manuscript format, that I have written concerning the contract negotiations currently being conducted by the Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers.

Bernadeia Johnson has emerged as a courageous and insightful Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

Lynn Nordgren leads a teachers union that is doing everything it can to obstruct the contract proposals that might in some cases challenge and inconvenience the most reactionary and least talented members of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers.

My articles copiously reproduce the Minneapolis Public Schools contract proposals and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers responses.  My own analysis is most evident in Article #1 and Article #2, and, especially, Article # 4 and Article #5, in which I summarize the Minneapolis Public Schools and Minneapolis Federation of Teachers positions---  and then offer incisive commentary.

Some readers may find the latter two articles the most engaging and find satisfying a process of skimming the other articles for details of the school district contract proposal, with union responses, but going to the two specified articles for the most careful reading.

The immediately following post gives the front matter of the book (title, copyright, and contents), with the five articles then appearing in succession.

Front Matter>>> Title Page, Copyright, Contents

An Assessment of the 2013 Negotiations, Minneapolis Public Schools and Minneapolis Federation of Teachers

Or What I Would Tell Lynn Nordgren and Her Group If They Had the Courage to Let Members of the Public Speak            

A Five Article Series

By Gary Marvin Davison, Ph. D.

Director, New Salem Educational Initiative


New Salem Educational Initiative

Minneapolis, Minnesota


An Assessment of the 2013 Negotiations, Minneapolis Public Schools and Minneapolis Federation of Teachers

Or What I Would Tell Lynn Nordgren and Her Group If They Had the Courage to Let Members of the Public Speak

A Five Article Series

Copyright © 2013 by Gary Marvin Davison

New Salem Educational Initiative


Contents

Article #1>>>>>

The Prevaricating and Irresponsible Posturing of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers

Article #2>>>>>

The Highly Promising Initiatives of the Team Assembled by Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson

Article #3>>>>>

Contract Language Proposed by the Minneapolis Public Schools and the Response from the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers

Article #4>>>>>

My Analysis of the Minneapolis Public Schools Contract Proposals and of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers Response

Part One: Brief Overviews

Article #5>>>>>

My Analysis of the Minneapolis Public Schools Contract Proposals and of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers Response

Part Two: My Comments

Article #1>>>>> The Prevaricating and Irresponsible Posturing of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers

Minneapolis Public Schools officials, spurred by the efforts of courageous and dedicated Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson, are fully focused on making changes in the educational delivery system of the district that will bring a higher quality of education to students, particularly at the schools most in need of improvement.

Lynn Nordgren and her group from the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers are doing everything that they can to make sure that the needed changes are not made.

Nordgren and her group reveal much of their flawed approach in a glossy flyer distributed at one of the early meetings. Entitled, “Minneapolis Teachers --- Goals for Student Success,” the flyer goes on to emphasize a number of points that would ensure that such success will not happen. The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers union calls for the following:

1) a moratorium on standardized testing;

2) school leadership by committee with heavy teacher input;

3) achievement of teacher quality through teacher-led, peer-reviewed evaluations, peer mentoring, participation in residency programs, a rigorous tenure process, and strong pre-service education;

4) child-centered curriculum informed heavily by the talents and interests of students ;

5) a variety of social services, addressing problems that students bring with them to school; and

6) class sizes that would fix ratios of 1:15 for K-3 students, 1:21 for those at grades 4-5, and 1:24 for students at grades 6-12.

Some of these tenets of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers seem appealing but need to be decoded:

1)

The moratorium on standardized testing should not even seem appealing to anyone who thinks clearly about assessment. Standardized, objective testing such as that done through the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) is the best way to determine if students have achieved mastery in the major skill areas of reading and math.

Results of the MCAs and other standardized tests have deeply embarrassed the teachers of the Minneapolis Public Schools, so they want to avoid further embarrassment by jettisoning such tests.

But colleges and university officials know that such standardized tests as the ACT and the SAT are good predictors of success at the college level. Military officials know that tests administered by the armed services predict with a high degree of accuracy the skill and knowledge sets that prospective soldiers bring to their service.

2) and 3)

Lynn Nordgren and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers tend to use the verbiage of “collaboration” in anything that involves decision-making at school sites. But teacher hiring, evaluation, and dismissal should not be under the purview of teachers. Those are matters of administrative responsibility, for which administrators should then be held accountable as to the teacher quality represented by the professionals operating in each classroom.

4)

By child-centered curriculum, Nordgren and group mean a curriculum disastrously touted by education professors under the monikers of “progressive” and “constructionist” approaches that promote the interests of individual students and teachers as the drivers of curriculum.

In fact, anyone who truly loves children and wants them to thrive during and after the K-12 school experience should want them to learn specified skill and knowledge sets in grade by grade sequence; these inevitably go beyond the immediate personal inclinations of students and will in the long run make them well-informed citizens who actually know something about math, literature, history, economics, biology, chemistry, physics, the fine arts, and multiple languages.

5)

The nomenclature adopted by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers calls for “wrap-around services,” proposed to address issues pertinent to family and community that may impede a student’s progress. The union is on solid ground in calling for better comprehensive services to address student needs. The problem is that teachers use family struggles and economic impoverishment of many children as excuses for their own failures to deliver the quality of education that is possible when highly qualified teachers are in every classroom.

6)

The class sizes touted by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers are fiscally unrealistic and do not guarantee student success.

With an exercise of fiscal and pedagogical logic, Minneapolis Public Schools officials should aim for K-3 class sizes in the low 20s, grade 4-5 class sizes in the middle 20s, and class sizes at the middle and high school level in the upper 20s, lower 30s, or whatever seems best for a given classroom and subject matter.

Much more use should be made of better trained teachers’ aides and talented volunteers to draw students aside for highly focused work on skills that are lagging.

Article #2>>>>> The Highly Promising Initiatives of the of the Team Assembled by Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson

In sharp contrast to the prevaricating and irresponsible posturing of Lynn Nordgren and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, the initiatives of Minneapolis Public Schools officials under the leadership of Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson are innovative and focused keenly on addressing academic issues of schools targeted for high priority changes in the delivery of education.

In a document entitled, “MPS Background on High Priority Schools “ (October 10, 2013), school district officials demonstrate through data presentation that the most academically challenged schools have much more staffing instability and less experienced teachers, even though schools such as Bethune, Bryn Mawr, Edison, Hall, Lucy Laney, North, Northeast, and Olson, by comparison with other schools, have much greater incidence of student poverty and chronic underachievement than does the district as a whole--- even in a school district that is itself underachieving.

To remedy the prevailing underachievement at schools prioritized for structural changes in the interest of better academic results, the district proposes the following in its “Summary of General Interest.” Responses of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers to each of these points are given in quotation marks, underneath the points:

1) Blend the former Memoranda of Agreements (MOAs) relating to High Priority Schools (HPS) and School Improvement Grant Schools into one new article of the contract.

“Question: Which elements of each MOA are intended to be “blended”? There are only a couple of sentences that are different.”

2) The list of participating Schools would be included in an Appendix to the contract, rather than listing schools in the agreement itself. This way the list can change from year to year without having to amend the contract repeatedly.

“NO.

“We are not entering this into our contract. There is not definite agreement, there is no evidence that what is being proposed will make a difference, there are too many details that have to be worked out. Students and teachers are not pawns to be used in an experiment. Children and youth need to be treated humanely--- they are not robots and their aptitudes and gifts should not be judged solely on test scores.

"A longer day of academic drilling while sitting at a desk is not in synch with best practices or child development. We agree with more hands on, experiential time after school that is educational but not more time at a desk, which ends up leading to students hating learning and school.”

3) Allow sites to provide more professional development or collaboration time to meet the specific needs of their site.

“There is already an overload of PD and meetings at the sites. Teachers cannot keep up with preparing lessons for the next day because of it. WE must find time for more review of student work, planning differentiated lessons, gathering of resources and time to speak with parents. Over and over, we are hearing the PD is not helping and actually hurting classroom instruction. It is all too often superficial, not relevant, and time consuming. We believe in professional development but not in its current format.”

4) Allow sites to provide additional instruction time to meet the specific needs of their sites. “Sites do provide more instruction time. Many students have an additional hour of math and hour of reading after school.

“Without more discussion, this feels chaotic--- free for all at best. Families already have a difficult time managing our system; this would only add more disruption.”

5) Enhance the ability for sites to hire and retain staff to maximize continuity of instruction and quality.

“Sites already have this ability. They select whomever they wish through the Interview and Select process.”

6) Maintain class size targets and ability to address teacher to student loads.

“There was no good faith effort over the past year by the district to do anything about class size or caseloads except the usual class size adjustments in October. Class sizes have not changed or they have gotten bigger. Caseloads are out of control--- way beyond state recommendations. We know class size and caseloads make a difference in learning and we can close the gap if we adjust to sizes that research tells us works.

"There appears to be an unwillingness to tackle the problem with any zeal or depth. That said, we are hopeful (yet also skeptical) the proposed plan to open schools will make a difference but that is not going to solve the problem we face in the present moment.”

7) Regular collaboration and assessment of the aspects that are working.

"Based on what? We did not do this over the past year and do not see anything in place to make that happen over the upcoming year(s). We refuse to use standardized test scores as the indicator of success."

Article #3>>>>> Contract Language Proposed by the Minneapolis Public Schools and the Response from the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers

Following up on its Summary of General Interests, the team negotiating for the Minneapolis Public Schools has offered proposed contract language meant to address the issues faced at High Priority Schools, dealing with those issues with greater flexibility and creativity.

The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers response to each of the parts in the Proposed Contract Language is given underneath the proposed language offered by the Minneapolis Public Schools:

Proposed Contract Language

Article XIX. HIGH PRIORITY SCHOOLS The Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) share a common goal in strengthening academic performance at schools identified by the district as “High Priority Schools.” For 2013-2014 these schools are listed in Appendix A.

The following commitments are effective July 1, 2013.

Section A. Time Teachers repeatedly expressed the need for more time to collaborate. Best practices in high performing, urban schools also demonstrate the need for structured, dedicated time for planning professional development and collaboration. Therefore:

a. Starting with the 2013-14 school year, teachers with any assignment at a High Priority School will participate in up to five (5) additional duty days or equivalent time for professional development/ collaboration beyond what is agreed to in the master CBA between MPS and MFT.

To this wording of the Proposed Contract Language, the MFT inserts “be required to” between “will” and “participate” in line two and at the end adds, “In addition, staff at all sites will have access to four (4) additional unencumbered preparation days in the 10 days before the first professional day. This is optional, not required, but is intended to provide teachers with the opportunity/ time to set up classrooms and prepare for the upcoming quarter, in advance of the official callback.” The MFT then creates a new part “b.” to read, “Teachers will be paid at their direct instruction rate of pay for the additional days--- whether required or optional.”

b. The specific schedule and topics to be addressed during the professional development/ collaboration days or extended times will be determined by each school’s Principal/ Administrator and Instructional Leadership Team after seeking input from the teaching staff. The school’s Associate Superintendent will have final approval of the plan.

This section is then lettered as “c” by the MFT, striking the words, “or extended times” from the second sentence, striking “Principal/ Administrator” from the second and third lines, and adding “collective” between “seeking” and “input” in the third line.

c. The District can also develop a plan for additional instructional time for students in all or some of the High Priority Schools. The District will work collaboratively with the MFT, teachers, parents, students, and community partners to review possible options that may include:

This section has then become “d,” with the entire first sentence deleted by the MFT, and with the remaining sentence altered to read as follows: “The District, MFT, teachers, parents, students and community partners will work collaboratively to review possible options for extended learning time that may include:”

i. Additional instructional days in the District school calendar approved by the Board of Education for 2013-14.

The MFT alters the wording of this point “i” and combines it with an altered point “ii” as follows: “Additional instruction time through after school extended enrichment learning opportunities.” I

i. Additional instructional time through extended learning options and a longer day.

iii. A summer school option at High Priority Schools that identifies specific students who would benefit from additional time and learning supports.

Having combined points “I” and “ii,” the MFT then presents this section as section “ii,” with modifications and additions as follows: “Required summer school option for all students in need of more learning time as recommended by the teachers and related services professionals in the schools. “Summer schools should continue to follow and expand on the experiential, applied learning model it currently uses. The summer slide for students is because they do not have access and opportunities to the same things that middle class and upper middle class students have--- camping, swimming, field trips to museums and outdoor destinations, hands on science lessons, community events, etc.”

iv. An alternative option developed by the parties that meets the objective of providing additional instruction, increasing student achievement and closing the achievement gap.

This section is presented by the MFT as section “iii,”with the following change of wording, “An alternative option developed by the parties that meets the objective of providing instruction, increasing student achievement and closing the opportunity gap such as wrap around services and community activities.”

d. Annually the District will designate sites and programs that will be added to the list of High Priority Schools contained in Appendix A based on changes in school performance. The District will notify MFT by November 1st of each year of any additions to the list.

The MFT alters section “d,” which has become section “e,”as follows: A team made up of MPS and MFT members will review sites and programs that may need additional support in the upcoming school year and determine the best actions to be taken.

e. Teachers at High Priority Schools who work additional days beyond the 196 day agreed to in the Collective Bargaining Agreement will need to sign a form stating that they understand that the extended time is not guaranteed in future years.

The MFT makes no change in this section, which has become section “f.”

Section B. Staffing

No excess placement may occur at a High Priority site unless the Principal/ Administrator agrees, or there is consensus of the Placement Committee, following an interview between the site and the teacher to maximize consent and best fit. This does not limit the discretion of the Superintendent or their designee to make final placement decisions even at a High Priority School.

The MFT strikes this entire paragraph, asserting that “The language of the current MOAs is clear and works just fine.” The MFT then substitutes its own introduction to “Staffing” as follows: “Staffing: No placement may occur at a High Priority School unless there is consensus of the Placement Committee, following an interview between the site and the teacher to maximize consent and best fit (as per the Streamlining Transfers Through Mutual Consent MOAs).

With the approval of Human Resources, a High Priority School will be able to have an extended early I & S session (i.e., open postings) to post specific positions internally and externally to fill directly into known vacancies without waiting until after Budget Tie-Out (BTO) and the later rounds of the I & S process.

The MFT strikes this entire paragraph, posing a question as follows: “QUESTION: How would we manage an expansion of the labor pool before BTO shows the specific needs? We propose to stay with what we have now. This proposal would potentially increase instability in staffing by increasing the numbers of teachers excessed within the system, which can be burdensome.”

Teachers accepting positions in a HPS wll make a three (3) year commitment to remain in the school to provide stability and continuity in the programming. The MFT leaves this sentence intact but alters the following paragraph. At the discretion of the Human Resources Department, hiring incentives may be used to remain competitive and compete for teachers with surrounding districts and schools. The district has the right to match offers, make competitive offers, provide hiring bonuses, and create retention bonuses in an effort to hire teachers in hard to fill license areas or programs.

The MFT strikes this entire paragraph, asserting the following: “This is very vague language. Perhaps looking at giving extra steps when a person is hired into a ‘hard to fill’ license area for a lane movement while on the job. If they leave this HTF position, they will return to the step or lane [at which] they would have been had they not been in a HTF position. (Toledo language…) All staff HPS and staff in hard-to-fill positions from non-hard-to-fill positions/ programs anywhere (based on shortages.) New hires or teachers who would change positions from non-hard-to-fill to hard-to-fill positions would get extra steps, currently employed teachers in those positions would also get the extra step move to honor their hard work, and to, hopefully, retain them.

In the event staff reductions are needed at a High Priority School due to changes in budget, a High Priority School will not be required to excess teachers in seniority order. Teachers who are excessed from a High Priority Schools or site due to a reduction in staffing shall participate in Open Postings and the Interview and Select interview and transfer process.

The MFT deletes this entire paragraph and proceeds to item “C.”

C.  Class Size Targets and Instructional Levels

The MFT makes an insertion here, as follows:

NOTE: This language was not honored this past year. We do not trust that it will be in the future. It feels like it is added to sweeten the MOA with no intent to actually make it happen.

To ensure students timely, meaningful attention and feedback as well as the ability to maintain a positive, productive student-centered classroom, the District and MFT commit to the lowest possible student to educator ratio. The District will work to target the following class sizes or instructor to student guides:

a. K-3 @ 21

b. Grades 4-5 @ 24: MPS will use minimal allocation dollars to address class size in order to ensure that K-3 numbers do not have a negative impact on the 4-5.

c. Grades 6-12: sites will determine class size. Sites may use their discretion to allocate their existing budget allocation to reduce class size.

The MFT lets the class sizes stand but adds a section “d” as follows:

d. Related services professionals will have caseloads per state recommendations and appropriate caseload support.

The district retains flexibility to meet exigencies, such as sibling preference, facility size, late enrollment, and other contingencies, as we make a “best effort” in meeting the targets. Where space for additional classes to reduce class size is not viable, the District will look to adjust staffing to accommodate and overall reduce instructor –to- student ratios.

The MFT strikes the entire first line of this paragraph and alters it to read as follows:

In order to meet the class size targets where space is not available, the District may look to adjust staffing to accommodate and overall reduce instructor-to-student ratios such as adding another teacher or ESP to the classroom.

Both parties realize that, if funding changes significantly year to year, the targets would have to be adjusted to be consistent with overall district funding, while still providing relatively lower class size targets for the High Priority Schools than the overall District targets for the same grade levels.

The MFT leaves this paragraph mostly intact, but removes the word, “targets,” in the first line, replacing it with the phrasing, “student to teacher ratio.” The MFT then adds a line, as follows: “Joint labor/ management negotiations would occur to adjust class size/ caseload as needed per changes in funding.”

MPS and MFT agree to monitor class size at Fall Staff Adjustments meetings. Representatives from MPS and MFT will meet no later than the third week in September each year to review data on actual class size numbers and discuss adjustments needed. This review will include Special Education and ELL class sizes and caseloads.

The MFT leaves the wording in this section intact but adds, “Need stronger language.” Section D. Evaluation MPS and MFT will regularly evaluate the success of this Article throughout its implementation.

The MFT leaves the wording in this section intact but adds, “[didn’t happen].”

Article #4>>>>> My Analysis of the Minneapolis Public Schools Contract Proposals and of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers Response>>>>> Part One: Brief Overviews

Brief Overview of the Minneapolis Public Schools Summary of General Interest and the Response of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers

In its Summary of General Interest, officials of the Minneapolis Public Schools seek to unify contract language that pertains to High Priority Schools and School Improvement Grant Schools, since these jointly pertain to schools facing elevated challenges in moving students to grade level performance in math and reading. They aim for flexibility in designating these schools and reforming the list on an annual basis, meaning that they should not be identified in the body of the contract, but rather placed in an appendix to the contract. The Summary aims for a great deal of site flexibility, with prime responsibility of site principals to make decisions that will move the mission of the schools forward in raising student academic performance and closing the achievement gap.

Thus, suitable authority is placed in principals’ hands to call for necessary professional development of teachers, add instruction time for those students who need highly intensified work on fundamental skills, hire excellent teachers and provide them with incentives to take on the inherent pedagogical challenge over the long haul. District officials vow to maintain class sizes as appropriate to actual, prevailing situations, and they commit themselves to ongoing evaluation of progress being made.

With regard to the Summary of General Interest, those formulating the response for the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers maintain that additional instructional time is already being provided after school, and that more emphasis on fundamental skills while sitting at a desk will result in students being bored and hating school. They claim that sites already have flexibility in hiring and retaining staff through the “Interview and Select” process. They say that they do not trust District commitment to maintaining proper class size, and they imply that regular assessment as to the effectiveness of approaches used at High Priority Schools will not, extrapolating from past experiences, be done.

Brief Overview of the Minneapolis Public Schools Proposed Contract Language and the Response of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers

According to the Proposed Contract Language on temporal matters, officials of the Minneapolis Public Schools call for the addition of five (5) additional duty days (including equivalent time for professional development) at High Priority Schools, with flexibility as to how the time is to be used as decided by Principal/ Administrator and Instructional Leadership Team. As in the Summary of General Interest, the contract proposal calls for additional necessary instructional time, calendar days, and summer school as needed by particular students.

The contract proposal emphasizes the matter of ongoing assessment as to which sites should be labeled High Priority Schools. It calls for teachers at these schools to sign their agreement to work the extra days necessary to address the academic needs of students. As to staffing, the Proposed contract Language calls for enhanced authority for principals and District administrative personnel on matters pertinent to the hiring, rewarding, and retention of teachers, with the responsibility of teachers to make a three-year commitment to the High Priority School. There is a call for teacher quality and performance to trump seniority in times of budget cutting.

Those formulating the response of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers place themselves firmly against all of the key innovations. They eliminate or alter language having to do with principal and administrative authority in hiring, rewarding, and retention of teachers; maintain that sites already choose whatever teachers they deem best; and defend the present multistage Interview and Select process hiring as fully adequate and appropriate.

Union responders characterize the proposed contract language as being too vague on the matter of incentives for teaching in High Priority Schools, asserting that rewards should be given through advances in position on steps and lanes in the current system of rewards for years of service and additional academic training. Those formulating the response for the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers acquiesce to the class size ratios proposed by District officials but seek greater specificity as to how these are to be achieved.

Article #5>>>>> My Analysis of the Minneapolis Public Schools Contract Proposals and of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers Response>>>>> Part Two: My Comments

Via the summary of General Interests and Proposed Contract Language, Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson and officials of the Minneapolis Public Schools are focusing with intensity on the very particular needs of students who are struggling below grade level in fundamental skills. These students are especially apparent at certain schools overwhelmingly dominated by students from low-income families.

Administrative authority to make needed changes and ongoing adjustments; the hiring, rewarding, and retention of excellent teachers; and enough time to do what needs to be done; are all effective tenets of successful programs such as the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) schools, the Harlem Achievement Zone superintended by Geoffrey Canada, and many of the most effective, high-poverty, high-performing schools across the nation.

Embedded in the expressed and implied conceptualization is the assertion that administrators should take responsibility for running schools and that the very best teachers should be in the classroom educating students to their maximum capacity. This makes extraordinary sense. Teaching is quite enough of a responsibility when it is done with excellence. Excellent teachers, secure in what they are doing in the classroom, focus on students and the classroom. Talented administrators are secure in taking responsibility for hiring the best staff possible and employing the skills of excellent teachers to maximum effect.

To their great credit, officials of the Minneapolis Public Schools are making a move toward a program, to be stipulated in the contract, to streamline processes most likely to enable talented administrators to use their talents, to allow excellent teachers to manifest their excellence, and for students (all of whom have enormous potential) to reach their full potential in mastering skill and knowledge sets that will define their experiences now and in their futures.

In business, industry, much of higher academia, and the best performing schools across the nation, administrative flexibility exists to search for and hire the best staff members, rewarding them with whatever incentives are appropriate (including those spontaneously dispensed as monetary reward for demonstrated and particular excellence). Well-functioning organizations feature administrators and managers who can make calls on the spot to meet the exigencies of the moment, assuming full responsibility for the calls that are made.

But in the stodgy world of the education establishment, this sort of talent and flexibility is not cultivated or allowed. Grade K-5 teachers undergo terrible teacher preparation, under the influence of education professors who do not respect knowledge. Grade K-5 teachers typically arrive in classrooms devoid of key knowledge sets in math, science, literature, history, economics, the fine arts, and languages. They are not prepared to impart knowledge to their students, because they have so little knowledge themselves. So as a posture to hide their insufficient knowledge, they pretend that instead of imparting knowledge, they are teaching students to “learn how to learn,” be “lifelong learners,” and to “think critically.”

Secondary teachers are a bit better trained. They have to undergo excruciatingly terrible education courses, but they do get majors in legitimate disciplines (e. g., math, chemistry, English, history, music, or Spanish)--- except for those who attend institutions that allow them to take the less rigorous major of “Teaching Social Studies” (Math, Science, etc.). But at the middle school level, the going philosophy of the education establishment has tended toward viewing socialization of the early adolescent as paramount, so that we wait until high school to deliver anything like a decent liberal arts curriculum. But here, too many teachers are inadequate to the task.

Thus, we have students (those who do at least manage to graduate) who walk across the stage not knowing who Frederick Douglass was, not knowing a cerebral cortex from a corpus callosum, never having really learned and understood how to apply the Pythagorean Theorem (much less the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus), never having had the full literary genius of Homer and Shakespeare revealed to them, having no idea of the difference between federal deficit and federal debt.

Our students are educated atrociously, officials of the Minneapolis Public Schools know it, and they are trying to do much better, especially with regard to the students failed the most by a failed system. The response of the representatives of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers is expected but even worse than one might hope. They resist giving principals and administrators the power that they need to hire, reward, and retain the best teachers, because many in the MFT membership would not measure up. Insecure in their considerable power to teach, they are distrustful of those who would wield proper administrative authority.  Unable to teach students fundamental math and reading skills to give grade level performance on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs), they reject fair and objective standardized teaching in favor of a deceptively titled “Authentic Assessment” that was tossed out over a decade ago under the pressure of an outside review that deemed the old Profile of Learning to be virtually no learning at all.

But some of the statements issued in response to the Proposed Contract Language are particularly, stunningly, deeply disturbing:

In what world do these teacher representatives dwell, in which there is no comprehension that additional explicit instruction in math and reading are necessary for students operating two and three grades below that of school enrollment?

From where comes the assumption that students will be bored when given proper instruction in math and reading?

Under what impoverished educational model does a putative educator claim that going to camp, museums, and outdoor nature venues will address math and reading skills--- because upper middle class students get to do more of these kinds of things?

Understand that I write this as a teacher who in the New Salem Educational Initiative takes students to the Great River Shakespeare Festival every summer, who invites students to dine in my home with my wife and me (sampling international fare that they are not likely to get as ordinary diet), who has taken groups to the Boundary Waters and on tours of East Asia.

But as the staple of their experience with me, my students eagerly run to my car after school, early Saturday morning, and on Sunday afternoons and evenings for the ride to the classrooms at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church to focus like a laser on math and reading fundamentals, then to embark on a magnificent exploration of subjects from across a liberal arts curriculum that they never get in their daily instruction in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

And anyone reading this is welcome to meet these students, all of whom come from economically challenged circumstances, any time, any academic session, any day of the week.

Conclusion

Officials of the Minneapolis Public Schools are to be lauded for having conceived and generated a contract that addresses the needs of students to acquire fundamental skill and knowledge sets, particularly in High Priority Schools.

The public should put its full weight of approval behind the efforts of Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson and a dedicated team of negotiators, conveying to the representatives of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers that the stipulations in the Proposed Contract Language are necessary, long overdue, and imperative.

A Note to My Readers on the Compact Book That You Will Be Reading

A Note to My Readers

In the several articles that follow, you will be reading a compact book (running about sixty [60] pages in manuscript form) that I wrote about a year ago. The book describes a single, even more eventful day than usual, in the life of the New Salem Educational Initiative.

The next material that I will be posting is the front matter (title page, copyright, contents) of the book. Thereafter, I will post each of the seven (7) chapters of the book in succession.

The names that I use for posting the book on this site, with the exception of those of my own family members, are pseudonyms, adopted for reasons of data privacy.

Title Page, Copyright, and Contents

Just Another Day at the Office :  A Day in the Life of the New Salem Educational Initiative/   The Remarkably Unremarkable Events of September 29, 2012


Gary Marvin Davison, Ph. D.
Director, New Salem Educational Initiative


New Salem Educational Initiative
Minneapolis, Minnesota



Just Another Day at the Office: A Day in the Life of the New Salem Educational Initiative/  The Remarkably Unremarkable Events of September 29, 2012

Copyright © 2012 by Gary Marvin Davison
New Salem Educational Initiative                     



Contents

Chapter One -----  The Miracle on 6th Street North    

Chapter Two -----  Shakespeare by Way of Ecuador   

Chapter Three ----- Spanning the Academic Bridge   

Chapter Four ----- Going Where They Are  

Chapter Five ----- Way Down, Moving Up  

Chapter Six  ----- Diamonds in the Rough  

Chapter Seven ----- Thoughts     

Chapter One ----- The Miracle on 6th Street North

Past pushers, pimps, and prostitutes already vying for customers at 10:00 AM on Saturday, September 29, 2012, I drove my hail-beaten ’96 red Honda Civic to the home in the 2200 block of 6th Avenue North in North Minneapolis. I had already called via my cell and notified Daniel Raymond-Johnson that I was on my way.

This is my eighth year to pull up at this house to pack several kids into my car on Saturday morning. Talika Wilson (Daniel’s cousin) was in the group from the start, back when she was a Grade 1 student who had not fared well in kindergarten, so that her family was seeking academic recovery in my direction; Talika is now at the head of her class as a Grade 8 student at Olson Middle School. She is bright-eyed, ever eager to tell me all about her week at school, ever avid in seeking clarification of concepts in math, science, history, and government for which she wants better understanding.

Two memories stand out in my brain from Talika’s early days in the Initiative. The first is how, in that first year, Talika was intent on getting clear in academic matters with which she was struggling at school. She was in a group of four at the time. I would come by her desk, sit down beside her, explain a concept, and convey what I wanted her to do. She would get right to it, and in the meantime I would be moving quickly to the desks of the three other students, explaining concepts to them, giving them additional tasks, and moving on. I would be back to Talika within 10 minutes, but for her academically earnest self this was not always fast enough. She’d be following me with her eyes as I negotiated my path among the other students and back to her, waiting for me, the formation of a tear beginning to appear at the edges of her eyes, so eager was she for the next explanation, the next great thing to learn.

The other memory further illustrates this avid academic thrust from a young brain ever-ready to shine its very bright light. One Saturday in Talika’s Grade 3 year, I appeared as always at the door of the home where she lives with her grandmother, two aunties, a sister, many cousins, and an assortment of other family members. Talika had hurt her right leg in some physical activity in the course of the week. Her thigh was especially tender, and she struggled through her door as she approached the long set of concrete stairs descending toward the curb where my car was parked. I said, “Hey, Tali (her nickname), why don’t you let me carry you down to the car?” “No, I can do it,” she replied, and proceeded to prove that indeed she could: Talika hopped on her left leg down twenty steps to the car, got in, and said, “Let’s go learn some stuff!” ………………………………………………………………………….

On this morning of Saturday, 29 September 2012, Daniel and Talika piled into my car for the short drive a few blocks to 26th Avenue North and then a few more up the little hill to Bryant Avenue North, at the corner of which New Salem Missionary Baptist Church is positioned across from Nellie Stone Johnson K-8 School. Once in our classroom at the church, Talika ran a few questions by me in review of division of fractions, the art of which was necessary for her to do some math problems at school to her satisfaction.

Talika is an “A” math student who easily masters grade level tasks, asks for periodic review of concepts unutilized for awhile, and is capable of taking on math tasks well above her level of school enrollment.

Daniel is even more precocious. He followed completely my review of fractional division; at just Grade 6, Daniel is completely adept at operations with ratios, proportions, and percentages traditionally associated with Grade 7 and Grade 8. After the review, Talika and Daniel began working through practice math Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) similar to the real tests that they will take in April 2013. Both of these students are on track to complete understanding of the concepts on those grade-level math MCAs by November 2012, at which time we will begin above-grade-level instruction in anticipation of academic concepts pertinent to Grade 9 for Talika and Grade 7 for Daniel.

Talika and Daniel are already reading well above grade level. This past summer of 2012, these two thoroughly read Shakespeare’s King Lear with me, and then went to see a splendid production of the play at the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona. They followed every line in the performance and expressed their understanding and excitement with utterances such as, “I still don’t think Shakespeare should have had Cordelia die!”--- and “I feel sorry for King Lear, even though he was so lame the way he fell for the lines of Goneril and Regan.” These are wonderful comments for students still in their pre-high school years. I compare Daniel, especially, to my own son Ryan at comparable age, when his teachers frequently marveled at the sophisticated vocabulary that came out of this advanced young academic specimen.

On the way to pick up cousins Ginger Taylor-Warren and Walter Allison for lunch, Talika, Daniel, and I reflected back on our trip to Winona and then to my house in Northfield for the Chinese dinner that I cooked for them. “Yeah, King Lear was great---” Talika said, “but your sweet and sour chicken was even better.”
……………………………………………………………………………….

Ginger Taylor-Warren splits time among houses on 6th Street North (grandma’s), Thomas Avenue North (dad’s), and Aldrich Avenue North (mom’s). She is content to stay at her mom’s house on her alternate weeks, but during the week with dad she escapes to grandma’s whenever she can. Ginger is now in Grade 3 and has been in my program since she was in kindergarten, so that she never had a chance to be academically abused by the Minneapolis Public Schools the way so many children are. I have always taught her everything that she needed to know, particularly in math and reading, but also in subjects across my solid liberal arts curriculum.

Ginger now reads with the adeptness of a Grade 5 student, and she performs math tasks well above level of school enrollment. She has, for example, already mastered her multiplication tables, and she stunned the audience gathered at the Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet in June 2012 with her comprehension of college preparatory words such as “quintessential,” “malapropism,” and “litigate.” She also happens to be the kid produced on the day that God decided to create the world’s cutest child.

She was at dad’s when Talika, Daniel, and I came for her at noon on this Saturday. She piled into the car and greeted my, “Hey, McDougal,” with “Hello, Harry.” I began calling her McDougal many moons ago as part of those silly things that I do to connect with young children and get their attention. Ginger returned my silliness with an appellation of her own for me, and so it goes.

We then went back to grandma’s on 6th Street North to pick up Walter Allison, Daniel’s half-brother, and thence to lunch. This is a longstanding tradition for my early Saturday participants. We go to the nearby restaurants of Subway, Taco Bell, or Wendy’s on West Broadway. I get the students’ orders on the way to the restaurant of choice (Subway on this particular Saturday), and upon arrival they go ahead and sit down at a table, with Talika and Daniel well-trained to make sure that Ginger and Walter manifest impeccable deportment. I have had many an adult comment on the exceptional behavior of the kids that I take into restaurants.

An elderly middle class couple made a special effort to come over to me on one occasion, with the wife taking the initiative in making the comment, “We just wanted to tell you how amazing the behavior of these children is. We can’t get our one grandson to act anywhere near this nicely when we take him out.” Her husband nodded in affirmation and smiled broadly.

After dining, I took Talika, Daniel, and Walter back to grandma’s. I then took Ginger to the church for a very focused hour, returned her to grandma’s, and then repeated the focused hour approach with Walter. Walter is functioning more like a Grade 2 student, well above grade level in math and reading. He can do mental addition and subtraction without recourse to paper or fingers (although I regard the latter as appropriate tools in the beginning), and he has mastered phonics and memorized unusual formulations such as the “ph” sound for “f,” along with double-letter sounds such as “th,” “sl,” and “st.” I keep things moving for Walter, as I do for all of my very young students, and I mess with their brains by purposely mispronouncing words and getting phrases wrong. I call Walter by such names as “Halter,” “Gibralter,” and “My Falter,” and I say things like, “Good snob,” rather than “Good job”; and “Let’s snow to the jar,” rather than “Let’s go to the car.” Young children love to correct adults, and I love to see the smiles on their faces in reaction to my goofiness. Walter happily corrects me when I make these verbal miscues, which Ginger is teaching him are, after all, “malapropisms.”
………………………………………………………………………………..

These four children come from a family that also includes Monique Taylor-Warren, a now Grade 10 student who has been studying with me for the same eight years that describe Talika’s tenure in the New Salem Educational Initiative.

Monique is now my brightest star, a participant in a full-fledged college preparatory Sunday evening academic session with two other students of similar histories under my tutelage. Monique could already score at a high level on the ACT. Young children in the family are observing their older relatives go off with me week after week, and they are anticipating the day when they will do the same.

This is the power of enduring commitment and the ripple effect of a pebble of love tossed weekly into the pond of lives that otherwise would know much greater confusion and abiding temptation. My effort is to provide an alternative to the similarly incessant messages delivered by the pushers, pimps, and prostitutes. Monique, Daniel, Talika, Ginger, and Walter are all connected by strong affective ties to a caring grandmother who lives in the residence to which I have long driven past the street corner ne’er-do-wells.

Given the odds for young people who live on such streets and amidst such influences, there is a kind of miracle happening on 6th Street North, where these five young people, and household younger relatives to come, are and will be moving on to courses of life more typically associated with the offspring of upper middle and upper class parentage.

Chapter Two ----- Shakespeare By Way of Ecuador

Raul Sanchez-Ruiz is part of an Ecuadorean familial contingent that first enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative in spring 2009. First came three cousins in a nuclear family superintended by Ronda Sanchez and Miguel Ruiz; then came three other cousins in the nuclear family of which Monica Sanchez is mom and Antonio Benitez is dad. Raul’s mom, Flora, observed my work with these relatives of hers and asked that I help her own son, who was badly failing Grade 6 math at the time.

Raul quickly recovered enough to achieve “B” grades in math through his middle school years. He is not a naturally gifted math student and, lacking the academic weight and ballast that comes with participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative from the beginning of the K-12 experience, Raul wages a never-ending battle to review concepts that should have long-since been internalized by Grade 6, recover the concepts learned during the Grade 6-8 middle school years, and take on the challenging new concepts that come with the high school sequence of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus.

Raul occasionally tracks backward toward a “C” and even “D,” but then we right the course again so that he moves back into “B” country, and every so often rises toward an “A.” With my ongoing support, Raul knows that he will always make the grade in math, so that the unnerving struggle in this subject will never be so severe as to undermine his efforts in subjects for which he manifests much more obvious gifts.

Raul inevitably wins awards at the Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet with nomenclature such as, “Genuine Intellectual.” And indeed, Raul is one of the very most naturally, unpretentiously, intellectual students whom I have had in my forty years of teaching. Our conversations to and from New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, where our weekly academic sessions are held, feature questions from Raul such as the following.

“Hey, you’ve written some books, right? How do you go about getting a book published?  How was Texas?” (This question tendered after I returned from a visit to look in on my 91 year-old mom in Dallas.)

“Say, I read somewhere that Texas was its own republic once. What exactly is a republic? Why didn’t Texas just stay its own nation?”

“Wow, look, it’s snowing. Hey, what exactly is the difference between sleet and snow?’

On and on his questions go. One glorious afternoon, Raul asked me some questions about Shakespeare, which led in turn to my putting a copy of Hamlet in his hands. Raul has since read that work on his own and then with me. He has also read A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear with me, attending professional productions of all three of the works of reference along with students whom I took to such venues as the Great River Shakespeare Festival (Winona) and The Jungle Theater (the Uptown area of Minneapolis). And on his own he has read Macbeth, which he describes as “My favorite book of all-time.”

Raul has established a very strong connection to me as teacher and mentor. He regularly expresses gratitude for what he has learned about academics and life under my guidance. Raul is a bit scattered in the way that intensely intellectual people sometimes are, so it was not particularly surprising that he had forgotten our mid-afternoon meeting on this Saturday, September 29, 2012. But I was taken aback by what Raul’s sisters had to tell me when I arrived to pick Raul up at 2:45 on that Saturday afternoon.
…………………………………………………………………………………

Raul has an older brother in his middle twenties and a little brother (Felipe) who is now in Grade 1 (I am currently trying to find a suitable time in my schedule to meet the family’s request that I work with Felipe). He also has two sisters, Melinda (age 22) and Isabel (age 24). I regularly talk to these two, especially when my humble Spanish comes short in conveying what I would like fully to tell Flora about her son’s academic progress. These two were both at home and very apologetic when Raul was not present upon my arrival.

I said that he really should remember that the mid-afternoon session is a fixture but that since I was newly returned from Dallas, I understood how Raul might have been thrown off temporal rhythm.

Then Melinda and Isabel began to convey to me that this was not just normal forgetfulness in the genuine intellectual. Raul, they told me, had been acting obstinate of late, neglecting his household chores, going off for long stretches without making clear where he was going, and sometimes saying he was going to a particular place but then being absent when they would call and check as to his whereabouts. This was a new Raul for me. His nuclear family was very tight, and Raul had always expressed reverence for his mom.

Raul’s mom and dad work different and odd hours at factory labor, a situation that I have witnessed as leading to enhanced rambling in adolescents. But I had not come to expect such behavior from Raul. I thanked Melinda and Isabel for telling me of their concerns, and I assured them that I would look in on Raul later in the upcoming week.

I did in fact go by the house (located on Madison Street, north of Lowry in Northeast Minneapolis) on Monday night and found Raul at home. I asked him why he had forgotten our academic session the previous Saturday, and he cited some confusion about when I was returning from Dallas. I reminded him that I had told him that I would just be gone for one Saturday. He was apologetic and said that he should have remembered. I said that his absence at the appointed time was not nearly as big a concern as my disturbance at being told about his recent unexpected behavior by Melinda and Isabel. I asked him if their account was true.

Raul admitted to most of what Melinda and Isabel had to tell me, but he told me that he had acted the way he had because he was mad at them for a certain (unspecified) reason.

I asked, “So that’s why you went off without being clear as to where you were going?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “

"And why you didn’t do your chores around the house?” “Uh-huh,” he returned.

“So in your view, these have been isolated incidents that you won’t repeat? You were just mad at Melinda and Isabel and this was your way of getting back at them?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Raul, you remember how I told you that colleges look most closely at your sophomore and junior years? This is not the time to be playing around and messing with your future. You’ve got to be at the top of your game. Our weekly sessions are a big part of keeping you there, don’t you think?’

“Yeah.”

“I’m not listening for a ‘yeah’ on this one.”

“Yes sir.”

“Well, that is a better way to reply to an adult, but what I really mean is that you need to understand that futures are made and broken at this time in your life. We have envisioned a future for you that may include being a photojournalist. You have enormous intellectual curiosity and talent. You can succeed on my college preparatory track, go on to achievement in college, get your degree, and be on the way to a better life. You want that don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes sir, very much.”

“Then you’ll be more responsible at home, right? You won’t worry your parents and sisters with idle ramblings? You’ll be here when I come to get you next Saturday?”

“Yes, I’ll have a better week.”

“Okay, go get Melinda for me,” I said as we wrapped up our heart to heart.

I told Melinda, who was the only older family member at home on that Monday evening, about the conversation that Raul and I had just had. She was profuse in her thanks, and she told me that she would call me if she or others at home had any concerns in the course of the week.

“Great. Well, I’ll be getting on now,” I said. “But I did want you to know that Raul and I had the talk and that I came by, as I said I would.”

“You always do,” Melinda replied. “And we thank you so much for coming by, and for all that you’ve done for Raul.”

“You’re very welcome, and I thank you in turn for being so concerned about your brother. And I know that in his heart he is thankful for the love and support that he gets at home.”

I turned to go, heading for the door of the screened-in porch where these conversations had ensued. I felt a tap on my back. I turned around. Raul was there, extending his hand.

“I really appreciate you coming by,” he said with a sincerity that pierced a big hole in my heart. “And I’ll be looking forward to seeing you next Saturday.”

Chapter Three ----- Spanning the Academic Bridge

I was visiting my mom in Dallas last February 2012 when a call with a “612” area code and “668” prefix appeared on the “missed call” and voicemail functions of my cell phone. I immediately recognized the call, therefore, as being from someone at the Minneapolis Public Schools; a quick look at the other numbers told me that the call was from Rebecca Hamilton of the Funded Programs Office at the Minneapolis Public Schools.

I have found convenient the memorization of some 150 telephone numbers, some of them relevant to people such as Rebecca, but most of them pertinent to family members and others with connections to my students. Telephone numbers of impoverished people change frequently, as folks exhaust the minutes in one plan, can’t pay the bill, and then reestablish cell phone plans with different companies. Land lines are inevitably disconnected for long stretches of time and in any case are on the wane. So in order to keep up with the predictably unpredictable and peripatetic existences of my students and their families, I make sure that I’ve got a bevy of phone numbers and addresses as alternative routes for maintaining all-important communication.

So this call was from Rebecca. Until this academic year of 2012-2013, for which I have moved entirely toward private sources of funding, I had for eight years established an annual contract with the Minneapolis Public Schools as a Supplemental Educational Services (SES) Provider under No Child Left Behind regulations. During the 2011-2012 academic year, there were 42 such agencies contracting to provide tutoring services beyond school hours. Rebecca knew that among those 42 agencies, I was the one most willing to help students who did not qualify for Supplemental Educational Services, so that any arrangement would be on a volunteer, unpaid basis.

Via voicemail, Rebecca briefly told me that she had such a case that she would appreciate discussing with me. Besides knowing about my bottom line willingness to work for free as necessary, Rebecca also understood a great deal about my relationships with my students and their progress under my direction: She had attended the Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet, marveling at the level of skill and talent on display, and bearing witness to the love that flowed among my students, their families, and myself. I talked to Rebecca and others at Funded Programs with considerable frequency; it was as much as a friend as a professional associate that I returned Rebecca’s call:

“Rebecca, it’s Gary,” I said as she answered her phone at the district office, then at 807 East Broadway (now moved to a location on West Broadway in North Minneapolis).

“Hey, Gary. Thanks for returning my call. I just got off a 45-minute call with a mom whose son is in the SPAN program. She was really upset that he does not qualify for SES, so I want to give you the heads-up that I gave her your number.”

“I’m so glad you did, Rebecca. What’s the woman’s name?”

“Shaniah Harrison. And her son’s name is Thomas Benton. She was a lot calmer when I told her that your program might be an option.”

“Okay, so she’s going to call me, right? Does she have a number for me to call her first?”

“She said that her phone was cut off and that she was calling on a friend’s phone. But I’m quite certain that she’ll be in touch.”

“Okay, thanks for calling. I’ll listen to what Shaniah has to tell me, and we’ll work something out.” Rebecca in turn offered generous thanks to me for being willing to work with students free of charge. She asked about my mom. We exchanged other courtesies and closed out the conversation.

Within an hour, I had the call come in from Shaniah, the essence of whose message I already knew. The SPAN program at the Minneapolis Public Schools is for young people with repeated behavioral infractions disruptive enough to warrant being placed in an environment separate from mainstream students. Because such students are already receiving special instruction, they are deemed ineligible to enroll in the SES program. Shaniah explained to me that Thomas was not being challenged enough at school and needed additional help and sufficient challenge to get up to his Grade 8 level, especially in reading and math. The SPAN program had helped him some behaviorally, but she feared that he was falling farther and farther behind academically.

There was no surprise in any of this for me. Virtually all special services programs in the public schools undervalue the capabilities of the students, effectively placing them on a track that is even less worthy to be called educational than is the mainstream course of study that sends the general student population shuffling toward a diploma.

I told Shaniah that I understood her concern and that we would work out a schedule. As we talked, we realized that we had many mutual acquaintances, including a number of her family members who attend New Salem Missionary Baptist Church.

I have ever since my return from Dallas in mid-February 2012 worked with Thomas beginning at about 5:00 PM on Saturdays. Or I have at least faithfully gone by the residence at the appointed time, occasionally to find no one at home--- usually because of some disruptive circumstance but occasionally due to forgetfulness on the part of people whose lives are disordered in the extreme.

Shaniah and Thomas have lived in three residences during the eight months that I have known them. For awhile they had no home of their own and had to shuffle among friends and family members. Nevertheless, Shaniah tried to keep contact with me by using the cell phones of friends or the new ones that she would get from time to time. And, because I knew so many people in the family, I was able to utilize those contacts to keep in touch. Thomas and Shaniah were indeed at home when I showed up early, at 3:15 PM on this Saturday afternoon of 29 September after finding Raul Sanchez-Ruiz unavailable. Thomas and Shaniah now reside in the 3200 block of Chicago Avenue in South Minneapolis.

I worked with Thomas for awhile on math skills that he should have mastered coming out of the 8th grade and are now crucial as he takes on Algebra I at Washburn High School. I then modeled an introduction to an essay in response to the prompt, “If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?”

This is similar to the kind of question asked on the Grade 9 Writing Test that a student needs to pass in order to graduate. Thomas chose Jamaica and identified understanding family life, trying a variety of food, and learning more about holidays and customs as three topics around which to order internal paragraphs. I modeled the introduction, he wrote the second paragraph, I straightened this out for him and explained the importance of keeping on topic within a paragraph, then left him with the task of doing the remainder of the body (paragraphs three and four) on his own. I told him that I would check the paragraphs that he writes at our next session and would model the conclusion for him at that time.

Thomas is still in the SPAN program, his continued enrollment having been determined in a meeting that I attended near the end of his Grade 8 year, just three months after making his acquaintance, at Shaquia’s request. His teachers were adamant that Thomas exhibited enough inappropriate behavior that he should not be returned to mainstream classes until he had proven himself in high school. Shaniah was given the choice of taking Thomas out of SPAN and mainstreaming him, in which case his behavior was likely to get him expelled; or continuing to receive SPAN services until he had proven that he was ready to go the mainstream route. Since expulsion would mean recourse to alternative schools even worse than the public schools and even more wretched than the special services program, I counseled Shaniah to take his teachers’ advice and keep Thomas in SPAN until his behavior indicated that he was ready for regular classes. Thomas is polite, soft-spoken, and eager to learn in my academic sessions with him. I have observed him for one school day, and his behavior was fine. But I fully believe that when presented with unchallenging material he gets bored, and that there are components of his psyche at this point that lead him to act out in given situations on certain school days. So for now I am keeping tabs on the weekly unfolding of events and monitoring Thomass prospects for taking on a regular schedule of classes.

All of this makes Thomas’s sessions with me even more important. He will get most of his education with me during our weekly session. His writing is currently rather rough, but within two to four months he will be writing the quality of essay necessary to earn him a passing grade on the Grade 9 Writing Test. All of my students have passed this test and the Grade 10 Reading MCA, the only other exam the passing of which is necessary for graduation. In the case of the writing test, I take my students through a highly efficient process by which they learn to write introductions and conclusions based on my models, work through the paragraphs of the body until they learn to stay on topic, and--- boom--- they’re ready.

The fact that only 60% of kids from challenged economic circumstances pass the Grade 9 Writing Test would be a head-scratcher if I didn’t know the lackadaisical instruction prevailing in the Minneapolis Public Schools as I do. I stress to my students that they are certainly free to identify more than three main topics for the internal paragraphs, and that there is nothing sacred about the over-prescribed five-paragraph essay--- but that those who grade these exams will be looking for at least five paragraphs, so that at minimum they should identify those three main topics and write paragraphs around these, in addition to introductory and concluding paragraphs.

This formula has led to grade level performance and above on the Grade 9 Writing Test for all of my students. So we’ll get Thomas on a path to pass his Grade 9 Writing Test, his Grade 10 Reading MCA, graduate from high school, and in the meantime train for the ACT and a viable knowledge base to take into a college or university setting. Thomas will not have the academic weight and ballast that students who have spent longer periods under my instruction will have, but he will be prepared for further knowledge acquisition at the post-secondary level.

Thomas remains one of the many student recipients of my volunteer efforts. He is one of a bevy of students for whom I have not yet found a private donor. This past summer my brother-in-law asked me if my work with students in the summer was funded or not. The detailed answer would have included the information that some of the students with whom I continued to work in the summer had private donors supporting their participation, while some did not.

My reply was more succinct and more resonant with my thoughts as to my relationship with my students: “I had a very good spring via the contract with the Minneapolis Public Schools. There is enough money available to take five of these kids to Winona for the Shakespeare festival and to work with others frequently throughout the summer. I don’t worry about whether a particular activity or time span is specifically funded. My bond with my students and families is such that fine distinctions of time and schedule are tangential to our relationship. I call them frequently for various reasons, and they similarly call me. We get together throughout the year, because we like each other and because we’re all bound up in this quest for knowledge thing.”

I take great satisfaction in knowing that Shaniah Harrison thus had a lifeline for her son, and that Thomas Benton is now spanning the academic bridge toward success in the only earthly sojourn we know with certainty that he’ll have.

Chapter Four ----- Going Where They Are

“Mister Gary!” Someone was calling loudly out to me as I drove down Humboldt Avenue North running northward from Harvest Prep Academy just off of Olson Highway in the southern neighborhoods of North Minneapolis.

I looked back into my rearview mirror and saw a man running swiftly along the sidewalk and then along the curb, nearing my car as I slowed to a stop.

“Marco--- I was just over at your apartment looking for Damon to take him to tutoring.”

“He’s not there, Mister Gary,” Marco said.

I should note here that there is a southern USA and African American tradition of calling people by their first name preceded by the titles of Mr., Mrs., or Miss. There actually is also a title pronounced “Miz,” but in the South of tradition this was not the term, “Ms.” as in the matrimonially neutral term for women corresponding to “Mr.” The pronunciation of “Miz” in the South in fact supersedes the dictionary pronunciation of “Mrs.” and is the title understood for a married woman. Some of my students and families call me, “Gary,” others call me, “Mr. Gary,” which by tradition connotes a suitable level of respect for people, particularly for people older than oneself.

“So, where is he? I’ve been missing him,” I said. “So have Orlando and Carlos,” I added, referring to Damon’s session mates late afternoon and early evening on Saturdays. These two students were riding with me in the car as we made our way toward New Salem after finding Damon not at home.

 “He hasn’t been at home the last three times I buzzed.” Until lately, Marco Martinson; his significant other, Brenda Mason; and the latter’s two children lived in an apartment building on Humboldt Avenue North just off of Olson Highway to the south. Damon is the older of the two children, now a Grade 4 student at Bryn Mawr K-5 School next to Anwatin Middle School.

“I don’t know where he is right now,” Marco lamented. “Brenda’s been talking all crazy, but I didn’t think that she was serious about wanting to be out of the relationship, get her own place, be single, stuff like that.:

“So you don’t know where they’ve gone now? Is Damon still at Bryn Mawr?”

“I don’t know where they are for sure. Brenda was talkin’ about goin’ to South Dakota where her brother is, but I don’t think she’s going to just go right off and do that. And I told her that she oughta keep Damon in the school he’s been in and started back in this year--- but I don’t know.”

“So are you still in the apartment?”

“No.”

“Where are you staying?”

“Well, last night I stayed with a friend, but tonight I don’t know. I might stay with that friend again, or someone else. I’ll figure it out.”

I asked Marco to confirm or give me his own cell phone number, which as I expected had changed since I last talked to him. We double checked and found that Brenda’s had not changed, at least as far as either of us knew, although she had not been picking up.

“Okay, Marco,” I said,

“I’ll keep trying Brenda’s number, and check around to see what I can find out. I’ll probably end up going over to Bryn Mawr to see what the folks there can tell me. I’ve got your number, and you’ve got mine, so we’ll be in touch.”

“All right, Mr. Gary. You be blessed, now.”

“You be blessed, too, Marco, and good luck.” I drove on to the church with Orlando and Carlos; Marco continued his stroll up Humboldt Avenue North. ……………………………………………………………………………….

One of the many reasons for the success of the New Salem Educational Initiative is that I go where the students are. Orlando and Carlos have themselves lived in six different residences during the four years that I have known them, their mother (Helena Duran), and other members of the extended family. The larger family has at least six nuclear families with roots to Mexico, some of them living together in the same household, generally at any one time spread over three houses in South Minneapolis.

I atypically lost track of Carlos during his Grade 2 academic year, the first year that he was enrolled in the Initiative, before I had much acquaintance with Orlando. This was at the midpoint of academic year 2009-2010, an extraordinarily busy time for me. I showed up one evening to pick up Carlos, and his family had just vamoosed. I called a couple of numbers that I had for Helena, but to no avail. I was so caught up in other dramas and the imperative to get my students prepared for looming MCAs that I never got around to going over to Ramsey Fine Arts School, at the time a K-8 school of the Minneapolis Public Schools, to inquire as to Miguel’s whereabouts.

Then, lo and behold, Orlando popped on my list as enrolled for SES in my program during the 2010-2011 academic year, when he was a Grade 1 student. The program was full to the gills by the time that Orlando enrolled, so I got him into a session but never quite figured out during that academic year where best to fit Carlos. Carlos reentered the Initiative at the beginning of academic year 2011-2012, by which time he was a Grade 4 student struggling to catch up to grade level. His attitude had turned a bit sour toward school, so Helena was elated that he was back under my wing.

I put Carlos on a very aggressive program of skill acquisition. Week by week, his vocabulary and reading comprehension greatly increased. He took home assignments, which I explained to Helena and she oversaw, and by spring Carlos was reading at grade level. He also recovered his grade level math skills, mastering his multiplication tables through 10 to the point of automatic recall, performing the four major arithmetic operations adeptly, and grasping pre-algebraic and other concepts at the Grade 4 level.

All of this required a certain sensitivity to the fact that Orlando is a highly precocious student. Two years younger than Carlos, he was often succeeding in mastering both verbal and math skills at levels exceeding his brother. As a Grade 1 student, Orlando whizzed through addition and subtraction exercises pitched first at and then above grade level. Having mastered multi-digit regrouping (carrying and borrowing), he proved to me that he was ready to work on his multiplication tables, which he had fully learned by the end of his Grade 1 academic year. Orlando continued his torrid academic pace during the 2011-2012 academic year, his second under my direction and the year of Carlos’s reentry.

By this time, as a Grade 2 student, Orlando was functioning two levels above school enrollment in reading and was also doing many mathematic tasks at the Grade 4 level. But I did introduce more complex division problems to Carlos first and let the latter show Orlando what he knew. I would also teach Carlos certain vocabulary items, which he then in turn explained to Orlando. In this manner, Carlos could feel that he had something to teach his little brother. So in time we had the best of both worlds. Orlando was progressing in the way that a gifted child should be encouraged to achieve, and Miguel steadily regained his confidence.

At the June 2012 Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet, Orlando displayed his multiplication talent for a gasping audience, and Miguel collected the “Most Improved” award as I explained to those gathered at the banquet that this is one of the most prestigious awards that I bestow. Carlos beamed. Orlando, Helena, and the extended family clapped loudly along with the audience.

So Orlando and Carlos, each in his own fashion, are on their way. Helena has the confidence that I will keep up with her boys wherever they roam. She keeps me posted with changes in cell phone numbers, and she alerts me to residential shifts in the manner of so many other familial contingents associated with the New Salem Educational Initiative. Helena and the others know how important is the fact that I will always meet them wherever they are. ……………………………………………………………………………

And so it is my assumed responsibility now to find Damon. Marcos knows that I’ll be on the case, and for that matter surely knows that I’m on the trail, as well. Brenda had been mentally scattered in my interactions with her at the start of this 2012-2013 academic year, but she had from all appearances been just as eager as always to ensure that Damon would have my academic support in the new academic year. She wanted to make sure that I had the correct cell phone number for her, and she was careful to note the time that I would be coming by for Damon on Saturdays. She seems to have been on the throes of her shift in residence and life circumstances as I made a run to Dallas at mid-September, so this abetted our losing contact as her most recent life dramas unfolded. Certainly, heretofore,

Brenda has always expressed ongoing appreciation for the progress that Damon has made since he enrolled as a Grade 2 student during the 2010-2011 academic year. At the beginning of that year, Brenda and Marco were newly arrived from Southside Chicago, looking for peace and a better life in Minneapolis. Teachers at Bryn Mawr were lamenting Damon’s slow grasp of math concepts, his apparent reading difficulties, and the fact that he might have a speech impediment. I determined immediately that Damon had no learning disabilities, and I doubted that the putative speech impediment was anything to worry about over time. By the end of that academic year, Damon was functioning fully at grade level in both reading and math, and in fact he was following the trajectory of many of my young students in learning conventionally Grade 3 multiplication skills by the end of the Grade 2 academic year. The perception of a speech impediment faded as his verbal skills improved.

Damon was on his way, and he kept up his pace of achievement during his Grade 3 academic year of 2011-2012, when he, Orlando, and Carlos became weekly session mates. I think often about the familial move from the mean streets of Chicago.

This is a specific detail in a general pattern that fits so many of my students. Enrollment in the New Salem Educational Initiative means success in the K-12 years and a certain route for escaping the cycle of poverty. Marcos wants this escape for his de facto stepson.

Brenda, wherever she is, wants this, too. So I’ll find her.

Chapter Five ----- Way Down, Moving Up

“Hey, Gary, guess what?”

“What’s that, Maria?”

“I’m making a 'C+' in math.”

“Woah, and that’s seventh grade math. Looks like all that work we did last year in sixth grade paid off. I’m very proud of you.”

I generally greet reports of any “C” type grade with exhortations toward “A’s” and “B’s,” but in Maria’s case, a “C+” represents such a large stride from where she was when she first enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative that I didn’t have the heart.

At this point in my exchange with Maria, her brother, Mateo, a year younger and now in Grade 6, poked his head around the doorway off the front porch where Maria and I were standing.

“And you, Mateo? How are you doing at school?” I asked.

“Good,” came the brief reply.

“No, he’s not!” two younger family members tattled impishly.

“Oh, really--- So what’s that about, Mateo?”

“Well, I did get suspended one day.”

“Okay, we’ll talk about that. And are you doing your homework?”

“Some of it.”

“Okay, we’ll talk about that, too. Come on, you two. Let’s go get in the car.”

Mateo Duran (Grade 6) and Maria Salazar Duran (Grade 7) are part of the extended family that includes Orlando, Carlos, and Helena. I generally pick them up on Saturday evenings at about 7:30, when I return Orlando and Carlos back home. I was a bit earlier than usual, given the flow of the day in the absence of the usual session with Raul Sanchez-Ruiz.

The mother of Mateo and Maria is Carla Duran, sister to Helena. Carla, like Helena and another sister, Francesca (whose children, Susanna [Grade 5], Anna [Grade 8], and Eduardo [Grade 9] are also enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative]), works at Taco Bell. She seems tired a great deal of the time and weighed down by the circumstances of a life that may not be everything that she hoped it would be. Whatever relationship she had with the father of her children (there is a 6 year-old brother [one of the impish tattlers] of Mateo and Maria for whom I will also find space in the Initiative), he is not in the picture now. Carla depends a lot on her parents, with whom she lived until recently, for sustenance and to help her manage her sometimes wayward brood.

Over this past summer 2012, Carla and her children moved to the residence in the 3100 block of Chicago Avenue to which Helena, Orlando, and Carlos also recently shifted. For Mateo and Maria, this is fortuitous. Helena is a strong personality who is highly adept at negotiating the frequent changes in her own life, which at one point featured a trip back to Mexico for an extended time, for reasons (immigration? family exigency?) about which I was never entirely clear. She rides herd on Orlando and Carlos, and from what I have observed so far in this academic year 2012-2013, she does so with Mateo and Maria and the younger children gathered in the household, as well.

Mateo and Maria need this kind of firm adult presence. They first enrolled in the Initiative during last academic year 2011-2012. Mateo is highly skilled at math, though his indifference to homework and tendency to play the class clown have left him with gaping holes even in his academic strong suit. In reading, he caught up one full grade level from a depth three grade levels below. The English language as such is not his problem, except inasmuch as his mother and grandparents have almost exclusively spoken Spanish to him at home; his English language vocabulary lagged seriously upon entrance into the Initiative but is increasing now at a promising pace.

Maria faces the same challenges in acquiring full grade level skills in reading, but she is an adept verbal learner and during her time in the Initiative her vocabulary and comprehension have risen to near grade level. In math, I decided early on that Maria would have to follow a slow, steady arc to success, so disastrously was she behind when she first came under my tutelage. Upon entrance to the Initiative in Grade 6, she never had really learned how to regroup (carry and borrow) in addition and subtraction; she knew, aside from the zero’s and one’s, only those multiplication tables that flow from counting by two’s and five’s in the early grades; and operations involving division and pre-algebra were completely beyond her grasp.

So during my work with Maria during her first year of enrollment, I would always start with a reading assignment, work on vocabulary, praise her for her rapid grasp of new words, her appropriate use of these in sentences, and her applying these toward better reading comprehension. We then proceeded to a math task that she knew was far below grade level, and about which she was embarrassed. But I would coax her through the task, she would make incremental progress, I would praise her for this, and I would communicate my absolute confidence that she was on a long but promising path to full grade level competence in math.

I would then have Maria return to a reading assignment, which would induce the sequence of sincere praise and encouragement on my part that would leave her smiling and feeling that the steep hill toward academic accomplishment at grade level was scalable, after all.

My first academic year of work with both Mateo and Maria was, more than in most instances, a careful exercise in building genuine self-confidence. For my students, this means not recourse to the false praise and shallow self-esteem building that occurs in the public schools in the absence of any chartable academic progress--- but rather incremental mastery of concepts for which the young person can feel true pride and build the kind of confidence in self that has staying power.

I had many a heart to heart with Mateo about the vacuity of claiming “I don’t care” or “This is boring” when the real problem is fear of recovering academic ground and taking on a challenge. “I just don’t like to read,” Mateo would tell me frequently.

“What you really mean is that you don’t know a lot of the words, and reading is hard because of that. So I’m going to teach you these words, we’ll talk about the article, then you’ll be interested. Okay?”

“No,” he would typically say.

“Oh, yes it is okay,” I would reply. “Because it has to be. You are going to get where you need to be in school, and then you’re going to the head of your class. And you’re going to go to college and be whatever you want to be. Right?”

“Maybe.”

“Yeah, you will, because if you don’t, I will look like this---” I would make a clownish frowny face.

“But if you become the student that I know you can be, I’ll look like this---“ And my face would become clownishly smiley.

“Oh, man, you are so lame,” Mateo would say, but he’d be grinning ear to ear. His spirits had risen, he would master the words, I’d guide him toward reading cues and enhanced comprehension, and he would leave each session feeling that reading was okay, after all. It was not having the tools to enjoy reading that had been the real problem.
.............................................................................................................................

I continued to work with Mateo and Maria over summer 2012 when our schedules were in synchrony, but we missed connections a number of times, our meetings were fewer than was the case for the Shakespeareans and many others whom I saw more often, and there was much in the way of the rhythm of the previous academic year that we needed to reestablish.

I was pleased that both Mateo and Maria were eager to resume regular weekly sessions. This is inevitably the case with my students, but these two were relatively new to my program and upon entry had evidenced terrible study habits, variable moods, and a tendency to slack in the absence of external exhortation.

In Mateo’s case, on this meeting of 29 September, there were not nearly so many complaints about the laboriousness of reading. There was instead a genuine desire to move forward. And he looked with great anticipation for my facial overreactions to things that he said. I gladly obliged. At evening’s end, Mateo knew, for example, the disparate uses and meanings of “legend,” “myth,” and “allegory”; the relationship but differing grammatical functions of the words, “endure,” “enduring,” and “endurance”; the different pronunciations of the verbal and adjectival applications of the word, “alternate”; and the distinction between the oft-misused “affect” and “effect.” Mateo also gained clarification of the rules governing decimal points in additive versus multiplicative operations with decimals.

For her part, Maria became adept at using words such as “vivid,” “embellish,” “alliteration,” “agile,” and “monsoons.” In the case of alliteration, we had a good laugh over her example of “Maria moves marvelously.” And we struggled forward in math, overcoming her disappointment that her fairly good understanding as to how to solve simple equations (dutifully done on her homework as the topic currently introduced at school) did not eliminate the need to continue our sequential study of arithmetic processes that she had not been pushed to learn by teachers in the early grades. I had to expend quite a bit of verbal and demonstrative energy to convince her that such fundamental knowledge was necessary as she moved forward into algebra and geometry. But Maria came around. She and Mateo both departed the church that night excited about what they had accomplished, each claiming to have learned more new vocabulary words than the other. ……………………………………………………………………………………

The ego of the child from impoverished circumstances tinged with familial dysfunction can be very fragile. I think long and hard about the prevailing psyche of each child. Particularly because my academic goals for my students are so high, and their fear of failure is so apparent, the decision as to what incremental step to take, and at what pace, is crucial.

This is particularly true for students such as Mateo and Maria, who came to me at the beginning of their middle school years so far behind. But the careful decisions have been made, sequential learning has ensued, and, though I had to work harder and longer than I do in the case of many of my students to get them into the rhythm of the program, Mateo and Maria are now what I term “plugged in.” They are part of the system and the opportunity that is the New Salem Educational Initiative. They started way down, but they now see themselves moving up.

I delivered Maria and Mateo back home at about 9:30 PM that Saturday, 29 September. I gave my report to Helena, rather than Carla, who was asleep. I told her how much I appreciated the interest that she took in all of the children of her extended family.

“Maria has improved so much and she is convinced that she can succeed in math now. Please make sure that she does her homework every evening,” I told Helena.

“That’s what I’ve been doing, and she actually seems to appreciate me nagging her.  Mateo is a tougher case, but I’m working on him, too.”

Sometimes the kids hang close as I give the presiding adult the report for the night. But as Helena and I stood talking on the screened-in porch at the front of the house, Maria and Mateo had gone on inside.

“Hey, Maria,” I yelled through the open doorway, “keep up the good work.

“I will,” she yelled back, then in time appeared at the doorway.

“Is there a chance that you can get that 'C+' into 'B' territory?"
“I’ll try.”

“That’d be super. I’m proud of you now, and I’ll be even prouder.”

As if on cue, Mateo now returned to the doorway and slipped onto the porch to stand close to Helena and me.

“And you, Mateo, no suspensions, okay?”

“Okay.”

“For real?”

“Yeah, man.”

“And don’t make it so hard on Helena and your mom. What are you going to do about that homework?”

“Do it.”

“For real?”

“Yeah, man.”

“Okay, Mateo, because you know how that’d make me feel, right?”

He said, “Yeah,” and then flashed an excellent imitation of my clownish smiley face.

“Right. Good night everyone!” I yelled out and turned back toward my car.

I heard the sound of spirits lifted, the music of joy in accomplishment that played on my mental radio as I drove on to visit one more house before heading homeward.

Chapter Six ----- Diamonds in the Rough

“Dang, you found me,” said Gina Salazar Duran in mock complaint.

Just a few weeks prior to my arrival at 9:45 PM on this Saturday, 29 September, Gina, her dad (David), her grandparents, and a few other family members had moved from 37th Avenue South to a house on the 3900 block of Clinton Avenue South. Gina actually will split time with her dad at the new address and her mom, who still resides in an apartment building near Pleasant and West Lake Street. Until a grand reshuffling of residences in the extended family that also includes Helena Duran, Orlando Marcos Duran, Carlos Marcos Duran, Mateo Duran, and Maria Salazar Duran; the latter two had lived in the house on 37th Avenue South along with Gina and many others.

In a pattern that holds for many of the families of students in the New Salem Educational Initiative, I would pick Gina up at 7:30 PM as part of the Saturday evening group that included cousins Mateo and Maria. An alteration of that pattern was the reason for my visit on this particular evening. Gina is a very different personality by comparison with Mateo and Maria. She was functioning below grade level in both math and reading upon entrance into the New Salem Educational Initiative, but she was much closer to grade level standard in both areas than were her cousins. In reading, the lag time was very short before she was functioning fully at grade level. Math has been more of s struggle in getting all of the previously neglected concepts under control, but Gina internalized my academic ethic very quickly, applied herself week after week, and by the end of academic year 2010-2011 had risen very close to grade level performance across a range of mathematical skill areas.

Gina is of very high intelligence and has keen powers of concentration. She is steadier in mood and attitude, and her level of self-confidence is many rungs higher than that of Mateo and Maria. In the course of academic year 2010-2011, I came to feel that Gina would be better placed with two students (Tomas Vasco-Delano and Xavier Renaldo Cruz) of comparable grade level (now Grade 6) whose steadiness of demeanor and degree of academic focus match her own. Gina, similarly to others in her family, had had an active summer that included forays out of town and various events that had precluded my getting together with her very often.

Upon my appearance at her new doorstep, we proceeded to talk about her summer, the shift of residence, and the switch to a new school (from Whittier K-5 to Folwell Middle School).

“So, you’re okay with these changes?” I asked her.

“Yeah, I like the new house, even though I’m just here on weekends. I stay with my mom during the week. And I like the new school, even though I still wish that I was in the fifth grade.”

This was a point of curiosity for Gina. Even though she was confident in her academic ability, and was a keen reader who, for example, worked her way through all of the Twilight series, the grade levels describing middle school and high school held something of a mystique for her. At one point during her Grade 5 year, she told me she would just as soon repeat Grade 5--- certainly not for academic reasons but more for fear of what lay ahead more nebulously in middle school and high school.

Part of her reluctance to move on may involve the societal expectations of and pressures on preteen girls. Gina once confided in me that she is not a “girly girl.” She is attracted to boys, but she eschews fancy hairdos, make-up, and frilly clothes. She seems very clear that she wants to be a police officer and has started to explore what this will mean in terms of police academy training and pertinent undergraduate studies. Gina has a maturity beyond her years, and anyone with this trait in her or his personality profile can find middle school a daunting and even repugnant proposition.

“Well, as you and I have discussed,” I replied, "you gotta move on. You made so much progress last year, and I know that you can be at the top of your class this year.”

“Not in math.”

“Yes, in math, too. You’ve got that great focus that I was always giving you your propers for, and you came such a long way. We’re going to go right into MCA math training this year, and I know that by April you’ll be among the top students in the state.”

“You really think so?” “I do. You know that I always go on the real.”

“Yeah. Okay. I’ll sure work hard. Maybe you’re right.”

“Count on it.”

“Say, it’s a little late for tutoring, isn’t it? Am I going to be going at the same time on Saturdays this year?”

“No. I just took Mateo and Maria back home. That’s part of what I wanted to talk to you about.”

In terms respectful of Mateo and Maria but obviously in praise of Gina, I told her about my idea of a switch in groups. Gina understood and in some measure seemed relieved.

“That may be better,” she said. “I liked going with my cousins, but I know Xavier from school last year, and I hear that Tomas is good guy.”

“Yeah, they’re on their way, too. They race to my car on Friday evenings and compete with each other when we read out loud. They have all kinds of comments to make on things that we read together. Lots of energy. Lotta pizzazz. Come a long way since they enrolled as second graders. They are some of my diamonds in the rough, just like you.”

“Diamonds in the rough? What does that mean?”

“It’s all good. I was lucky enough to find you--- and so many of my other students. You’re my shiny gems. When I found you, when you enrolled in my program, you had some rough places, but you were so rare, no one like you, just a very valuable gem all ready to shine.”

“I like that. I like the way you say things. So you think I’m like a diamond, huh?”

“Sure do. You really are so very smart Gina. You know that, don’t you?”

“I do now. I do think so. And I’ve always been interested in things to read and stuff to learn. But I didn’t think of myself as smart until you kept telling me and made me feel that way.”

“Well, I guess you just made my day. It’s been a good one anyway, but that may have been the topper. So I’ll pick you up about 7:00 next Friday to go with Xavier and Tomas, okay?”

“Okay. I’ll be ready.”

I turned to go but looked back as I made my way to the car. Gina was standing right where she had been when I made my turn. She was casting a glowing smile.

“Wow, I like that smile,” I said. “Wassup with that?”

“I like the idea of the new group. We’ll have a lot of fun and learn a lot, the three of us in that group. I think this diamond is really going to be shinin’ by the end of this year.”