The names used for the students and
their family members in this article are, in the manner of my typical practice,
data privacy pseudonyms.
Just beyond the
southern edge of Nicollet Mall off downtown Minneapolis there is a subsidized high-rise
apartment complex run by the social service agency, Volunteers of America
(VOA). This facility is just a few years
old and like so many similar facilities from a certain vantage point has a look
of decency and even an occasional nod to the nice. There is an open courtyard with picnic tables
and playground equipment that in other circumstances would present themselves
as beacons of that quality of energetic life to which human beings aspire on
this one earthly sojourn.
But grinding
poverty tends over time to wear down such facilities, as we know from familiar
motifs played out in Southside Chicago, East Los Angeles, West Dallas, North
Minneapolis, and many other urban centers where originally hospitable public
housing took on a different look as drug dealers and pimp-pushers plied their
trades and took their toll.
God bless
Volunteers of America for building this tower of cheap housing for people who
have few other options.
But the
Tower of Hope lies beyond any such tower of housing, in the pursuits and
policies of the locally centralized school district, in this case the
Minneapolis Public Schools.
………………………………………………………..
I got the
call for help in an apartment on the eleventh floor of this high-rise via the
intermediation of Shameah Franklin, mother of Kamal and Alicia, focal
personages in the next article as you scroll on down this blog. The daughter of Joanna Blake, Shameah’s best friend, was flailing academically and
behaviorally at Jefferson K-5 in the Minneapolis Public Schools. I got the message one week in March 2016 and by
the next week was ascending the elevator to assess the needs of Aniya Emerson, daughter
of Joanna.
I always
brace for the worst.
Shameah’s
description of Aniya’s situation suggested to me the possibility that the
latter might be a child with significant behavioral challenges and learning
disabilities. Shameah told me that she
was on an Individualized Learning Plan (IEP) of the type given by special
education staff at the Minneapolis Public Schools to children who struggle with
behavioral or learning difficulties or both.
The prevailing circumstances seemed to present a child who lashed out at
fellow students and was falling academically behind her grade 2 level of school
enrolment.
When I
arrived, I went into the upbeat banter and verbal introduction that always
accompany my first arrivals, quickly putting both Joana and Aniya at ease. I talked with Aniya awhile to get a sense of
how she felt about school, which bespoke a situation better than I expected,
given what I knew of her circumstances via second- and third- hand accounts.
I then on my
yellow pad sketched out addition and subtraction problems of a rudimentary,
single-digit sort. Aniya had no problem
with these. I went on to double-digit
versions of these problems, with no regrouping (borrowing or carrying). Still no difficulty. I went on to double-digit problems requiring
regrouping, for the first time getting a stymied response from Aniya.
I explained the
regrouping process. Aniya caught on
immediately. We went through several
double-digit exercises of this sort, then I move on to three-digit and
four-digit versions, which require a great deal of focus for the first-time performer
of these operations. Aniya made a few
mistakes but righted her course upon my gentle correction and without too much
ticking of the clock was performing these problems with alacrity.
I had Aniya
count by “2’s,” “5’s,” and “10’s,” which she did with skill in the upper range
of my expectation when first meeting a grade 2 student. I then showed her how multiplication with
such numbers is just an extension of the counting process. She had heard of multiplication and thought
herself very cool for doing some. Things
were progressing so quickly at this now 45-minute juncture that I showed her
the nine trick; Aniya caught on so
quickly that soon she was calculating 6 x
9, 4 x 9,
8 x 9, on
through all such combinations involving single digits--- with nary a mistake or hesitation.
Okay, let’
see, I thought, maybe she has a verbal challenge. I sketched out a bevy of single-syllable words,
two-syllable words, and then upon her success went on to teach Aniya vocabulary
such as probable, fortunate, comprehensive, thorough, beneficial, comparative,
impulsive, self-control, opportunity, and even amicable. From the beginning, she sight-read these word
with great skill and learned my definitions at rapid speed. Aniya knew and could spell all of these words
90 minutes into this quite revealing academic session.
…………………………………………………………
With the
elapse of these notable minutes, I determined that Aniya has no learning disabilities.
I turned to
behavior.
Aniya did
lash out sometimes in class. A lone antagonist,
a girl in her class, particularly provoked thee responses. I told Aniya that someone who had the kind of
ability that she had demonstrated to me should be making the most of her
natural gifts. We talked about
strategies for dealing with Markesha, the antagonist. We talked about not letting the silly, rude,
or distracting comments from others throw a person off one’s game plan. Aniya listened. I had the strong sense that I was getting
through.
But often
bringing a child’s behavior into line is a matter of much more extended
conversation, of the kind that I had week after week with Kamal (he of the SPAN
program cited in the next article as you scroll down). But this was a younger child, and the
behavior was not so entrenched at grade 2 as can be the case at grade 8. Joanna advocated for her child at two looming
meetings to assess her IEP status.
Week by week
I would ask if there were any incidents at school; over the course of five weeks, there was only
one minor incident. Furthermore, as Aniya
and I zoomed through ascendingly greater mathematics challenges and her
fluently and accurately read book of grade level readings that I gave her, her
teachers were amazed that this child who so recently was languishing below
grade level was now giving evidence of ability in math and reading at grade 3
and by some indicators at grade 4.
At the end
of academic year 2015-2016, staff at Jefferson released Aniya from her IEP.
She has
continued to thrive in this academic year 2016-2017.
………………………………………………………….
For Joanna personally,
this year has not been so good. The organs
of her merely 32 year-old body have been as dysfunctional as were her own familial
circumstances growing up in Chicago, then in foster care in St. Cloud,
Minnesota.
Joanna’s
blood pressure runs way too high. At 30
years of age she had received notice that she was a diabetic. Her dedication to a better, more vegetable-laden
diet had been sporadic. In November 2016,
her kidneys began to function abnormally. When I said goodbye to Aniya and Joanna for a
while as I took off for Taiwan and then Texas in December, the mother of this
tandem did not look at all well. She had
just spent several hours at Hennepin County Medical Center with medical staff
furiously trying to get her bodily systems in sync. Joanna’s face looked withered and
exhausted. Quite frankly, I hoped that
she would still be on the planet when I returned in a few weeks. I gave thought to how I might help situate
Aniya if her mother did not make it.
Joanna
looked better on my return. The verdict
on the immediate future of her health is still uncertain, but she appears to
have a chance of surviving and proceeding deeper into a life that in its early
decades had known too much of the bad habits and self-medication that are the
wont of people for whom life has seemed to offer too much abuse and too little
hope.
……………………………………………………………..
I have
detailed in many articles on this blog how history is responsible for creating too
many circumstances of the sort described for Joanna and Aniya.
I have been
at least as persistent in pressing the message that the overhaul of K-12 education
is the foundational solution for our prevailing domestic problems arising from basic
human needs.
With the
impartation of excellent K-12 education, we give hope to people, a vision
beyond the present, a future of lives unfolding with cultural enrichment, civic
preparation, and professional satisfaction.
We provide to Aniya and children of her demographic descriptors that share
of the human inheritance in knowledge and skill that is their birthright, and
we end generations of cyclical poverty, create lives of personal power and
self-confident citizenship, and thereby send forth those “tiny ripples of hope”
so as to “build a current that can tear down the mightiest walls of oppression
and resistance” that Bobby Kennedy says arises from displays of moral courage.
We therefore
must have the moral courage to overhaul K-12 education and make of the
Minneapolis Public Schools a model of the locally centralized school district.
Precious and
precocious child Aniya and mother Joanna are now looking beyond a tower of poverty
toward a Tower of Hope.
We must
assure that children of all demographic descriptors and the parents who adore
them can do the same.
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