Two Other Academic Sessions Featuring Remarkable Cases of Life Transformation on Sunday, 7 February

The academic session recorded in the immediately prior article posted on this blog was just one of three that I ran on that Sunday, 7 February.


The other two also featured very needy cases >>>>>


My second academic session was with a Grade 6 girl, Janine (data privacy pseudonym, as in all cases of students and their family members about whom I write on this blog), who has languished in unchallenging special education classes since she was in the early grades;  the third academic session involved two more parents of students, neither of whom advanced beyond Grade 10 in school.


Even as my days become full beyond full, I could not turn the entreaties of these aspiring students down:


The Grade 6 girl lives in the adjoining apartment in the run-down building where Evelyn and family live;  her Mom is gravely worried about the girl if her educational prospects don’t rise above those with which the mother herself was inflicted by terrible schools.  Janine is tall and stout for her grade level.  She is the frequent target of physical bullying and verbal taunts.


Janine is functioning far below grade level in math, reading, and by extension all of her other subjects in school.


But she proved herself highly capable in my initial academic session with her in the room that I use for small-group tutoring at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church: 


I put her through my quick-acquisition method for learning multiplication tables;  Janine gained firm mastery over seven such items that had long proven vexing for her. 


We then read an African American folk tale, "The People Could Fly," which Janine loved and read orally quite well, with a bit of pronunciation and vocabulary instruction from me.  With regard to the latter, I noted the words with which she struggled and went over the meanings of these very carefully in a list that I constructed on the spot.  By the end of the two-hour academic session. Janine could define and spell all of these words---  and use them in sentences.


Assuming that I am now able to keep Janine in my universe of students and families as I typically do for the long haul in the New Salem Educational Initiative, the productive future that her mother wants for her daughter will come to pass. 


Janine is yet anther case of a student consigned to the graveyard of special education who can reach her potential, given an atmosphere of confidence and sequentially designed and demonstrated progress.


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My third academic session after church attendance on this Sunday, 7 February, was with two mothers (Carla and Sonia) of my younger students (these young ones, numbering five in all, filling two of my other academic sessions), adults in their early 30s who can triple their current pay as health care workers if they are able to get their GEDs. They are rooted in an immigrant family from Mexico, hard workers giving life everything they have to forge a better future for their children.


Sonia could not remember multiplication tables beyond those with the number five (5) when we began our session;  Carla was shaky in her mastery of those beyond six (6).  Within 30 minutes, though, they had both mastered all multiplication tables for the numbers one (1) through nine (9).


For the remainder of our two hours together on this Sunday evening, 7 February, we carefully went over multiplication with two-digit numbers top and bottom and three-digit numbers top with two-digit numbers on bottom.


Both of these parents-become-students attended the Minneapolis Public Schools in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  Carla finished only Grade 8;  Sonia dropped out in the middle of Grade 10.  They both told tales of schools (Green Central K-8 and Washburn High School) in behavioral turmoil, staffed by teachers too often indifferent to the academic needs of struggling students.


They acted as if I were a miracle worker in teaching them to multiply. 


But I have no doubt that both Carl and Sonia will soon be on a course to obtaining their GEDs and that they will move thenceforth toward advanced study with me as we travel through the exciting world of knowledge that I have compiled in my book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.


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Thus, these two parents are now also my students, among the 55 that I now enroll in the New Salem Educational Initiative small-group program--- in addition to the 25 who participate in the New Salem Tuesday Tutoring Program attended mainly by children of the church.


As an extension of my work with these students, I also keep track of those who have now graduated from high school and were among the participants in the New Salem Educational Initiative, monitoring their progress in college and university attendance and continuing to help academically as necessary.


One twenty-one year-old male, for example, started as a student of mine at Grade 6 and is on the throes of getting his bachelor’s degree in Public Relations but needs a math credit in College Algebra;  so we are meeting two hours a week as in days of yore, reviewing the concepts in quadratic equations, functions, and the like that he needs to master as he goes online to get that final credit.


And so it goes with an approach that seeks to serve multiple and varied requests, in a program that manifests the love that never goes away.


Because my efforts in the New Salem Educational Initiative are well-known in North Minneapolis, I get requests all the time to address critical academic needs of the moment, or to help families work through difficulties of many kinds. I have knowledge of, and connections to, many government and social service agencies, so that in addition to offering my personal counsel, I can act as a resource referral unit to families in need. In all, I have 125 people in my personal network of academic instruction and counsel. I envelop all of these people, both those I see every week and those I see in the midst of particular crises, in the spirit of love that abides eternally.


All students deserve this experience, an education of excellence and enduring relationships in the context of the love that never goes away.


And this is the sacred mission with which we must imbue personnel in the Minneapolis Public Schools.