As you
scroll on down this blog, you will successively read four accounts of success
involving eight different students of mine in the small-group (one-to-five
participants) program of the New Salem Educational Initiative.
>>>>>
There is an account of Evelyn Patterson and
her two sons, Damon Preston and Javon Jakes, whom I have followed through two
residences in North Minneapolis, one in far South Minneapolis, one in East St.
Paul, and then served as mover to the current residence in Coon Rapids to
provide an excellence of education that can promote this remarkable trio’s continued trajectory out of the depths
of poverty toward a life of meaning and satisfaction.
>>>>>
There is then the story of Manuela, Lucinda,
and Anita--- three sisters of Ecuadorean
parents Carlos and Marcia Saldovar who
also have lived a residentially peripatetic existence during the nine years
that I have known them but are now positioned as first-year college (Manuela), grade
12 (Lucinda), and grade 9 (Anita) students to live as professionally
accomplished adults.
>>>>> There is then the third account of Shameah Hutchinson, whom I have assisted in her
commendable efforts to give her children Kamal Richardson (recent high school graduate) and Alicia Bennett (now a grade 7 student at Ramsey K-8 in Minneapolis) a life much more productive than she herself has known, that latter life having featured far too many instances of dysfunction, dislocation, and homelessness.
>>>>>
And there is the fourth article detailing
the journey of Aniya Emerson, daughter of Joanna
Blake, from
a perceptibly behaviorally and academically troubled grade 2 student to a student
realizing all of her precocious potential at grade 3; while her mother struggles to cope with an array of medical challenges.
As you read these accounts, suggestive of how I spend most of my time seven days each week, know also that I am currently assembling two books.
One of these books, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, is a work that I began two years ago as an efficient instrument to assist in my delivery of the knowledge-intensive education that the Minneapolis Public Schools does not provide; this nearly complete book features chapters focused on the subject areas of economics, psychology, political science, world religions, world history, American History, African American history, literature, English usage, fine arts, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics.
The other book, also nearly complete, is entitled, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect; this work proceeds in three parts: an objective presentation of the organization and academic outcomes of the Minneapolis Pubic Schools; an analysis of that organization and those outcomes; and the presentation of a philosophy and program for overhaul of organization, curriculum, and teacher training toward the provision an education of excellence at the Minneapolis Public Schools.
With the production of these books and my full-scale commitment to the overhaul of education at the Minneapolis Public Schools, my already busy seven-day weeks became even busier:
My days now run 16 to 18 hours and on any given day in addition to work on these books feature the writing of articles (now totaling 371) for the blog; the production of my academic journal (Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota); recording my television show, The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison; making Public Comments at the monthly meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education; and appearances at many public forums for articulating my program for transformation of K-12 education.
What is important to understand is that before I launched these multiple efforts, my days were already full with running the two programs of the New Salem Educational Initiative that I continue to direct: the Tuesday Tutoring Program of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church; and the seven-day-a-week small-group academic program; that I continue to run as these other efforts proceed.
You now may be able to understand with greater clarity how those 16-18 hours ensue.
This is the total commitment of the revolutionary, driven by a task as important and necessitating the level of commitment expended by Mohandas Gandhi, A. Philip Randolph, Gloria Steinhem, Mao Zedong, and Saul Alinsky.
The four accounts as you scroll on down the blog are the sort that animate all my days.
These are examples of young people yearning for, receiving, and thriving on the provision of a knowledge-intensive education.
I will provide such a knowledge-intensive education of excellence to as many young people as I can for the rest of my days.
And I will work incessantly to promote transformation of the Minneapolis Public Schools into a model of the locally centralized school district.
The locally centralized school district is the unit of delivery of K-12 education for the overwhelming majority of young people in the United States. And, in the context of a society that clamors for local control, this is the level at which the needed overhaul must take place.
I cannot teach everyone. The locally centralized school district, beginning with the Minneapolis Public schools, must become the locus for the delivery of a knowledge-intensive education for young people who shall then go forth as culturally enriched, civically prepared, and professionally satisfied adults.
As you contemplate the necessity of the transformation, please now receive insight into the latent potential residing in every single child--- and gain inspiration for you own action in the accounts of individual and familial transformations in the next four articles as you scroll on down this blog.
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