The days running from Saturday, 27 February, through Sunday, 6 March, featured amazing opportunities in the interest of transforming lives and advocating for excellent education via the multi-program effort of the New Salem Educational Initiative.
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On Saturday, 27 February, Darnelle Franklin and I recorded two hours of my television show, The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison (Minneapolis Telecommunications Network [MTN] Channel 17, Wednesdays at 6:00 PM). Darnelle is a Grade 9 student at Henry High School who has studied with me throughout his K-12 years. He is functioning at Grade 11 in both reading and mathematics, and he is now one of several students studying subject area material covered in my book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.
During our recording of two complete shows, Darnelle and I reviewed topics from the third chapter that Darnelle has read; this chapter covers Political Science and succeeds Darnelle’s study of Economics, and Psychology in two previous chapters.
On the show, we discussed the political forms of absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy, and liberal democratic republic. We emphasized the historical evolution of these political forms and how constitutional monarchies in practice have tended to feature parliamentary versus presidential systems, and how in Europe they have also tended toward democratic socialism by comparison to the greater emphasis on laissez faire capitalism in the United States.
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On that very Saturday of 27 February I maintained a full schedule of small-group sessions, including work with siblings Joanna Billings and Wilson Billings, at Grade 2 and Grade 4 respectively at Jenny Lind K-5. Joanna is very precocious and has studied with me since she entered Grade K; she is functioning above grade level in reading and is far above grade level in math, accomplishing feats that are more typically associated mathematically with students at Grade 4. Similarly, Wilson is making top grades at school, has a powerhouse image of himself as an academic achiever, and is operating above grade level in both math and reading.
My work on Saturday also included work with siblings Hanna (Grade 4), Rico (Grade 6), and Gilberto Ramirez (Grade 8). Hanna is a fantastic talent and also diligent. Rico is a similarly fantastic talent but scattered and inconsistent in his effort. Gilberto is of more average ability but highly engaged and dedicated as a student. Hence, getting high performance from these students requires varying approaches--- all of which are keeping these three students on promising pathways to postsecondary experiences at colleges or universities.
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On Sunday (28 February) I worked with the mother (Carla) and aunt (Felicia) of these three students; each of these young adults aspires to her GED and enhanced employment opportunities. They are focused and highly motivated; and in all this a great family story. Just prior to working with Carla and Felicia, I worked with three members (Evelyn Patterson, Damon Preston, and Javon Jakes (grade 1), whose remarkable story I recorded in an earlier blog article--- and continue toward the end of this article.
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In the course of the following days of the week I worked with students ranging from Grade 1 to post-collegiate, the latter case a young man who has studied with me since Grade 6 and needs one course in College Algebra to claim his bachelor’s degree.
Seven of the students with whom I worked are advanced enough to be reading my college preparatory Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, reveling in the new knowledge that they are gaining as to the functioning of the Federal Reserve System and the stock market; the operant behaviorism of B. F. Skinner versus the psychoanalytical approach of Sigmund Freud; the relevance of the caucus and primary systems, and the Electoral College, to the current presidential campaigns; and the other material that they are learning in chapters focused on Political Science, Economics, and Psychology.
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On Super Tuesday (1 March), I advocated for a resolution in my Democratic political caucus, asserting the case for the DFL and the national Democratic Party to moving assertively to advance a national K-12 curriculum. I was doing this to be pugnacious, given the realities of the attachment to local control in the United States, but lo and behold my resolution passed, 20-14.
Through the middle of the week I continued to give my efforts to a multiplicity of tasks >>>>>
>>>>> I superintended the New Salem Tuesday Tutoring Program;
>>>>> conducted a bevy of small-group academic sessions;
>>>>> and collected data on the number of positions with salaries for central office personnel at the Minneapolis Public Schools.
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Then yesterday, 7 March, I again met with Evelyn Patterson 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 unit, their current bedbug-ridden apartment, on the East Side of St. Paul. Their current quarters are too ill-lit and devoid of furniture to be tenable for my academic work with members of the household.
Yesterday (7 March), Evelyn continued to zoom through our review of mathematical topics that will allow her to resume the college training that was interrupted a decade ago. We have gone through arithmetic operations and various operations with decimals, percentages, and fractions. We spent the preponderance of our time yesterday on the addition, subtraction, and multiplication of fractions and mixed numbers; and we went on to a review of fundamental algebraic equations.
Javon, now at Grade 1, is reading and performing mathematical operations that typically describe the skill and knowledge level of the Grade 3 student. Yesterday we concentrated on math. I ran Javon through a series of exercises on which he performed magnificently, demonstrating full grasp of multiplication tables for the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 9. Javon loves my trick for the nines and is a whiz at its application. Next week Javon will learn multiplication tables for 6, 7, and 8--- thus completing, at just Grade 1, the all-important 0-9 sequence.
Damon performed multi-step algebraic equations adeptly, moving smoothly through ascending levels of challenges. He needed some review as to the rules that apply to additive as opposed to multiplicative operations with negative integers, showing his typical patience in regaining mastery.
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When Evelyn, Damon, and Javon had entered my car at 2:30 PM on this Sunday, 6 March, Damon and Javon had just had a verbal quarrel. Evelyn was very frustrated.
I asked Damon and Javon what their argument had been about and found out that the dispute involved use of a friend’s electronic device for playing games. I talked to these half-brothers at length about the need to get along so as to help their mother. Evelyn struggles with her mental health, which I did not have to mention specifically for the boys to get my meaning implicitly.
So elated were these three about their academic successes on this day of study with me, that their spirits were elevated considerably as we made our way back to their apartment building. I talked to Damon and Javon again about ratcheting down the frequency of their arguments. They promised me that this would be a good week for their interactions.
Thus, transporting these three to and from their apartment allowed us time to talk in a way that helped them sort through a matter of seemingly trivial argument but one that had weighed heavily on Evelyn’s morale. And their accomplishment in their academic assignments had provided to each of these family members another rung on the ladder to success.
When people focus on matters for study that give them self-confidence and a sense of life progress, emotional states can be altered from moods of negativity to feelings of positive self-worth.
The mastery of broadly grasped and deeply internalized knowledge has been transformative in the cases of Evelyn and her sons Damon and Javon. These are people who yearn to learn all there is to know about all manner of subjects. They love learning for learning’s own sake; and they see their increasing knowledge as giving them the power to forge lives at a level of success that previously has escaped those of older generations in their family.
Evelyn, Damon, and Javon demonstrate each week the radiant power of knowledge. All of our nation’s citizens deserve the power of knowledge that surges in the souls of Evelyn, Damon, and Javon with each passing week.
Thus do I feel very blessed as I reflect on this very remarkable series of days extending from Saturday, 27 February, to Sunday, 6 March.
And thus do I vow to intensify the bevy of activities that currently describe the multi-faceted program of the New Salem Education, toward overhauling K-12 education for the life enrichment of all of our precious young people, and for all of those adults who are seeing for the first time the magnificent opportunities of life that beckon for them on a foundation of knowledge intensity and ethical responsibility.
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