Stunning Displays of Student Talent and Accomplishment at the 12th Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet

Note to my readers:  All names used in this article are data privacy pseudonyms.

The 12th Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet was one of our best in terms of making students feel honored.

The New Salem Educational Initiative now constitutes my 16-18 hour per day effort to transform K-12 education, especially via my program of direct instruction to young people and adults of all ages;  and my activities for inducing the Minneapolis Public Schools to become a model for the locally centralized school district.

 

The program of instruction  is delivered in two types of programs: 

 

1)  New Salem Tuesday Night Tutoring, mainly for the benefit of young people and adults at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church;  and

 

2)  The seven-day-a-week program of 17 small-group academic sessions conducted after school, evenings, and weekends .

 

I have directed and taught in the Tuesday evening program for twenty-three (23) years.

 

I have directed and served as the only teacher in the small-group program for thirteen (13) years.

 

We did not have a banquet the first year of the small-group program, but have had such a gathering for every year since:  Thus, our banquet held last week on Tuesday, 6 June, was our 12^th Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet.

 

The banquet includes a dinner that I personally cater, consistent with the multiple roles that I play as curriculum generator, van driver, family outreach director, development (fundraising) director, and teacher for all aspects of the small-group program.  For the Tuesday evening program, I have four tutors who serve the students under my direction.

 

After dinner, students put on impressive displays of the skill and knowledge that they have acquired as participants in the New Salem Educational Initiative.   Typically, students give speeches by famous African American leaders;  demonstrate mathematics, reading, and subject area academic knowledge; and present a Shakespearean play that I compress for a 30-minute performance, with all original Elizabethan language.     

 

I did not ask any students to step up to the challenge of doing great African American speeches this year, knowing that the most likely candidates for such declamatory exercises would come from the actors in Othello and that those in this group needed full focus on their roles in the play.

 

This left me with a bit more perceptible time for handing out the certificates and taking even more time and care than I do as an abiding practice to make sure that each student, the family members, and the audience as a whole understood the nature of each student's accomplishment.

 

All of these presentations were important and delivered the appropriate message with honor to the recipient.  Highlights were awards given to Evelyn Patterson (Courageous Talent), Damon Preston (Great Talent and Dedication), Javon Jakes (Eager Young Talent),  Elena Martinez (Successful Collegiate Scholar),  Corazon Martinez (Talent and Persistence), Felicia Martinez (Splendid Talent and High Ambition), Jamal Houston (Student of the Year), Jamir Brown(Tops on Tuesday), and Parents of the Year Raul Martinez and Anna Ramirez.

 

Thirty-two year-old Evelyn Patterson grew up tough on Chicago's South Side, suffered abuse from more than one family member and family associate, got derailed from a serious foray at a suburban Chicago community college when her mom died just as they were reconnecting---  then suffered through an ultimately unsatisfying relationship while experiencing significant mental health issues durng her first years in Minneapolis.  She has now rebounded, regained late high school/ early college level skills in her study with me, made numerous favorable life changes, and is poised to go to Anoka-Ramsey Community College in the autumn. 

 

Grade 8 Damon Preston is the older of Stacey's two sons, an old soul who goes to church on  his own, studies hard and maintains an "A-minus" average, rises to any challenge that I put before him, has been on my television show more than any other student, and is planning to be a contract negotiation lawyer in the aftermath of a discussion that he and I had about the different fields of law.

 

Grade 2 Javon Jakes is Stacey's younger son, a genuinely precocious student who has mastered his multiplication tables, learned many college preparatory vocabulary items, sounds words out with alacrity, reads fluently and with exceptional comprehension, and is always ready for what I have for him academically and more.

 

Elena Martinez (Successful Collegiate Scholar) worked diligently as a first-year student at Augsburg University, attended my academic sessions for study of my first three chapters in Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, learned how to write a research paper under my guidance, and polished numerous skills that allowed her to flourish as a bona fide university student.  She is now planning to transfer to St. Catherine's University to pursue a course of study leading to a medical degree as a registered nurse. 

 

Grade 12  Corazon Martinez (Talent and Persistence), and I worked especially hard digging her out of an academic hole that she had dug for herself in pre-calculus, spending heavy-duty hours mastering the coordinates on a unit circle;  trigonometric functions and their graphs;  the law of sines and cosines;  trigonometric identities;  the equations and graphs for parabolas, ellipses, and hyperbolas;  and logarithms.  Corazon applied herself to the task, made "A's" on both her midterm and her final, and almost pulled herself all the way up from failure to "B" territory, falling just short at a "C-plus."  Corazon and I also worked on poetic descriptions for some highly sophisticated and stunning photographs that she took for a visual art class, for which she recorded an "A."  Getting Corazon back on track, especially the feat performed in pre-calculus, is one of the five best personal achievements for me as a teacher in my forty-four year career---  and, to be sure, gave Corazon a chance to rise to a very high level of academic performance.  She is now positioned to be a viable candidate for a course of study leading to a medical degree as a registered nurse.

 

Grade 9 Felicia Martinez (Splendid Talent and High Ambition), was consistently on the :"A" honor roll and responded brilliantly in her reading of my chapters from Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education in Psychology, Economics, and Political Science.   Elena has a chance to train for high performance on the ACT leading to scholarships to attend a first-tier university.

 

This is true also of Grade 9 Jamal Houston (Student of the Year), who entered the program late in the academic year but responded so brilliantly that he mastered several chapters in Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, read Othello with me, then performed the title role in our presentation of that great work of Shakespeare at the banquet.  Deandre knew all of his lines, spoke forcefully and clearly, and punctuated his dialogue with thoughtful and compelling gestures.  This is the young man whom I've said is the nicest I've ever known with the possible exception of my beloved son Ryan Davison-Reed.

 

Our production of Othello, as was the case last year, included many cast members still young and developing the experience needed to master all of their lines and deliver their performance with full confidence.  So I prompted them a good bit, moved around in directorial style, and oversaw a performance in the style of an advanced rehearsal. 

 

But Felicia Martinez as Desdemona was very good, especially at key parts such as the catastrophic deathbed scene, Elena Martinez was soft of voice but good in the kinetic aspects of the role of Emilia, Evelyn Patterson was a delightfully game and clearly-heard Roderigo, Damon needed prompting at many points in delivering his heavy load of dialogue but otherwise did well as Iago, little Javon rose to the occasion as Governor Montano of Cyprus, Joshua Washington delivered his one instance of dialogue with aplomb as Brabantio, and Jamir Brown delivered all five of his moments of dialogue as the Duke of Venice with perfect accuracy and skill that makes him a promising future candidate for a main role. 

 

And then there was the very high caliber performance of the confident and adroit Jamal Houston.

 

The crowd ate enough of my fried chicken, barbecue chicken, lasagna, spaghetti, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, and salad for a gathering twice the size.

 

Parents were very proud, with Evelyn Patterson radiant, Letoya Carter  in a reverie over Deandre's accomplishments, and Raul and Anna all aglow over the performances given by and honors bestowed on their three talented and diligent daughters.

 

This banquet was a major event in the lives of those attending and delivered powerful messages as to the potential for high academic performance bubbling just below the surface and waiting to come to the fore in many a young person facing challenging life circumstances. 

 

The potential was realized and the academic performance rose beyond the surface for these participants in the New Salem Educational during the 2016-2017 academic year.

 

This year's banquet, as in the case of the eleven other such gatherings, provided a fine venue for the display of talent possessed and developed by my students in the New Salem Educational Initiative---  and a powerful indicator of the  talent residing in the masses of young people who await that excellence of education that we must provide to all of our precious children, of all demographic descriptors.