Aug 22, 2018

Why I’m the Guy Whom Officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools Will Never Fool: Accounts of Student Challenges and Accomplishment in the New Salem Educational Initiative >>>>> The Remarkable Case of Maya Cardenas


I’m the guy whom officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) will never fool.

 

I often remind them of this in my monthly Public Comments at meetings of the MPS Board of Education.

 

Specifically, in the midst of the academic year, when the New Salem Tuesday Tutoring Program is in full motion (remember that I coordinate two programs:  the Tuesday evening program and the seven-day-a-week small group program), at the end of my comments I frequently say:

 

Now when I walk out of here to go coordinate the

New Salem Tuesday program, I want you to say to

yourselves, “Now there goes the guy whom we will

never fool, because he is departing to run his

program, where he administers to the students whom

we academically abuse during the daytime.”

 

Remember, dear readers, that I have taught at every level and in all situations that you can imagine:  mostly in high schools, but along the way also in a prison (GED curriculum), in Taiwan (English as a Second Language), four and a half years in university and college settings (East Asian history), and in my current programs of the New Salem Educational Initiative, in which I teach students of all ages and levels, most of whom are or who began as students enrolled in the Minneapolis Public Schools.  I get students up to grade level in mathematics and reading, mostly doing the latter by putting them on a track that envisions college attendance and speeds them toward accumulation of university preparatory knowledge in mathematics, natural science (biology, chemistry, physics), world literature, history, government, economics, psychology, and fine arts (visual and aural). 

 

I am now teaching this curriculum to my K-12 students and have a number of college, university, and other adult students, as well.

 

……………………………………………………………………………

 

Some of my most rewarding experiences of the last few months have been with Maya Cardenas (data privacy pseudonym), a student who matriculated at the University of Minnesota/Twin Cities (therefore the flagship university for the state of Minnesota).  She received both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in elementary education.  But courses in elementary education are the lightest weight on any college or university campus.  So, now, pay attention to this:

 

This highly intelligent student, who attended schools of MPS and Columbia Heights and then went on to the University of Minnesota, graduated with woefully deficient knowledge and skill sets from both high school and the state’s putatively best public university.

 

Needing to pass two mathematics exams to secure full licensure to teach elementary school (already teaching second grade, though, on a provisional license), she came to me (as others in her family had done previously) for assistance in acquiring the knowledge and skill that she did not obtain in high school or at the university.

 

So we dug in and went to work.  Maya had to be reminded even of fundamental processes in subtraction (borrowing or regrouping).  She had to master her multiplication tables.  She needed to learn for the first time how to do extended long division operations.  We had to work on all skills pertinent to fractions, decimals, percentages, ratios, and proportions.  Then we had to tackle a bevy of skills in algebra and geometry;  we worked, for example, on solving linear equations and inequalities, area and volume respectively for a multiplicity of two and three dimensional figures, permutations, combinations, and applications of the Pythagorean Theorem and the Quadratic Formula.

 

Maya completed her crash course in K-12 mathematics with me and went on to master a number of knowledge and skill sets preparatory for trigonometry and pre-calculus.  She took one of the exams for licensure in June and another just yesterday (Tuesday, 21 August).  She passed them both and told me that understanding mathematics for the first time has opened up a whole new world for her that had been a mystery.

 

Maya is now going to study one of my two nearly complete books and continue to meet with me once a week for two hours to get the remainder of an education that she never received in high school or in her bachelor’s and master’s programs.  That book is Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, covering in fourteen chapters the most core principles and fundamental knowledge sets of economics, psychology, political science, world religions, world history, American history, African American history, literature, English usage, fine arts, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics.

 

Maya has also taken a keen interest in my other nearly complete book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect.

 

She has expressed interest in attending a meeting of the MPS Board of Education with me.

 

Maya Cardenas knows and wants to assist me in explaining why I am the guy that officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools will never fool.

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