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.