Principles for Extrapolation by Decision-Makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools: 10th Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet

Every year the occasion of the New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet provides opportunity for decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools to draw from student demonstrations of skill and knowledge, and from many other moments that transpire, fundamental approaches that could be extrapolated for application in the Minneapolis Public Schools. This is particularly true of this year’s banquet.


In terms of grand moments at the banquet, two are especially instructive.


The first of those came at the midpoint of the banquet, when I and fourteen of my students performed my 30-minute compressed version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (all original language, lines and scenes selected for delivering the essence of the plot, character, and themes).


Principle #1: The Appeal of Shakespeare and Other Classical Literature to Students
Throughout the K-12 Years


One of these students is just graduating from third grade:  Helena Ramirez (data privacy name, as with all student references in this article) played a hit-woman, paired with brother (Marcos Ramirez, Grade 7) as hitman, the duo hired by Macbeth to knock off his friend, Banquo. The performance called upon this young student to deliver, among others, the follow line:


I am one, my liege,
Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world
Have so incensed that I am reckless what I do to spite the world.


Helena delivered the line flawlessly and now has that rich store of language in her mental file. Marcos Spoke a similar line when he declared,


And I another
So weary with disasters, tugg’d with fortune,
That I would set my life on any chance to be rid on’t.


Not only is the Elizabethan language sonorous to the ear, the characters and the lines convey a street-type all too familiar to children living at the urban core. The words spoken reveal people living at society’s fringe: ill-educated, undependably employed, beaten down at every turn by defeat, ready to strike back with any action that will either advance their material prospects or rid them of a dead-end life.  Such characters are replete in Shakespearean tragedies, to which I invariably find students relate intimately when the language is decoded for aesthetic appreciation and substantive meaning.
 
We should never disregard this love of classical literature by children when taught by a teacher who is deeply taken with the beauty of the language and has the pedagogical ability to convey the litrary majesty and the meaning. Fault in lack of appreciation and comprehension is never that of the student. Rather, it is the fault of the teacher, the solution for which lies in the identification and training of teachers able to rise to a challenging but achievable responsibility.


All fourteen of the student actors, variously playing roles as witches, ghosts, palace guards, thanes (aristocrats), monarch (shrewd and ambitious queen), and heirs to the throne reveled in the applause that greeted the conclusion of their exercise in serious work that brings magnificent rewards.


The other grand moment at the banquet occurred at the end of the celebration, at which I sat with my best student, Monique Taylor-Myer, to demonstrate to a stunned audience the full extent of this remarkable student’s extraordinary knowledge base and level of accomplishment as she concludes her K-12 years as a graduating senior and anticipates applying her full-ride package of scholarships, grants, and other forms of financial backing to her first year as a university premed student.


Principle #2: The Rewards of Many Years of Absorbing a Rich Liberal Arts Curriculum


Monique Taylor-Myers began studying with me as a Grade 3 student at Shingle Creek K-5 School in the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS). She attended classes at her school of MPS, as most of my students do, getting most of her real education in her studies with me beyond school hours. Through the years, she built an advanced skill base in mathematics and verbal skills, the latter of which she put to use in readings that I put before her in the key subject areas of natural science, history, economics, creative literature, and the fine arts.


By the time Monique was in Grade 8 (Olson Middle School), I placed her in a special class that I conducted with two other similarly advanced students who had absorbed large knowledge and skill bases with me over many years of study beyond the school hours. By the end of Grade 10, Monique was clearly moving rapidly ahead of even these other two highly capable young scholars, so that she and I began to meet in an Oxford/ Cambridge-style tutorial seminar, taking to ever advanced levels our exploration of subjects across the liberal arts curriculum.


During summer 2014, Monique and I met for periods lasting beyond the typical two hours to expedite her preparation for taking the ACT. The academic sessions stretched to three hours and sometimes went to three and a half hours. After Monique took the ACT in October, we continued to meet in academic sessions of this extended duration, now focused once again on news articles, literature, and subject area material that covered the gamut across a rich liberal arts curriculum.


She and I were so invested in our work that by spring 2015 we often lost track of time and sat in studious exploration of the wonderful world of knowledge for four full hours. So it was that Monique and I sat at banquet’s end as I asked her questions pertinent to Freudian (e. g., Id, Ego, Superego; Oedipal Complex) and behaviorist psychology (ratio and interval/ fixed and variable schedules of reinforcement); micro- and macro- economics (GDP growth rates expected for mature versus emerging economies; functioning of the Federal Reserve in implementing monetary policy; items [Entitlement Programs] taking highest percentage of the Federal Budget [fiscal policy]; the differences in economic theory offered by Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, and Karl Marx); political science (the left-right international political continuum; detailed explanation of the differences between radical and democratic socialism, and between revolutionary communism at the far left and reactionary Nazism and Fascism at the far right); and world religions (Judaism and Hinduism as progenitors of other regional faiths).


We also outlined Monique’s knowledge of mathematics through FST (Functions, Statistics, and Trigonometry); and biology, chemistry, and physics. But that’s not all. Monique and I then read selections from August Wilson’s Fences, Sophocles’s Antigone, Lewis Carrol’s Alice in the Wonderland/ Through the Looking Glass; and poetry from Harlem Renaissance writers Georgia Douglass Johnson and Langston Hughes, and from Maya Angelou (“On the Pulse of Morning” [written for and delivered at Bill Clinton’s First Presidential Inaugural]).


No one in the audience was surprised, but all rose in standing ovation, when I awarded this remarkable academic talent, on the basis of her ability to focus for long periods of time in complete absorption of an off-the-charts knowledge base that puts her functionally at the level of the successful third-year (junior) university student--- and far beyond what in fact many university graduates have learned and retained--- with an award confidently declaring her the “Best Student in the State of Minnesota.”   All of this was after Monique, as Lady Macbeth, had declared (among other soaring Elizabethan lines), with the reference to the looming assassination of King Duncan and his never again witnessing the light of another day,


O, never
Shall the sun that morrow see!
To beguile the time, look like the time;
Bear welcome in your eye, your hand, you tongue:
Look like the innocent flower;
But be the serpent under’t;  you shall put
this night’s great business into my dispatch:
Leave all the rest to me.


Absorbing this broad and deep knowledge base requires years of academic leavening. Doing so prepares one to succeed in all manner of university courses; and to live a life of cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction.


Other Principles, Extrapolated from My Awarding of Student Certificates, and from the General Atmosphere of the Banquet


The banquet began with a meal of my preparation, and a moment of comment and gratitude for the repast from Reverend Jerry McAfee. The main activity of the banquet thereafter, aside from the major segments just detailed, was my awarding of student certificates of accomplishment for participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative for academic year 2014-2015.


I made all of the decisions as to the appellations for each award, highly personalized for each student’s accomplishment and with very specific comments on the history of each student’s participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative. The awards included, for example, the Magnificent Potential, University-Bound, and Poised and Confident Scholar awards.


These came with respective comments as to a particular Grade 5 student’s need to apply in school the same habits of scholarship that he demonstrates with me; the extended academic accomplishment of a Grade 8 student whose mother completed only third grade in Mexico; and the exceptionally serene presence of a Grade 11 student who encourages her two sisters to be similarly confident and serious about their academic studies.


Behind all of this knowledge of student familial background and details of academic status and achievement is my memorized retention of three or four cell phone numbers for each student household; in-the-home interaction with my students and their families; myriad roles played as counselor and conduit to the variety of resources typically needed by economically challenged families; and my status as an adjunct family member in the homes of most of my students.


Thus, from the above, we may extrapolate numerous principles from my approach in the New Salem Educational Initiative for application to the policies for implementation in the Minneapolis Public Schools:


Principle #3: Intimate knowledge of each student’s familial situation and life circumstances


Principle #4: Thorough understanding of the student’s academic history and current level of skill and knowledge mastery across a range of subject areas


Principle #5: Expectation that students all master common skill and knowledge sets, with high confidence that they are capable of doing so


Principle #6: Love expressed, lived, demonstrated in every word that I speak and action that I take--- resulting in effective adoption as a family member


Principle #7: In all of this, the guiding and exalted principle that authentic personalization comes not with pandering to student whim (with all of the latter’s overblown rhetoric as to “learning styles” and “driving passion”) , but rather with deep understanding of a student’s life situation and personal history--- who that student is as a person--- and the confidence that all students may rise to the challenges of a commonly mastered rich liberal arts curriculum that can then serve, animate, and ignite those individual passions that do lie within each student’s intellect and soul.


At the end of the 10th Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet, my staff of tutors in the New Salem Tuesday Night Program; the students and families of the seven-day-a-week small-group program in which I alone am the teacher; myself, my life partner of over forty years (Barbara Reed), and everyone else in the room, hugged, spoke words of joy and celebration, and radiated love for all members of this human community.


For the perceptive reader and adept extrapolator, that conclusion to a radiantly wonderful evening provides much to consider, as well.