In the
course of the last several weeks, as more and more readers have become
interested in my blog, and I have become ever more active in efforts to
overhaul K-12 education, a bevy of people have become interested in the New
Salem Educational Initiative and inquired as to its origins and as to the day
to day functioning of the program. This
article constitutes an update of a similar article posted many months ago. This update will give my many new readers a
strong sense of my convictions and my efforts to revolutionize K-12
education.
Herein lies
a description of the history, principles, and day to day life of the program. And before I get to the program itself, I
give a brief description of my own background and life as a teacher in K-12
education:
Personal Background, Trainiing, and Life
as a Teacher
I attended
Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas, from the autumn of 1969
through the spring of 1973. Prior to
entering SMU, I had already become intensely interested in the social
revolutions (feminist, civil rights) that were taking place in the late 1960s
and early 1970s; my interest quickened
and my activism expanded during my years at SMU. I did not march for causes very much; although I have never shied away from
confrontation, I have always wanted any confrontations that I initiate to have
a very specific impact, and my ongoing commitment has been and continues to be
to practical action meant to advance the common good.
By the
spring (1971) of my sophomore year, I had decided to be a teacher. I became active in SMU Volunteer Services and
soon took on the position of coordinator for services rendered at institutions
for the mentally challenged and in the Dallas Independent School District
(DISD). I majored in political science
and had near-majors in history and psychology.
I took math through calculus and pursued a broad and deep liberal arts
education. I also endured the
excruciatingly terrible education courses to gain certification in the teaching
fields of government and history; in
time, in Minnesota, that certification would come to include all of those
subjects considered part of social studies.
During my
junior year, I served a semester internship at L. G. Pinkston High School in
West Dallas, a heavily African American ghetto.
This experience solidified my dedication to the education of urban
youth. I did my student teaching at
another inner city school but returned to Pinkston for my first two academic
years (1973-1974 and 1974-1975) as a regular classroom teacher.
During the
years from 1976 through 2003, I traveled throughout the United States and most
of East, Southeast, and East Asia; got
an M. A. (University of Iowa, 1979) and Ph. D. (University of Minnesota, 1993)
in Chinese and Taiwanese history; lived
in Taiwan for a total of three and a half years, becoming fluent in Mandarin
Chinese and acquiring some Taiwanese (the Minnan dialect similar to that of
Fujian Province on the Chinese mainland);
and teaching in almost every type of situation: English as a Second Language (Taiwan); prison (Missouri Eastern Correctional
Center); instructor at the University of
Minnesota (two years teaching courses in East Asian history in the late 1980s
as I pursued my doctorate); a semester
teaching modern Japanese history at St. Olaf College; a rural high school, a suburban alternative
high school, and two different alternative high schools in Minneapolis.
This is to
say, too, that my wife, Barbara Reed, and I moved to Minnesota in the late
summer of 1982 as she took a position at St. Olaf College in Northfield, where
she still is a professor of Asian religions with dual appointments in the
Department of Religion and the Department of Asian Studies.
I have been
active in K-12 education in North Minneapolis since 1991, became a member of
New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in 1993, and for 20 years have coordinated
and taught in the New Salem Tuesday Night Tutoring Program, which currently
includes five tutors in addition to myself.
Over the years from 1988 forward, I have written eight books, including
a co-written book with Barbara. I
researched and wrote two books for the Minneapolis Urban League (The
State of African Americans in Minnesota,2004 and 2008 editions). From the very beginning of my academic
career, I have always wanted to be a K-12 teacher who trained like a university
scholar.
In addition
to continuing to run the New Salem Tuesday Tutoring Program, for the last ten
years I have coordinated the New Salem Educational Initiative, which
incorporates the Tuesday night program but also includes a seven-day-a-week
small-group program, my written output of articles on K-12 education, and activist
efforts to overhaul K-12 education.
The Day to Day Functioning of the New
Salem Educational Initiative
Through the
Tuesday night program, the small-group program, individual studies, and
continued mentorship once students start matriculating at colleges and
universities, I now have 125 students in my
New Salem Educational Initiative network. My most time-consuming efforts go to serving
the 45 students in the seven-day-a-week small-group academic sessions and the 20-25 students who participate on a given evening in the New Salem Tuesday Tutoring Program.
Students now
typically enter the small-group program of the New Salem Educational in Grade K
(kindergarten), following older family members who have been in the
program. I perform all functions in the
service of these students. I generate
the curriculum and compile the materials for study, do the initial enrollment,
attend to all office details, write grants and raise funds. Most importantly, I talk with and counsel
family members of students, transport students to and from each academic
session, and teach each two-hour session personally.
The
relationships that I form with students are permanent. Once students are enrolled in the New Salem
Educational Initiative, they remain under my academic instruction and personal
mentorship forever. Students who enter
after a few years in school typically are functioning below grade level in math
and reading when they enroll in the New Salem Educational Initiative. My first effort, then, goes toward bringing a
student up to grade level in these two key skill areas. This generally happens within an academic
year or two. Once a student attains
grade level competency in math and reading, she or he moves on to a college
track course of study, reading and hearing about subjects across the liberal
arts curriculum. Reading at that point
becomes not so much a skill as a portal for advanced learning.
Students in
the New Salem Educational Initiative acquire full grasp of mathematics skills
pertinent to the four basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication,
and division), fractions, decimals, percentages, graphs, tables, proportions,
and ratios; and they learn all skills
necessary for algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus.
Students
also acquire strong verbal skills, learning how to write cogent essays and to
read complex material with acquisition of advanced vocabulary and ever
ascending levels of college preparatory reading comprehension. They read a generous number of selections
from the Core Knowledge books edited by E. D. Hirsch, and they move in logical
sequence through additional material chosen to impart strong knowledge sets
across the liberal arts (math, natural science, history, economics, psychology,
fiction and poetry, and the fine arts).
Students use this strong liberal arts background in reading material
from newspapers and journals, in both hard copy and online. Middle school and high school students read
Shakespearean plays such as Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King
Lear, and Twelfth Night.
Students
enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative all come from low-income
families with multiple challenges. Currently,
all of my students are African American and Hispanic. In the early years, students tended to enroll
after having spent a number of years at the Grade K-5, Grade 6-8, and even the
Grade 9-12 level in the Minneapolis Public Schools--- and had to make up significant and often
severe academic deficits. Now, with so
many younger students following older family members into the program, they
tend to enroll at the Grade K (kindergarten level), and thus are always
advanced for their grade levels. Either
way, the economically challenged students of the New Salem Educational
initiative end up on a college track course of study far more typical for
students at the middle and upper economic levels.
Principles Undergirding the New Salem
Educational Initiative
Implicit in
the above and more explicitly stated here, the principles undergirding the New
Salem Educational Initiative, in accord with my views on K-12 education, are as
follows:
For the
United States to claim full democracy, all students should receive high quality
education across the core subjects of the liberal arts curriculum. This is the same kind of education envisioned
for good citizenship and high quality life by Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann,
who wrote of “common schools” for all.
The abiding assumption in the New Salem Educational Initiative is that
the logical acquisition of strong skill and knowledge sets promotes rich
intellectual and cultural life, creates good citizens, and prepares the way for
high professional and life satisfaction.
Students in
the New Salem Educational Initiative come alive in the world of knowledge. They don’t think twice about whether they can
achieve at a high level. They can tell
that I have full confidence in their academic abilities. They move through challenging material in
logical sequence. They work on a task until
mastery is achieved, and then they move on to the next, higher skill. They witness their own success, and they want
more of the same. Just a few days into
their participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative, students see
themselves as successful learners, and they take off toward ascending heights
of skill and knowledge. Whatever
challenges of material poverty they bring into the program, students gain a
wealth of knowledge and they do not see poverty of any sort in their futures.
Students know
that I will never go away. They see me
week after week. They feel my love. Their families feel my love. I feel the love of these wonderful people in
return. We all understand that we have
entered into relationships that are permanent, that endure beyond the K-12
stage, that continue through attendance at excellent colleges and universities,
that will endure into the stage of adulthood.
Students in
the New Salem Educational Initiative succeed, because they have all of the
ability to do so, and because I will have it no other way. I care about my students as if they were my
own, and in the manner of excellent parents and teachers, I do anything
necessary to assure that my students, my children, are successful. Mainly, I teach up a storm. I exert heavy-duty effort, in the application
of what my West Texas pappy called “elbow grease.” The parents of students in the New Salem
Educational Initiative care deeply, as all parents do, either in manifest
expression or latent potential. I guide
them either productively to apply the former or to tap and activate the latter.
The overhaul
of K-12 education constitutes the next stage of the Civil Rights Movement. High quality K-12 public education will end
cycles of poverty and turn societal liabilities into economic and cultural
assets. Through my conducting of 17
two-hour academic sessions for groups of three to five students each, I ensure
that my students will become productive and happy citizens. Through my writing, speaking, and activism, I
am fully dedicated to inducing the Minneapolis Public Schools to become a model
for how centralized systems can do the same.
My Current Efforts in the Overhaul of
K-12 Education--- and My Vision for the
Minneapolis Public Schools as a Model for Locally Centralized Schools Districts
Imagine the Minneapolis Public Schools improving so thoroughly as to become a model urban central school district that similar organizations in other cities can utilize as reference for their own overhaul of K-12 education at the level of the central school district.
In my new book (Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education) focused on the subject areas of economics, political science, psychology, world religions, world history, American history, African American history, literature, English usage, fine arts, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics; I am providing the knowledge and skill set that would provide the essence of the curriculum productive of well-educated graduates of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS). Based on such a solid base of academic information and skills, graduates of MPS would possess knowledge that even our present version of university graduates in the United States would be happy to remember from courses in the given subject areas.
What I am doing in all aspects of the New Salem Educational Initiative--- including writing Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education; monthly production of the academic Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota; hosting of the television show The K-12 Revolution (every Wednesday at 6:00 PM on Channel 17, Minneapolis Telecommunications Network [MTN]); personally conducting 17 small-group college preparatory academic sessions per week in a network that includes 125 students and their family members; superintending the Tuesday Tutoring program at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church; speaking at numerous public venues (including monthly appearances during Public Comment time at the convening of the MPS Board of Education); and the posting of well over 200 articles on this blog--- is providing a vision for K-12 education and the future of North Minneapolis that encompasses what I am hoping to leave to the world when my own days on earth are numbered.
Imagine MPS extrapolating the principles of the New Salem Educational Initiative so as to design a locally centralized school system so worthy as to offer a model for the excellent liberal arts education that I am always advancing and that I am now detailing in the nearly completed book (I have finished ten out of the projected fourteen chapters).
Imagine school classrooms from the K-5 level forward that are replete with academic resources of both the venerable print and the contemporary technological sort. Hold in your consciousness an image of classroom walls and hallways filled with maps of continents, nations, and ecosystems from throughout the world; and with prints of great works of art and visual representations (paintings, photographs, and sculpture) of historical personages of great thought and accomplishment.
Consider the transformative lifetime impact on young people who fully function at grade level in mathematics and reading and then follow academically committed teachers on a journey through the exciting world of knowledge. Think about the effects on the lives of our precious young people, alive in the world of knowledge and excited by the banter of teachers who truly love them and effortlessly blend academic, comedic, and culturally attuned comments into their verbal expressions, their communications, their teaching.
Imagine schools as genuine places of knowledge acquisition that welcome students, their families, and community members to the sites and into the hallways of learning and ethics. Into these hallways would come experts from the realms of academia, business, government, social service, and theology to talk to MPS students and their families in a setting alive with the love of knowledge and ethical action--- and to engage in lively intellectual encounters with teachers capable of exchanging informed views with people of enormous information bases and great expertise.
Ethics would be an important topic for discussion in the schools of the future for MPS, with powerful conversations flowing in consideration of ethical precepts from the world's great religious traditions, applied in the context of an extensive knowledge base acquired both through dedicated academic study and active engagement with the workaday world:
Young people and their families would be invited to participate in discussions focused on the nature of the good, the beautiful, and the empathic--- for the express purpose of advancing human understanding and promoting peaceful, productive relationships among people.
Imagine beckoning rooms in our schools from the K-5 level forward that are packed with great classic and contemporary works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry; performance stages; technological resource area; media center; kitchen for student use; along with conventional classrooms used for traditional purposes and as centers for discussion, lectures, and speeches.
Imagine schools from the K-5 level forward that include spaces for instruction in the vocational and technical arts, arranged for particular students upon expressed interest, so that the transmission of liberal arts knowledge would flourish alongside instruction that could include auto repair, plumbing, electrical work, carpentry, and various other vocational arts.
Minneapolis in general and North Minneapolis specifically would become much better places for our young people and their families to dwell--- very much including those who are my personal passion: those who have been mired in cyclical familial poverty for generations. Schools would become tangible expressions of the joy of knowing and understanding the great world and universe, centers of information and wisdom in the midst of a community that radiates love of knowledge, ethical conduct, human beings.
I am developing the New Salem Educational Initiative as a vanguard community, formed by the 125 students and family members in my network, with the view of educating hordes of others interested in increasing their knowledge in all manner of subjects and coming to a place where ethics and moral conduct are treated as cherished guides to human action and interaction.
A very definite component of my vision is the transformation of the image of the North Minneapolis community that I love, from the perception of a place of destitution and violence to the recognized center of advanced academic knowledge and elevated ethical conduct.
This can and must happen in the future overhaul of K-12 education at the level of the locally centralized school district, with the Minneapolis Public Schools serving as model to a world that must thrive on the basis of knowledge and ethics, rather than perishing for a lack thereof.
…………………………………………………………………………………….
In addition to
producing the book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, I also am
drawing together a bevy of material on the Minneapolis Public Schools and will
soon be ready to offer the results to the general public as Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current
Condition, Future Prospect. I am
organizing this work into three parts, the first giving objective data and
facts pertinent to the organization and programs of the Minneapolis Public Schools; the second analyzing that organization and those
programs, and assessing the performance of staff members, particularly those
drawing high salaries and responsible for the poor academic performance of
students in the Minneapolis Public Schools;
and the third detailing the philosophical underpinnings and programmatic
approaches that will transform the Minneapolis Public Schools into a model for
the locally centralized school district.
This is
quite a production, as is the book offering the detailed, fourteen-chapter presentation
of curriculum.
I’ll keep
you readers posted as to the completion of these volumes, and assume that you
will thrust yourselves into the pot that I am stirring or at least watch the
contents of that pot boil--- as these
two books make their public appearances.
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