I also am deeply dedicated to my beloved life partner, St. Olaf College Professor Barbara Reed; my amazing son, Ryan Davison-Reed; my treasured 95 year-old mother, Betty Davison; my abundant and extraordinary friends at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church; and a bevy of other friends and associates who grace my life. I have always felt that dedication to both the greater good and the good of family and friends--- with appropriate distribution of time--- is crucial to the responsible life. As the master of my own professional time, I take off as much time as my Inner Voice communicates to me I should to give to the ones I love in my closest inner circle of family and friends the attention that they deserve.
On most days, though, I am consumed with activities designed to overhaul K-12 education:
I read several books and articles each week.
I write a bevy of articles for this blog.
I write and organize articles into my monthly academic publication, Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Every two weeks, Hollie Hollister Smith and I record two hours of our television show, The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison (Wednesdays at 6:00 PM on Minneapolis Telecommunications Network [MTN] Channel 17).
I am now assembling articles and chapters that I’ve written for the publication of two books--- Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education and Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect --- both now nearly complete, in advanced draft stage.
And I speak at every available forum--- including the monthly meetings of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education--- to advance my five-point program for the transformation of K-12 education.
My models are the great revolutionaries Sojourner Truth, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Mao Zedong, A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Saul Alinsky, and Gloria Steinhem.
I most especially allot my time according to the model of Mao during his days in the caves of Yan’an in the late 1930s and early 1940s, when he read, thought, and wrote deep into the night--- then went forth into the field of action during the day.
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My field of action is composed of many corners of the Greater Twin Cities Metropolitan Area, especially Minneapolis, and most often North Minneapolis and New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, to which I transport my students for 17 academic sessions seven days a week, teaching students at all grade levels and quite a few adults, in groups that range from one to five student per group. Most of my students are or started as Minneapolis Public School (MPS) students before they and their families moved or became disenchanted with MPS schools; they get meals and extracurricular activities from the school district and learn most of what they know from me.
My students first secure their basic skills in mathematics and reading, then they begin the exciting academic journey through economics, political science, psychology, world religions, world history, American History, African American History, literature, English usage, fine arts, higher mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics--- these latter subjects constituting the knowledge that I have poured into my book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, a logical extension into high school and university area study from the premier knowledge-intensive K-8 curriculum of E. D. Hirsch at the Core Knowledge Foundation.
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On Saturdays I conduct four academic sessions, and every other week on that day and I also record two hours of the television show. My day begins at 9:00 AM and generally ends at 9:00 PM, after which I gather with Barbara for Saturday night leisure time. Barbara is on sabbatical in Taiwan at the present time and thus I have been pouring even more temporal space and energy into my various writing endeavors.
Yesterday (Saturday, 2 December), I worked with twelve students across four academic sessions; in the next two articles as you scroll on this blog I convey to you accounts of interactions I had with two of those students, involving issues of the type that drive me forward as I wage the K-12 revolution.
My two interrelated lives in the New Salem Educational Initiative are those involving
- teaching my students; and
2. conducting my various other revolutionary activities with the motivation of ensuring that all students
gain the knowledge-intensive education that my students are receiving.
gain the knowledge-intensive education that my students are receiving.
You should have no difficulty understanding how the first life activity informs the second as you read the next two articles.
Please read on as you scroll on down this blog.
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