My students, their families, numerous Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) officials (Interim Superintendent Rochelle Cox, Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing, Executive Director of Strategic Initiatives Sarah Hunter, MPS Board of Education Director Collin Beachy, and MPS Board of Education Student Representatives Abdihafid Mohamed and Halimah Abdullah), wife Barbara Reed, and myself capped the academic year and greeted looming summer with gusto at our Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet.
I cooked a dinner consisting of barbecue chicken, mac’n cheese, spaghetti (vegetarian and meat options), lasagna (also with the two options), and with tossed salad and cookies.
The students and I performed my compressed (for 20-minute presentation, maintaining all original Elizabethan language) version of King Lear students and I delivered speeches originally given by Martin Luther King and Malcolm X (inasmuch as so many went down to the wire meeting academic challenges at academic year’s close, I did not burden my female students this year with renditions of powerful oratory by Sojourner Truth and Ida B. Wells-Burnett), and I brought students up with me to bestow certificates. bearing appellations such as
Mega-Insightful
Rapid Academic Ascent
Rock Steady Academician
Celestial Potential
Perpetual Fascination
Honor Roll Magnate
High-Achieving Dedication
Steep Academic Vistas
Impressively Pensive
Abundant Latent Talent
Creative Talent
Intelligence and Humor
Academic Achievement and High Character
Optically Active Academician
Creative Spirit and Academic Dedication
Student of the Year
Certificates also were given to the many supportive parents and included a “Parent of the Year” award to each of a wife and husband duo who shepherd multiple family youth in addition to their own children).
Attendance by MPS staff members signaled my very different relationship with staff than has been the case in past years. I have for many years established excellent relationships with staff members such as Senior Finance Officer Ibrahima Diop, Senior Information Technology Officer Fadi Fadhil, Senior Human Resources Officer Maggie Sullivan, and Senior Accountability, Research, and Equity Officer Eric Moore, in addition to Rochelle in her previous roles as Executive Director for Special Education and then Associate Superintendent--- and some have attended past banquets.
But to have in attendance those in roles of Superintendent and Senior Academic Officer, who have been among my key targets of revolutionary critique in the past, does indeed signal a very different stage in the Revolution. Aimee, whom I once criticized relentlessly, has thrived under Rochelle’s leadership and the productive discussions that she and I have had, and now is working energetically to deliver knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum and the training of teachers capable of delivering that curriculum: In her 180-degree turn toward academic quality, she and I have become good friends.
A great deal of love and amiable human spirit, as if we all comprised a large extended family, pervaded the big basement room where the banquet ensues.
I felt a hugely blessed man.
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