I’ve written many times about Damon Preston, one of my most remarkable students in the New Salem Educational Initiative. Now in grade 8, Damon became my student in his grade 1 year, soon after his arrival with his mom, Evelyn Patterson, and her significant other at the time, Marcel Gifford, in Minneapolis from Chicago.
I followed Damon and family through three residences in Minneapolis (two on the North Side, one in far South Minneapolis), to one residence on the East Side of St. Paul, and this past summer served as mover, gratis of course, when the family moved again to still cheaper housing and a much better living situation in Coon Rapids.
This represents a salient feature of the New Salem Educational Initiative: Once a student enters my universe, I do not let go.
Damon was perceived to have a speech impediment when he first entered the New Salem Educational Initiative and all through his first years at Bryn Mawr K-5 (in the residential area and just west of the park of the same name, just across a short bridge from North Minneapolis , south from Glenwood Avenue along Penn Avenue), Damon had his ups and downs in grade reports and test scores but maintained a steady academic course with me. By grade 4, Damon was shorn of the putative impediment, was demonstrating in his grades and test scores the skills that he had developed with me in the New Salem Educational Initiative. As the family moved to St. Paul for their three-year stay on the East Side, Damon was ready to weather extraordinarily challenging life circumstances as Evelyn and Marcel--- both very good people to whom life had not been kind in their own youth--- worked through difficulties that included bouts of physical violence.
Many a time did I respond to calls in the middle of the night. On many a day did I sit offering counsel to Evelyn, Marcel, Damon, and Javon.
Evelyn, who carries the HIV virus, was able to get housing in Coon Rapids in a program for people who have significant chronic illnesses. In a timely break from the situation that had developed in St. Paul, Evelyn extricated herself from her relationship with Marcel (albeit with the necessity of a restraining order and multiple court appearances) and took the boys to this suburb, beyond Fridley at the northern reaches beyond Minneapolis.
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Damon has always been an old soul, mature beyond his years. He has always listened to my counsel. He has always sought out churches all on his own in any neighborhood in which the family might find itself. He longs for good behavior, calm amidst the storm, excellence in academic performance: He has always responded at the upper ranges of quality of production in his studies, last spring 2016 receiving the Student of the Year Award at the New Salem Educational Initiative Annual Banquet.
On this past Saturday, Damon demonstrated all of his maturity and studiousness as we drove from his home in Coon Rapids and then arrived at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, where I conduct most of my 17 small-group academic sessions per week.
Damon as a youngster expressed a desire to be a pro wrestler but listened carefully while I detailed a myriad of other options. He began to develop an interest in law, bolstered by our discussions and our study of political science and history.
On our way to the church, I asked Damon if anyone had ever told him that there are options for practicing law beyond the criminal court trial so familiar to the television scene. He said that he remembered that I had mentioned that other options existed but that no one at school had ever provided any such information.
So I told Damon,
“Many attorneys provide services that do not typically or necessarily involve court appearances. Some provide expertise in matters pertinent to real estate acquisitions. Others specialize in entertainment law. Some lawyers have knowledge of oil and gas law, letting clients involved in oil and gas exploration or who own oil fields know about statutes that define the rights of all parties who might have claims on the land. Other attorneys provide advice to clients on marital and family law that many times helps them negotiate settlements and resolve difficulties without going to trial. Still other lawyers specialize in legal contracts and mergers when two corporations decide to combine together--- You remember my example of how Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken are now part of the same corporation, right? You’ve learned from our study of economics the difference between a company and a corporation, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, sure, I remember.”
“So what do you think? What kind of law do you think you might choose as a specialty?”
Typically, Damon did not hem or haw. He had listened. He had been thinking. And now he said:
“I think that helping people with contracts might be interesting--- either singers or actors--- or maybe those people wanting to merge two companies or corporations.”
“That’s great, Devone. Wow. I don’t think there are too many eighth graders already thinking about going into contract law.”
Devone grinned broadly.
He remembers all too well much of the pain along the roads he’s traveled.
He has his sights on the more promising roads ahead.
We’ve talked frankly about one person being able to break the cycle of familial poverty that can create a bright feature for everyone in the family thenceforth.
Damon wants to be the one.
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Damon and I got to New Salem and went down to the room in which I typically render instruction. He told me on the way to the church, after we had that little session focused on the subfields of law, that he was making a “B” in his advanced algebra class and wanted to understand simultaneous equations better so he could pull that grade up to an “A.” So we went over five examples that I scratched out on my humble blackboard, and within 45 minute Damon was at a superior level of mastery.
Damon and I then covered the section near the end of the Economics chapter in my 14-chapter book (Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education) that discusses the three seminal figures Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes. I decided to leave Marx, whose theory is a bit more difficult to cover in summation, for next week, given that we by now had just a little over an hour.
So we had a thorough discussion of Smith’s preference for laissez faire, the Invisible Hand, unfettered entrepreneurs, and government limited mostly to providing infrastructure, public security, and defense; versus Keynes’s view, a century and a half out from Smith, that capitalist economies can fall into recession and even depression (the latter of which Keynes had witnessed in extremity, the Great Depression of the 1930s) and that at such times government spending should be used to substitute for private capital with financial and monetary (we discussed the difference between those two terms) stimulus to get the economy back on track. We discussed the potentiality of depression that well may have been averted with the Bush and especially the Obama stimulus policies--- and the debate that such matters engenders among conservatives, moderates, and liberals.
At only grade 8 Damon, he of the challenged life circumstances in extremis, has now mastered most of the material in my chapters on psychology, political science, and economics. He loves it all. His comments are germane and thoughtful. He wants all of the knowledge that I can give him, and in a life dedicated to the pursuit and dispensation of knowledge, that is a lot.
Damon loves the knowledge.
And he loves how that knowledge can lead him toward contract law, multiple contributions to society, and the shattering of a cycle of poverty.
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When I returned Damon to his home, I spent 30 minutes with his little brother Javon, who at grade 2 already knows all of his multiplication tables under my tutelage and can recognize and define words such as benefit, substantial , marshal, deciduous, precocious (Javon understands that the latter is an adjective and that it describes him); and then I spent the same amount of time in academic huddle with Evelyn, who is undergoing an intensive math and verbal skills review with me in preparation for going back to community college (many moons and another lifetime ago in Chicago, the razor-sharp Evelyn accumulated a year and a half of college credits).
These are life transformations, built on knowledge, strong relationships, and the unrelenting hard work that my West Texas pappy always called “elbow grease.”
For Damon, Javon, and Evelyn these interactions are those to which they most look forward in any given week.
For me these interactions are also very special, but in the context of my week constitute just another day at the office--- or part of one.
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