I turned my old Honda toward home at almost exactly 10:00 PM, twelve hours since I drove past the street people on 6th Street North to pick up Talika and Daniel. Home is Northfield, Minnesota, about 45 miles south on I-35 from Minneapolis. Throughout most of the year, I make the drive seven days a week. This is particularly true during the academic year, but I do this through much of the summer, as well. I am my own boss, and I boss myself in my many roles in the New Salem Educational Initiative, so I can take off for a few days every two months or so to go spend time with my 91 year-old mother in Dallas, or to spend a holiday with my beloved Barbara Reed, or to visit my son, recent McGill University graduate, Ryan Davison-Reed, in Montreal. But most days finds me rolling northward to Minneapolis, mornings on weekends, early afternoons on weekdays; and back in the evenings between 9:00 and 10:00 PM.
Such is the tone and tenor of my life. I have now been working with inner city young people and their families for 41 years, ever since spring 1971, when as a sophomore at Southern Methodist University I began coordinating tutors sent by that institution’s Volunteer Services into the Dallas Public Schools. My own particular interest was in the community around the West Dallas projects, where I began my career as a regular teacher in autumn 1973.
I have been working with students on the Northside of Minneapolis since 1991. I became a member of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in 1993 and in 1994 started the long-running New Salem Tuesday Night Tutoring Program that has run ever since. I started the New Salem Educational Initiative as a professional endeavor in 2004, and it is a day in that program to which you have been privy in these pages.
……………………………………………………………………………..
Engraved on the heart of every parent is the desire that her or his offspring shall have an abundant and happy life. This desire knows no social class, no race, no ethnicity. But the desire is much more frequently frustrated in the hearts of parents who can only superintend impoverished and frequently broken or dysfunctional households. For at least a half-century K-12 education in the United States has tended toward mediocrity and we are as much “A Nation at Risk” as when that study first appeared in 1983. The surest route to the abundant and happy life that every parent desires has been cut short by the inadequacy of our public schools.
During the early 1980s, people living at the urban core became increasingly at risk for many reasons. Crack cocaine hit the streets and gang activity intensified in competition to peddle the pernicious smoker’s version of the stuff that for a much higher price wealthy white people had been stuffing up their noses. The life of the street became much more violent and dangerous. Either trying to get a piece of the profitable action, or seeking relief from lives of pain, those left behind in the post- Civil Rights Era of white and middle class black flight suffered a terrible death even in life.
On the Northside, middle class Jewish folk accelerated their flight to St. Louis Park after the summer 1967 riots along Plymouth Avenue. Many African American families that could do so took similar routes to near, middling, and occasionally more distant suburbs. Some middle class families remained, some do so to this day; but in time much of the urban core of Minneapolis filled up with impoverished African American and then Hmong and Hispanic families.
From the late 1970s forward, a sizable contingent of people migrated from very troubled areas in Chicago; Gary, Indiana; Detroit; and other urban centers. They knew nothing of the rich African American heritage centered on the Phyllis Wheatley Settlement House near old 6th Avenue (today’s Olson Highway) in North Minneapolis. Many of these folks, looking for a better life, settled in and did the best they could. Others caused trouble and added to the confusion that accelerated during the 1980s and has never abated.
Officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools have never articulated, much less implemented, a viable academic program for serving the needs of students from impoverished and frequently dysfunctional families. The excuse in tautological formulation has been that the district serves students of impoverished and frequently dysfunctional families. Since this is their student population, their client base, the officials of the Minneapolis Public Schools have failed miserably and they fail miserably still.
..........................................................................
When one assumes a given responsibility for young people, as have I in the New Salem Educational Initiative, one should go about one’s task with a combination of compassion and logic.
One should see the enormous potential in magnificent young brains such as those of Talika Wilson, Daniel Raymond-Johnson, Ginger Taylor-Warren, and Walter Allison and nurture that potential toward miracles such as that on 6th Street North.
One should see the abiding genius of an Ecuadorean immigrant youth such as Raul Sanchez Ruiz and establish the deep personal connection to student and family that will keep the Shakespearean fascination alive while solving the dilemmas of adolescence.
One should confront head-on the reality of a behaviorally challenged youth such as Thomas Benton while honoring the admirable concern of a mother such as Shaniah Harrison with a plan that will enable the youth she loves to span the bridge from SPAN into territory where genuine academic accomplishment thrives.
One should go wherever students such as Orlando, Carlos, and Damon are, because if they are not found, they will have lost their best chance for a better, more stable, and fully vibrant life.
One should respect the capabilities of students such as Mateo and Maria who start way down but can move far up, with a realistic, carefully sequenced plan that reaches them affectively so as to reach them effectively.
And one should recognize just how many diamonds in the rough there are, those like Gina Salazar Duran, yearning to shine, if only someone takes the time to burnish them to their brightest sheen.
……………………………………………………………………………
Children are our treasures. All children are precious. We should treat them as creatures of inestimable value, whether they are our personal genetic progeny or the offspring of fellow Villagers. Our own lives are valuable only if we live our earthly journey as an opportunity to enrich the human community with faith, hope, and love. We must convey the faith that all children are capable of receiving and comprehending the intellectual inheritance that is the human birthright. We must transmit the hope that young people imbued with deep knowledge and ethical sensibility will create the world that we dare to dream.
And we must radiate the love that seeks to unite those living in poverty and in plenty on a common mission toward fairness for all. If all families are not as we wish them to be, we have an obligation to treat all families and all children as our own. They will become better and so will we through an expression of love that knows no bounds and recognizes no boundaries. Wherever a child abides, there is an intellect to stimulate, a creativity to nurture, a morality to cultivate. By dedicating ourselves to the proper education of all children, we strive to realize the democratic society that we have imagined ourselves to be.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment