Update for Donors

Kyndell Harkness, Star Tribune

Strong indication of my reasons for going about things as I do comes from this amazing summer of 2012 with my students. Many of you have seen the Star Tribune article (“One-Man Dynamo Has a Shining Record,” June 5, 2012) highlighting the successes of students in the New Salem Educational Initiative. In the photograph, two students and I can be seen discussing the life of Shakespeare, in the midst as we were of reading King Lear and discussing an accompanying biography of the great playwright himself. 

Fresh from astonishing performances in which they delivered Shakespearean soliloquies at the June 2012 Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet, five students traveled with me in two different groups to the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona. Three of these students live on the most gang-ridden, drug-infested street of Minneapolis, but no matter: Having read King Lear with me line by line and taken roles along the way, these students hung on every word and understood the dialogue better than the great majority of well-educated, aesthetically inclined adults in the audience. 

On the way back to Minneapolis, we stopped at my house in Northfield, where they talked to Barbara (my wife), looked through our ample book collection, ate the Chinese food I cooked for them, and then went on tours of the St. Olaf College and Carleton College campuses. 

In the meantime, I ran numerous sessions with all of my students, keeping them academically fresh and moving them on ahead for high quality performance in 2012-2013. For students newer to the program, this meant continuing to work through the logically sequenced assignments that will move them to grade level in math and reading. For some of the younger students who have been with me for an extended time now, this meant doing things like already mastering multiplication (a conventionally Grade 3 skill) in anticipation of entering Grade 2 or Grade 3. 

For students who will enter Grades 4 and 5, this meant reading material at the levels of Grade 6 or 7 and moving well along a course toward mastery of pre-Algebra mathematics skills (the four basic operations, decimals, fractions, percentages, proportions, ratios, and various applications in the use of graphs). 
For students anticipating grades 6 through 8, this meant reading classic novels and plays, refining their pre-Algebra skills, and then acquiring skills in Algebra and Geometry that will have them fully prepared for excellent academic performance in high school. 

For those Grade 9 through 12 students who have now been in the New Salem Educational Initiative for many years, their work with me this summer has featured intensive college preparatory experiences. They are moving through math curriculum fully preparing them in Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Calculus. They are reading practice ACT and SAT selections and engaging in explicit advanced vocabulary acquisition. They, even the Grade 9 students, are already taking practice ACTs and SATs, so that when they encounter the real thing, they will have prospects of aiming for scores that could yield National Merit Scholar status. 

To a student, these young people greet me with smiles. They want to continue our sessions together in the summertime. The young ones leap into my arms and hurry into my car for transport to New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, where the sessions are held. It is really something to behold, the best way that I can imagine to spend my life. A few of you have yourselves been able to witness my interaction with my students and families. I hope that more of you can do so in the future, and you are welcome at any time that you can make the temporal space in your own busy lives. 

In becoming interested in the New Salem Educational Initiative, you have become a part of something unprecedented, you should be very proud, and I want you to fully understand the phenomenon that is the transformation of young lives.