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.”
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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.”
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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.