[Note: Names used in these and other such articles on my blog are data privacy pseudonyms.]
On the afternoon of Sunday, 28 February 2016 (yesterday as I write this), the remarkable life transformation of a family about whom I’ve written in prior articles posted on this blog continued to gather gale-wind force.
What transpired in the academic session that I conducted with three members of this family carried multiple messages pertinent to the revolution of K-12 education in the United States as the debt that we owe to the African American people >>>>>
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In the manner recorded in my accounts of other Sundays, I departed sanctuary services at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church about 1:30 PM to conduct my academic sessions for the day. I drove over to the apartment building occupied by Evelyn Patterson, her significant other Marcel Gifford, and her sons Damon Preston (Grade 7) and Javon Jakes (Grade 1).
As I have noted, this is the economically poorest family whom I have ever served, keeping in perspective that my whole teaching career has been dedicated to teaching the most impoverished and historically underserved members of our society. I followed this family through four different living units in (mostly North) Minneapolis before they moved to a lower-rent Section 8 housing unit, their current bedbug-ridden apartment, on the East Side of St. Paul.
Evelyn texted me earlier in the day that she was going to have trouble honoring our agreed-upon academic session time of 2:00 PM, because Marcel was working at his Excel Energy Center concessions stand job for the day, and she did not want to leave the boys alone.
I often work with Damon and Javon on Saturday but on the previous day (27 February 2016) was so busy recording two hours of my television show (The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison, shown Wednesdays at 6:00 PM on Minneapolis Telecommunications Network [MTN] Channel 17) and conducting two other academic sessions that I could not squeeze in a meeting with Damon and Javon.
So the plan on this particular Sunday, having deferred my meetings with Damon and Javon from Saturday, was to work with Evelyn at New Salem first, then go back for Damon at 4:30 PM for transport to his own academic session with me at New Salem, then work in the hallway back at the apartment with Javon.
Remember that the apartment itself is too ill-lit and devoid of furniture to be tenable for my academic work with members of the household.
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And remember Evelyn’s life story to date:
She is thirty-three (33) years old and the graduate of a high school in one of Chicago’s roughest South Side neighborhoods. She actually rung something approaching an education out of the teachers at that school and proceeded upon graduation to attend community college. She did this while working over a five-year period and apparently amassing almost a year and one-half worth of credits.
But her education was disrupted when her mother died, a cataclysmic event in Evelyn’s life since after several years of estrangement this young woman and her mom had just begun to reestablish a relationship. Soon thereafter, Evelyn committed time to helping her ill and convalescing maternal grandmother who had raised her during a late childhood and adolescence of estrangement from her mom. To her dismay, other members of the family transported the elderly woman from Minneapolis (to which Evelyn had moved from Chicago) to Atlanta; soon after the move southeastward, this beloved grandmother died, causing in Evelyn an array of emotions grounded in guilt and a sense of loss.
And remember my longtime relationship with Damon and Javon:
Damon entered my program as a six year-old at Grade 1; Javon was just a newborn in arms at the time. I have thus known Evelyn, her significant other (Marcel Gifford), and the boys for six years now.
Damon is a Grade 7 student who is now so advanced that he has already read two chapters in Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education (my book written at a college preparatory level and featuring fourteen chapters written as mini-courses in economics, political science, psychology, world history, American history, African American history, literature, English usage, fine arts, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics).
Javon, now at Grade 1, is reading and performing mathematical operations that typically describe the skill and knowledge level of the Grade 3 student.
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When I got the text from Evelyn, I suggested that we combine the academic sessions for her, Javon, and Damon; so that I would pick them up all up at 2:00 PM for transport to New Salem.
I did so, and thus began a remarkable day with the numerous implications noted in the opening of this article >>>>>
I positioned Evelyn, Damon, and Javon in individual rooms and gave them assignments of wide variance one to the other.
With Evelyn, I continued our intense review and recovery of mathematical skills. Remember that thus far we had done two hours of intensive math review, covering the basic mathematical operations involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; and we went on to decimals, the relationship of fractions to decimals, place value of mixed numbers with decimals, and all operations with both decimals and fractions.
Evelyn is whip-smart and highly motivated. So again we went to work:
I gave her a very quick review of the skills mentioned above, then we worked on algebraic equations. We began with very basic equations, which she quickly grasped, then I began to increase the complexity of the equations, giving Evelyn challenges involving multiple steps; thorough knowledge of adding, multiplying, and dividing positive and negative integers; and application of work that we had done for all basic operations with fractions. Evelyn once again grasped everything that I explained very quickly. We will soon be moving through all material typically covered in Algebra I and into fundamental and intermediate geometry.
Classrooms at New Salem have excellent-quality old-fashioned chalk boards and tables with folding and sturdy, ergonomically comfortable plastic chairs. My modus operandi for the day was to sketch out exercises for Evelyn, dash over to Javon’s room to ask him questions about books that I had him reading, and then move on to Damon’s room, where the latter was looking up unfamiliar words in Chapter Three, Psychology, from Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.
Javon and Damon excelled as much as did their mother:
Javon read 25 short to medium-length books ranging from Grade 2 to Grade 3 level. I asked him close questions about the characters and story lines in each of these books, to which he responded with animated, insightful, accurate responses. Subject matter covered reparation of friendships after altercations; the consequences of lying and the enduring rewards of telling the truth; role reversal that comes when a monkey starts to imitate a little boy; the sublimity of clouds of many shapes; and the classic story of Dumbo the elephant.
Damon did a highly adroit job of putting definitions pertinent to my coverage of neuropsychology into his own words, rendering the meaning of the cerebellum, pons, medulla, midbrain, and brain stem in clear, descriptive language. He also requested that I review with him multi-step algebraic equations involving multiple operations with integers and fractions that he knew I was covering with his mom.
When I announced that we had to wrap things up after our two hours together, so that I could get them home and move on to my next group, they all lamented that we had to go:
Evelyn was all aglow for the success that she was having recovering concepts that she had long forgotten and some for which she was only now getting explanation that allowed for breakthroughs in understanding.
Javon loved all of the stories in the books that he read, was energetic throughout the entire two hours of reading all of those 25 books that I provided for him, and excelled at all of the multi-digit addition and subtraction problems and the fundamental multiplication exercises that I provided when he had gobbled up the books--- in all of this demonstrating just how advanced Javon is for a Grade 1 student, and how quickly he can move through material that challenges him properly.
And Damon beamed as if he were going to get the most highly prized new electronic gadget when I told him that for our next academic session I would bring him a book on the brain with multiple neuro-anatomical illustrations as a follow-up to my section in Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education on neuropsychology.
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When I delivered Evelyn, Damon, and Javon to their apartment building, I showed them the cold-weather gear stored in my trunk as a follow-up to a conversation that we had had on the way back from New Salem on the importance of dressing properly in subzero weather.
I told them that I go for my daily run right on through the winter, and that I love how I can actually get hot during a run with prevailing temperatures ranging down to, say, twenty below zero Fahrenheit. I both made believers out of them and brought smiles to their faces when I showed them my three ski masks, topped by a full-coverage, moisture-resistant mask, that I layer over my head and face when the truly cold temperatures abide.
Javon told me that I looked spooky. I chased him to the door of his apartment building.
A he was running,
Javon shouted, “Thanks for all the books!”
I couldn’t have scripted the end to this day’s encounter with Evelyn and the boys any better.
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For all three of these highly intelligent people, these were two hours spent away from their squalid apartment, escaping from pealed paint and biting bugs to mental tracks leading to high academic accomplishment.
They are all in route to collegiate or university experiences and lives of cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction.
Evelyn, Damon, and Javon are now in the midst of life transforms through the power of knowledge-intensive education.
This is the education that they deserve.
As I have detailed in many articles on this blog, the many African Americans who embarked on the Great Northern Migration were shuttled into areas left to them in the context of restricted housing covenants that denied them residential access to most parts of the city and certainly the suburbs. Whether in the rural South or the urban North, our collection of inadequately United States has abused most African American people with lousy schools.
This has been true for people whose families were intact and extolled the value of education.
And as to those families facing circumstances accrued in the context of a brutal history and particularly wretched conditions of survival, the education establishment of the Minneapolis Public Schools and other locally centralized systems of public education have never articulated a program for imparting an education of high quality to those whose families that feature stark levels of poverty and significant dysfunction.
The revolution that must come in K-12 education is our most profound domestic duty for public policy in the United States.
The provision of knowledge-intensive education is the tangible manifestation of the apology that our society owes to the African American people.
This is the next, long-delayed, Second Stage of the Civil Rights Movement.
All of our people deserve the quality of education that Evelyn, Damon, and Javon are receiving in the New Salem Educational Initiative.
The provision of such an education is my apology to the African American people on behalf of the citizenry of the United States.
We as a society must extend this apology in tangible manifestation to all people in the overhaul of K-12 education.
Only through the power of a knowledge-intensive K-12 experience to all of our people can we become the democratic society that we imagine ourselves to be.
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