I turned my old Honda toward home at almost exactly 10:00 PM, twelve hours since I drove past the street people on 6th Street North to pick up Talika and Daniel. Home is Northfield, Minnesota, about 45 miles south on I-35 from Minneapolis. Throughout most of the year, I make the drive seven days a week. This is particularly true during the academic year, but I do this through much of the summer, as well. I am my own boss, and I boss myself in my many roles in the New Salem Educational Initiative, so I can take off for a few days every two months or so to go spend time with my 91 year-old mother in Dallas, or to spend a holiday with my beloved Barbara Reed, or to visit my son, recent McGill University graduate, Ryan Davison-Reed, in Montreal. But most days finds me rolling northward to Minneapolis, mornings on weekends, early afternoons on weekdays; and back in the evenings between 9:00 and 10:00 PM.
Such is the tone and tenor of my life. I have now been working with inner city young people and their families for 41 years, ever since spring 1971, when as a sophomore at Southern Methodist University I began coordinating tutors sent by that institution’s Volunteer Services into the Dallas Public Schools. My own particular interest was in the community around the West Dallas projects, where I began my career as a regular teacher in autumn 1973.
I have been working with students on the Northside of Minneapolis since 1991. I became a member of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in 1993 and in 1994 started the long-running New Salem Tuesday Night Tutoring Program that has run ever since. I started the New Salem Educational Initiative as a professional endeavor in 2004, and it is a day in that program to which you have been privy in these pages.
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Engraved on the heart of every parent is the desire that her or his offspring shall have an abundant and happy life. This desire knows no social class, no race, no ethnicity. But the desire is much more frequently frustrated in the hearts of parents who can only superintend impoverished and frequently broken or dysfunctional households. For at least a half-century K-12 education in the United States has tended toward mediocrity and we are as much “A Nation at Risk” as when that study first appeared in 1983. The surest route to the abundant and happy life that every parent desires has been cut short by the inadequacy of our public schools.
During the early 1980s, people living at the urban core became increasingly at risk for many reasons. Crack cocaine hit the streets and gang activity intensified in competition to peddle the pernicious smoker’s version of the stuff that for a much higher price wealthy white people had been stuffing up their noses. The life of the street became much more violent and dangerous. Either trying to get a piece of the profitable action, or seeking relief from lives of pain, those left behind in the post- Civil Rights Era of white and middle class black flight suffered a terrible death even in life.
On the Northside, middle class Jewish folk accelerated their flight to St. Louis Park after the summer 1967 riots along Plymouth Avenue. Many African American families that could do so took similar routes to near, middling, and occasionally more distant suburbs. Some middle class families remained, some do so to this day; but in time much of the urban core of Minneapolis filled up with impoverished African American and then Hmong and Hispanic families.
From the late 1970s forward, a sizable contingent of people migrated from very troubled areas in Chicago; Gary, Indiana; Detroit; and other urban centers. They knew nothing of the rich African American heritage centered on the Phyllis Wheatley Settlement House near old 6th Avenue (today’s Olson Highway) in North Minneapolis. Many of these folks, looking for a better life, settled in and did the best they could. Others caused trouble and added to the confusion that accelerated during the 1980s and has never abated.
Officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools have never articulated, much less implemented, a viable academic program for serving the needs of students from impoverished and frequently dysfunctional families. The excuse in tautological formulation has been that the district serves students of impoverished and frequently dysfunctional families. Since this is their student population, their client base, the officials of the Minneapolis Public Schools have failed miserably and they fail miserably still.
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When one assumes a given responsibility for young people, as have I in the New Salem Educational Initiative, one should go about one’s task with a combination of compassion and logic.
One should see the enormous potential in magnificent young brains such as those of Talika Wilson, Daniel Raymond-Johnson, Ginger Taylor-Warren, and Walter Allison and nurture that potential toward miracles such as that on 6th Street North.
One should see the abiding genius of an Ecuadorean immigrant youth such as Raul Sanchez Ruiz and establish the deep personal connection to student and family that will keep the Shakespearean fascination alive while solving the dilemmas of adolescence.
One should confront head-on the reality of a behaviorally challenged youth such as Thomas Benton while honoring the admirable concern of a mother such as Shaniah Harrison with a plan that will enable the youth she loves to span the bridge from SPAN into territory where genuine academic accomplishment thrives.
One should go wherever students such as Orlando, Carlos, and Damon are, because if they are not found, they will have lost their best chance for a better, more stable, and fully vibrant life.
One should respect the capabilities of students such as Mateo and Maria who start way down but can move far up, with a realistic, carefully sequenced plan that reaches them affectively so as to reach them effectively.
And one should recognize just how many diamonds in the rough there are, those like Gina Salazar Duran, yearning to shine, if only someone takes the time to burnish them to their brightest sheen.
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Children are our treasures. All children are precious. We should treat them as creatures of inestimable value, whether they are our personal genetic progeny or the offspring of fellow Villagers. Our own lives are valuable only if we live our earthly journey as an opportunity to enrich the human community with faith, hope, and love. We must convey the faith that all children are capable of receiving and comprehending the intellectual inheritance that is the human birthright. We must transmit the hope that young people imbued with deep knowledge and ethical sensibility will create the world that we dare to dream.
And we must radiate the love that seeks to unite those living in poverty and in plenty on a common mission toward fairness for all. If all families are not as we wish them to be, we have an obligation to treat all families and all children as our own. They will become better and so will we through an expression of love that knows no bounds and recognizes no boundaries. Wherever a child abides, there is an intellect to stimulate, a creativity to nurture, a morality to cultivate. By dedicating ourselves to the proper education of all children, we strive to realize the democratic society that we have imagined ourselves to be.
Oct 1, 2013
Sep 21, 2013
Quality Compensation for Teachers (Q Comp) Has Been Subverted by Lynn Nordgren and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers
Minnesota Statute 122A.413-415, providing for Quality Compensation for Teachers (Q Comp) has been subverted by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers from its original intent to provide merit pay for teachers of highest caliber.
In collaboration with officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools, Lynn Nordgren and her colleagues at MFT have formulated a corrupted version of Q Comp that fails to meet requirements of the statute enacted by the 2005 Minnesota legislature and signed by Governor Tim Pawlenty.
According to that statute, still on the books, the key components of Q Comp are 1) the provision of career ladders for teachers who remain in the classroom while modeling excellence and mentoring other teachers; 2) job-embedded professional development, giving all teachers opportunities to share and learn strategies that promote student learning in collaboration with colleagues; 3) performance pay, whereby teachers who rise to a designated standard of excellence are rewarded with merited emolument; 4) teacher evaluations that provide feedback to teachers for improved performance and serve as a major factor in determining the recipients of merit pay; and 5) an alternative salary schedule that “reforms the lockstep steps and lanes system” (which elevates pay for teachers based on years served and academic degrees attained) by making merit pay a major component.
Notice that, according to the still-prevailing law, the last three components are intimately connected by the concept of merit pay for teachers of true excellence. The steps and lanes system is the system of teacher remuneration that has prevailed in the United States since World War II. According to a document produced by the Minnesota Department of Education in 2005, the steps and lanes system represents a historical Phase III, superseding an early 20th century Phase II in which men earned more than women and high school teachers gained greater pay than elementary school teachers. The latter system had in turn replaced a pre-1900 Phase I in which individual teachers negotiated salary with the local school board.
In promoting Q Comp and superintending its foundation in law, the Pawlenty administration envisioned a Phase IV with “states and local school districts moving away from ‘single salary schedule’ to alternative salary schedules based on performance, knowledge and skills.”
The Application for Q Comp Aid currently posted by the Minnesota Department of Education still follows the prescriptions of Minnesota Statute 122A.413-415. Component 4 of that application is Performance Pay, with requirements for meeting schoolwide student achievement goals on standardized assessments, achievement by subgroups (grade level, team, or classroom), and a set performance standard through the teacher evaluation process (the latter appearing as component 3 of the application). Component 5, Alternative Salary Schedule, asks applicants to describe how the salary schedule has been reformed to determine a teacher’s vertical movement on indicators of student and teacher performance; and to provide a copy of the salary schedule grid and an example of how teachers now move through the reformed schedule.
An example of implementation of Q Comp as merit pay in the 2005 MDE document calls for the majority of teacher compensation to be aligned with a performance pay system that would in equal parts be based on teacher effectiveness according to an Instructional Standardized Rubric; and student achievement measures that include local standardized tests, teacher assessments, and schoolwide achievement as measured by the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs). Clearly, merit pay is at the core of the still prevailing statute.
But in forging their agreement, representatives of MFT and MPS have cynically provided for a token three dollars as a reward for those who demonstrate excellence in the classroom, apparently hoping that those who review their application at MDE will accept this subversion and decide in favor of their submission.
Representatives of MFT and MPS thus are hoping to use the $9 million that they stand to gain for the purposes of teacher planning and training time ($5.0 million), teacher evaluation ($2.8 million), and stipends for teachers who serve as pedagogical models and collegial mentors ($1.2 million).
These are purposes that should already be embedded in the Minneapolis Public Schools budget of nearly $720 million. Teacher training, teacher evaluation, and policies that highlight the efforts of faculty leaders should be ordinary expectations, not specially funded efforts of a K-12 system of public education.
Consider how much better that $9 million could be used. Calculating generously that 15 percent of the 2,978 teachers in the Minneapolis Public Schools could be evaluated as truly excellent, over $10,000 could then be designated as an initial salary boost for each of the 447 teachers who would qualify. And 129 new, higher quality teacher’s aides could be hired at an annual salary of $35,000 each.
Providing this kind of remunerative compensation for true teacher excellence would recognize a standard to which other teachers, seeking comparable pay hikes, should want to aspire. Offering a salary likely to attract high quality teacher aides would gain much needed help for those students still caught in the achievement gap.
These sorts of initiatives would represent the type of genuine breakthroughs envisioned by those who authored the still-prevailing standards in Minnesota Statute 122A.413-415. They would recognize true teacher excellence. They would promote policies likely to raise student achievement. And they would constitute policies that are in accordance with, rather than subversion of, the law.
According to that statute, still on the books, the key components of Q Comp are 1) the provision of career ladders for teachers who remain in the classroom while modeling excellence and mentoring other teachers; 2) job-embedded professional development, giving all teachers opportunities to share and learn strategies that promote student learning in collaboration with colleagues; 3) performance pay, whereby teachers who rise to a designated standard of excellence are rewarded with merited emolument; 4) teacher evaluations that provide feedback to teachers for improved performance and serve as a major factor in determining the recipients of merit pay; and 5) an alternative salary schedule that “reforms the lockstep steps and lanes system” (which elevates pay for teachers based on years served and academic degrees attained) by making merit pay a major component.
Notice that, according to the still-prevailing law, the last three components are intimately connected by the concept of merit pay for teachers of true excellence. The steps and lanes system is the system of teacher remuneration that has prevailed in the United States since World War II. According to a document produced by the Minnesota Department of Education in 2005, the steps and lanes system represents a historical Phase III, superseding an early 20th century Phase II in which men earned more than women and high school teachers gained greater pay than elementary school teachers. The latter system had in turn replaced a pre-1900 Phase I in which individual teachers negotiated salary with the local school board.
In promoting Q Comp and superintending its foundation in law, the Pawlenty administration envisioned a Phase IV with “states and local school districts moving away from ‘single salary schedule’ to alternative salary schedules based on performance, knowledge and skills.”
The Application for Q Comp Aid currently posted by the Minnesota Department of Education still follows the prescriptions of Minnesota Statute 122A.413-415. Component 4 of that application is Performance Pay, with requirements for meeting schoolwide student achievement goals on standardized assessments, achievement by subgroups (grade level, team, or classroom), and a set performance standard through the teacher evaluation process (the latter appearing as component 3 of the application). Component 5, Alternative Salary Schedule, asks applicants to describe how the salary schedule has been reformed to determine a teacher’s vertical movement on indicators of student and teacher performance; and to provide a copy of the salary schedule grid and an example of how teachers now move through the reformed schedule.
An example of implementation of Q Comp as merit pay in the 2005 MDE document calls for the majority of teacher compensation to be aligned with a performance pay system that would in equal parts be based on teacher effectiveness according to an Instructional Standardized Rubric; and student achievement measures that include local standardized tests, teacher assessments, and schoolwide achievement as measured by the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs). Clearly, merit pay is at the core of the still prevailing statute.
But in forging their agreement, representatives of MFT and MPS have cynically provided for a token three dollars as a reward for those who demonstrate excellence in the classroom, apparently hoping that those who review their application at MDE will accept this subversion and decide in favor of their submission.
Representatives of MFT and MPS thus are hoping to use the $9 million that they stand to gain for the purposes of teacher planning and training time ($5.0 million), teacher evaluation ($2.8 million), and stipends for teachers who serve as pedagogical models and collegial mentors ($1.2 million).
These are purposes that should already be embedded in the Minneapolis Public Schools budget of nearly $720 million. Teacher training, teacher evaluation, and policies that highlight the efforts of faculty leaders should be ordinary expectations, not specially funded efforts of a K-12 system of public education.
Consider how much better that $9 million could be used. Calculating generously that 15 percent of the 2,978 teachers in the Minneapolis Public Schools could be evaluated as truly excellent, over $10,000 could then be designated as an initial salary boost for each of the 447 teachers who would qualify. And 129 new, higher quality teacher’s aides could be hired at an annual salary of $35,000 each.
Providing this kind of remunerative compensation for true teacher excellence would recognize a standard to which other teachers, seeking comparable pay hikes, should want to aspire. Offering a salary likely to attract high quality teacher aides would gain much needed help for those students still caught in the achievement gap.
These sorts of initiatives would represent the type of genuine breakthroughs envisioned by those who authored the still-prevailing standards in Minnesota Statute 122A.413-415. They would recognize true teacher excellence. They would promote policies likely to raise student achievement. And they would constitute policies that are in accordance with, rather than subversion of, the law.
Aug 26, 2013
How the New Salem Educational Initiative Works: The History, Principles, and Day to Day Life of the Program
In the course of the last several weeks, as I have written a number of opinion pieces for the Star Tribune and become ever more active in efforts to overhaul k-12 education, more and more 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. Many blog articles back, I posted a program summary and funding request, and all of my articles give a strong idea as to the principles, love, and dedication that undergird the Initiative. Since several years or so have passed, though, since I last gave an overall summary, 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, Training, 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); college/ university setting (two years as a T. A. at the University of Iowa; instructor at the University of Minnesota for two years teaching courses in East Asian history in the late 1980s as I pursued my doctorate; a semester teaching a course in 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. Our son, Ryan Davison-Reed, was born in 1989 in Taipei (Taibei), Taiwan, during one of our stints (1988-1990) doing research and living in Taiwan.
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 65 students in the seven-day-a-week small-group academic sessions. Students now typically enter the small-group program of the New Salem Educational Initiative 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 curriculum (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.
From 6:00 AM until midnight on most days, I am working at tasks relevant to advancing the academic talent of my students or overhauling K-12 education. Through my writing, speaking, and activism, I am fully dedicated to inducing the Minneapolis Public Schools to become a model for how centralized public school systems can do the same.
Personal Background, Training, 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); college/ university setting (two years as a T. A. at the University of Iowa; instructor at the University of Minnesota for two years teaching courses in East Asian history in the late 1980s as I pursued my doctorate; a semester teaching a course in 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. Our son, Ryan Davison-Reed, was born in 1989 in Taipei (Taibei), Taiwan, during one of our stints (1988-1990) doing research and living in Taiwan.
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 65 students in the seven-day-a-week small-group academic sessions. Students now typically enter the small-group program of the New Salem Educational Initiative 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 curriculum (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.
From 6:00 AM until midnight on most days, I am working at tasks relevant to advancing the academic talent of my students or overhauling K-12 education. Through my writing, speaking, and activism, I am fully dedicated to inducing the Minneapolis Public Schools to become a model for how centralized public school systems can do the same.
Aug 20, 2013
Part One: Another illustrative Case to Consider in Observing the Principles of the New Salem Educational Initiative in Motion
Interaction with Ezekiel Jefferson, Melinda Parks, and Family on
19 August 2013
Note: Data privacy pseudonyms are used for all people and schools cited in this five-part series of articles.
Part One: Introductory Comments
Recently I recorded the highly notable events pertinent to my interaction with Damon Preston and family on 13 August 2013, offering both an account with actual names for those of you with strong interest and connection to the New Salem Educational Initiative; and another version using data privacy pseudonyms for posting on my blog.
At the beginning of that account, I emphasized that each interaction with a student enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative offers enough compelling material to fill a book, and mentioned that a number of such encounters have been recorded in my compact book, Just Another Day at the Office/ A Day in the Life of the New Salem Educational Initiative: The Remarkably Unremarkable Events of September 29, 2012.
On 19 August 2013, just a week after that interaction with Damon and his family, there occurred another exchange of word, knowledge, and emotion that struck me as bearing particularly on the essence of the program that is the New Salem Educational Initiative. In this case, the familial residence had been stable, and there were more caring adults rallying around the young person, Ezekiel Jefferson, than was and is the case for Damon Preston.
The specifics of familial circumstances differ in certain notable ways but in each case, that centered on my interaction with Damon Preston, and that centered on my experiences with Ezekiel Jefferson, those involved are battling poverty and elements of familial dysfunction, even as they demonstrate a magnificent will to endure, survive, and seek a better life for their precious off spring.
As you read this account you will note certain key features of the New Salem Educational Initiative at work in a particular case, on a given day, and against the background of many previous days. You will note the permanence of my relationships with the students and family, the multiple roles necessary in providing a panoply of functions, the willingness to transport or travel as often and far as the moment requires, the love and respect that pervades the communications that flow between all of those residing in the family and myself.
So it is that in another five-part series I give another account of interactions that seemed especially salient in illustrating the principles that undergird the Initiative: those that unfolded on 19 August 2013 with a visit to the home of Ezekiel Jefferson, and his family, including little sister Anna Parks, mom Rolanda Jefferson, and grandmother Rebecca Jefferson.
Part Two gives the background to the interaction on that day, provided by the experiences that I had been fortunate to have with Ezekiel and his family over a four-year period.
Note: Data privacy pseudonyms are used for all people and schools cited in this five-part series of articles.
Part One: Introductory Comments
Recently I recorded the highly notable events pertinent to my interaction with Damon Preston and family on 13 August 2013, offering both an account with actual names for those of you with strong interest and connection to the New Salem Educational Initiative; and another version using data privacy pseudonyms for posting on my blog.
At the beginning of that account, I emphasized that each interaction with a student enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative offers enough compelling material to fill a book, and mentioned that a number of such encounters have been recorded in my compact book, Just Another Day at the Office/ A Day in the Life of the New Salem Educational Initiative: The Remarkably Unremarkable Events of September 29, 2012.
On 19 August 2013, just a week after that interaction with Damon and his family, there occurred another exchange of word, knowledge, and emotion that struck me as bearing particularly on the essence of the program that is the New Salem Educational Initiative. In this case, the familial residence had been stable, and there were more caring adults rallying around the young person, Ezekiel Jefferson, than was and is the case for Damon Preston.
The specifics of familial circumstances differ in certain notable ways but in each case, that centered on my interaction with Damon Preston, and that centered on my experiences with Ezekiel Jefferson, those involved are battling poverty and elements of familial dysfunction, even as they demonstrate a magnificent will to endure, survive, and seek a better life for their precious off spring.
As you read this account you will note certain key features of the New Salem Educational Initiative at work in a particular case, on a given day, and against the background of many previous days. You will note the permanence of my relationships with the students and family, the multiple roles necessary in providing a panoply of functions, the willingness to transport or travel as often and far as the moment requires, the love and respect that pervades the communications that flow between all of those residing in the family and myself.
So it is that in another five-part series I give another account of interactions that seemed especially salient in illustrating the principles that undergird the Initiative: those that unfolded on 19 August 2013 with a visit to the home of Ezekiel Jefferson, and his family, including little sister Anna Parks, mom Rolanda Jefferson, and grandmother Rebecca Jefferson.
Part Two gives the background to the interaction on that day, provided by the experiences that I had been fortunate to have with Ezekiel and his family over a four-year period.
Part Two: Another Illustrative Case to Consider in Observng the Principles of the New Salem Educational Initiative in Motion
Interaction with Ezekiel Jefferson, Melinda Parks, and Family on
19 August 2013
Note: Data privacy pseudonyms are used for all people and schools cited in this five-part series of articles.
Part Two: Background of Ezekiel Jefferson’s Participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative
During Grades 2 through 4. Ezekiel Jefferson first enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative during his Grade 2 year in school (the 2009-2010 academic year). Ezekiel quickly became one of my most enthusiastic students, waiting with a big smile on his face at the door of his home when I would arrive to pick him up late on Wednesday afternoon each week for his two-hour academic session.
Ezekiel showed himself to be precocious in learning most of his multiplication tables at an early age, and reading with great fluency and comprehension at grade level and above.
Ezekiel would occasionally have behavioral incidents at school in the course of his Grade 2 and Grade 3 academic years, but these were generally resolved to the satisfaction of school officials, Ezekiel’s family, and the other student or students involved. Also, teachers would sometimes indicate dissatisfaction with Ezekiel’s degree of diligence in turning in homework assignments, and this sort of dissatisfaction would occasionally lead teachers to underestimate Ezekiel’s actual ability in math and reading.
Rolanda and Rebecca would record such incidents and expressions of teacher concern, we would work through them, and as we moved forward everyone at school and home could see that
Ezekiel’s progress in his sessions with me indeed showed academic precociousness, with display of ability that placed him at grade level for all tasks and above grade level for some.
Ezekiel’s behavioral struggles became more serious in Grade 4 (academic year 2011-2012), his third year of enrollment in the New Salem Educational initiative. In the course of that period, Ezekiel’s biological father tried to become a factor in his life, after many years of neglecting any role connected to fatherhood. But the effort was egocentric on this man’s part, tending to come in the form of alcohol-fueled telephone calls that left Ezekiel confused and edgy.
Luckily, Ezekiel’s Grade 4 teacher, Linda Hubbard, is masterful at her craft, both pedagogically and emotionally. She had a strong sense of how to guide Ezekiel toward productive learning experiences and out of his discordant moods. She and I communicated frequently. She was always aware that I would be working with Ezekiel on Wednesdays, she appreciated the progress in math and reading that Ezekiel achieved under my direction, and she gave him assignments knowing that his work with me would maximize his mathematical understanding and reading comprehension.
Ezekiel was not so fortunate in Grade 5, and his life challenges became more serious. His teacher, Marsha Keller, evidenced a personal sweetness but none of the pedagogical flare or elevated empathic qualities of Linda Hubbard. She and I got along well enough personally, but this was not a case of two master teachers coalescing around the varied needs of a child the way that Linda Hubbard and I had done. From a practical standpoint, Ezekiel’s weekly acquisition of new math and reading skills occurred only in his academic sessions with me.
The turbulent period that was Ezekiel’s Grade 5 academic year (2012-2013) is given essential rendering in Part Three.
Note: Data privacy pseudonyms are used for all people and schools cited in this five-part series of articles.
Part Two: Background of Ezekiel Jefferson’s Participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative
During Grades 2 through 4. Ezekiel Jefferson first enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative during his Grade 2 year in school (the 2009-2010 academic year). Ezekiel quickly became one of my most enthusiastic students, waiting with a big smile on his face at the door of his home when I would arrive to pick him up late on Wednesday afternoon each week for his two-hour academic session.
Ezekiel showed himself to be precocious in learning most of his multiplication tables at an early age, and reading with great fluency and comprehension at grade level and above.
Ezekiel would occasionally have behavioral incidents at school in the course of his Grade 2 and Grade 3 academic years, but these were generally resolved to the satisfaction of school officials, Ezekiel’s family, and the other student or students involved. Also, teachers would sometimes indicate dissatisfaction with Ezekiel’s degree of diligence in turning in homework assignments, and this sort of dissatisfaction would occasionally lead teachers to underestimate Ezekiel’s actual ability in math and reading.
Rolanda and Rebecca would record such incidents and expressions of teacher concern, we would work through them, and as we moved forward everyone at school and home could see that
Ezekiel’s progress in his sessions with me indeed showed academic precociousness, with display of ability that placed him at grade level for all tasks and above grade level for some.
Ezekiel’s behavioral struggles became more serious in Grade 4 (academic year 2011-2012), his third year of enrollment in the New Salem Educational initiative. In the course of that period, Ezekiel’s biological father tried to become a factor in his life, after many years of neglecting any role connected to fatherhood. But the effort was egocentric on this man’s part, tending to come in the form of alcohol-fueled telephone calls that left Ezekiel confused and edgy.
Luckily, Ezekiel’s Grade 4 teacher, Linda Hubbard, is masterful at her craft, both pedagogically and emotionally. She had a strong sense of how to guide Ezekiel toward productive learning experiences and out of his discordant moods. She and I communicated frequently. She was always aware that I would be working with Ezekiel on Wednesdays, she appreciated the progress in math and reading that Ezekiel achieved under my direction, and she gave him assignments knowing that his work with me would maximize his mathematical understanding and reading comprehension.
Ezekiel was not so fortunate in Grade 5, and his life challenges became more serious. His teacher, Marsha Keller, evidenced a personal sweetness but none of the pedagogical flare or elevated empathic qualities of Linda Hubbard. She and I got along well enough personally, but this was not a case of two master teachers coalescing around the varied needs of a child the way that Linda Hubbard and I had done. From a practical standpoint, Ezekiel’s weekly acquisition of new math and reading skills occurred only in his academic sessions with me.
The turbulent period that was Ezekiel’s Grade 5 academic year (2012-2013) is given essential rendering in Part Three.
Part Three: Another Illustrative Case to Consider in Observng the Principles of the New Salem Educational Initiative in Motion
Interaction with Ezekiel Jefferson, Melinda Parks, and Family on
19 August 2013
Note: Data privacy pseudonyms are used for all people and schools cited in this five-part series of articles.
Part Three: Ezekiel Jefferson’s Turbulent Grade 5 (Academic Year 2012-2013)
I attended numerous meetings at Kaufman K-5 School centered on Ezekiel’s behavioral incidents. A team formed at the school, composed of a counselor, administrative staff, Ms. Keller, a psychologist, a school liaison, and math and reading specialists. Ambitious plans were proposed for dealing with Ezekiel’s struggles, both academically and behaviorally in the school setting. But on the part of the team and in the implementation of the plans, there was insufficient follow-through.
Ezekiel appreciated my efforts in behalf. He would typically run up to me and give me a hug when I appeared at Kaufman for one of our meetings. But during our academic sessions, he would often be in a foul mood from his day’s experience at school. I strove mightily to keep Ezekiel on course academically, even as I became ever more important as a counselor to this troubled young person and his family.
Ezekiel’s lack of focus hurt his math skills acquisition ability during his Grade 5 year. He and I struggled even to maintain his fundamental skills pertinent to addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The increasing importance at the Grade 5 level of operations and applications in fractions, decimals, percentages, rudimentary algebra, and basic geometry provided us with severe challenges in skill acquisition as Ezekiel wrestled with his mood swings and I refereed these wild emotional shifts tenaciously.
Ezekiel’s struggles came in the form of his biological dad’s misguided verbal utterances; chronic bullies and situational opponents at school; and the rivals that he perceived in the persons of his younger sister, Anna (Grade 1 during that 2012-2013 academic year) , and newborn brother, Denton. The latter was something of an unplanned surprise for Rolanda and for Drake Parks (Deontay’s de facto stepdad, also the father of Anna). Ezekiel was avowedly jealous of the claims that the younger children made on Rolanda’s attention.
Even as Ezekiel’s biological dad’s calls diminished, and Drake made strenuous efforts to strengthen his own role in Ezekiel’s life, Ezekiel’s Grade 5 year required an ongoing, titanic effort on the part of Ezekiel and his family just to survive emotionally and financially (Rolanda also lost her job in the course of these months) from week to week. As the last six weeks of school approached, Ezekiel’s behavior resulted in serious disciplinary action.
Expulsion loomed, but a kind of indefinite suspension (a less serious classification) persisted. Ezekiel did not go to class, but rather was given assignments to work on at home. A homebound teacher from the school district was supposed to monitor Ezekiel’s progress, but such a role became the promise that was never realized. I became Ezekiel’s sole source for academic instruction.
I often added an extra two-hour academic session per week during this very rough period in Ezekiel’s life. I typically lingered long after the session to discuss critical issues with Ezekiel, Rolanda, Rebecca, and Drake. Somehow, Ezekiel stayed on track with his reading skills at the Grade 5 level. In math, Ezekiel for the most part succeeded in demonstrating skill maintenance in the four basic operations and other fundamental skills absolutely necessary for mastery at Grade 5. As summer winds to a close, Ezekiel and I will continue to work toward full manifestation of skills pertinent to fractions, decimals, percentages, rudimentary algebra, and basic geometry so that he has maximal chance at success during Grade 6.
By the end of Ezekiel’s Grade 5 (2012-2013 academic year), he, Rolanda, Rebecca, Drake, and I breathed a collective sigh of relief. Ezekiel had survived. We all had endured. Ezekiel would never have made progress through this trying period in his life without his participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative, so that the adult members of his family were enormously robust in their words of gratitude. I thanked them in turn for their ongoing support of my efforts and for their persistence in addressing Ezekiel’s ongoing issues.
Ezekiel and his family unfortunately had an unexpected visitation from Drakes’s mother, arrived from Chicago, at the time of our 8th Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet on 4 June 2013. This was an occasion at which Ezekiel and sister Anna were both slated to demonstrate their reading (and in Anna’s case, mathematical) prowess. I lamented this absence, because the positive attention that Ezekiel would have received for excellence in reading would have been a considerable emotional boost after a tough year.
But this summer, we have kept things on track. During a two-week span when I traveled to the Southwest to visit family, Ezekiel continued to finish the book of readings on which he and I were working as the academic year came to a close. I frequently called Ezekiel to see how he was doing while I was traveling, and I continued with such check-ins for several days after my return.
Then came the remarkable day of 19 August 2013, the events and interactions of which are recorded in Part Four.
Note: Data privacy pseudonyms are used for all people and schools cited in this five-part series of articles.
Part Three: Ezekiel Jefferson’s Turbulent Grade 5 (Academic Year 2012-2013)
I attended numerous meetings at Kaufman K-5 School centered on Ezekiel’s behavioral incidents. A team formed at the school, composed of a counselor, administrative staff, Ms. Keller, a psychologist, a school liaison, and math and reading specialists. Ambitious plans were proposed for dealing with Ezekiel’s struggles, both academically and behaviorally in the school setting. But on the part of the team and in the implementation of the plans, there was insufficient follow-through.
Ezekiel appreciated my efforts in behalf. He would typically run up to me and give me a hug when I appeared at Kaufman for one of our meetings. But during our academic sessions, he would often be in a foul mood from his day’s experience at school. I strove mightily to keep Ezekiel on course academically, even as I became ever more important as a counselor to this troubled young person and his family.
Ezekiel’s lack of focus hurt his math skills acquisition ability during his Grade 5 year. He and I struggled even to maintain his fundamental skills pertinent to addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The increasing importance at the Grade 5 level of operations and applications in fractions, decimals, percentages, rudimentary algebra, and basic geometry provided us with severe challenges in skill acquisition as Ezekiel wrestled with his mood swings and I refereed these wild emotional shifts tenaciously.
Ezekiel’s struggles came in the form of his biological dad’s misguided verbal utterances; chronic bullies and situational opponents at school; and the rivals that he perceived in the persons of his younger sister, Anna (Grade 1 during that 2012-2013 academic year) , and newborn brother, Denton. The latter was something of an unplanned surprise for Rolanda and for Drake Parks (Deontay’s de facto stepdad, also the father of Anna). Ezekiel was avowedly jealous of the claims that the younger children made on Rolanda’s attention.
Even as Ezekiel’s biological dad’s calls diminished, and Drake made strenuous efforts to strengthen his own role in Ezekiel’s life, Ezekiel’s Grade 5 year required an ongoing, titanic effort on the part of Ezekiel and his family just to survive emotionally and financially (Rolanda also lost her job in the course of these months) from week to week. As the last six weeks of school approached, Ezekiel’s behavior resulted in serious disciplinary action.
Expulsion loomed, but a kind of indefinite suspension (a less serious classification) persisted. Ezekiel did not go to class, but rather was given assignments to work on at home. A homebound teacher from the school district was supposed to monitor Ezekiel’s progress, but such a role became the promise that was never realized. I became Ezekiel’s sole source for academic instruction.
I often added an extra two-hour academic session per week during this very rough period in Ezekiel’s life. I typically lingered long after the session to discuss critical issues with Ezekiel, Rolanda, Rebecca, and Drake. Somehow, Ezekiel stayed on track with his reading skills at the Grade 5 level. In math, Ezekiel for the most part succeeded in demonstrating skill maintenance in the four basic operations and other fundamental skills absolutely necessary for mastery at Grade 5. As summer winds to a close, Ezekiel and I will continue to work toward full manifestation of skills pertinent to fractions, decimals, percentages, rudimentary algebra, and basic geometry so that he has maximal chance at success during Grade 6.
By the end of Ezekiel’s Grade 5 (2012-2013 academic year), he, Rolanda, Rebecca, Drake, and I breathed a collective sigh of relief. Ezekiel had survived. We all had endured. Ezekiel would never have made progress through this trying period in his life without his participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative, so that the adult members of his family were enormously robust in their words of gratitude. I thanked them in turn for their ongoing support of my efforts and for their persistence in addressing Ezekiel’s ongoing issues.
Ezekiel and his family unfortunately had an unexpected visitation from Drakes’s mother, arrived from Chicago, at the time of our 8th Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet on 4 June 2013. This was an occasion at which Ezekiel and sister Anna were both slated to demonstrate their reading (and in Anna’s case, mathematical) prowess. I lamented this absence, because the positive attention that Ezekiel would have received for excellence in reading would have been a considerable emotional boost after a tough year.
But this summer, we have kept things on track. During a two-week span when I traveled to the Southwest to visit family, Ezekiel continued to finish the book of readings on which he and I were working as the academic year came to a close. I frequently called Ezekiel to see how he was doing while I was traveling, and I continued with such check-ins for several days after my return.
Then came the remarkable day of 19 August 2013, the events and interactions of which are recorded in Part Four.
Part Four: Another Illustrative Case to Consider in Observng the Principles of the New Salem Educational Initiative in Motion
Interaction with Ezekiel Jefferson, Melinda Parks, and Family on
19 August 2013
Note: Data privacy pseudonyms are used for all people and schools cited in this five-part series of articles.
Part Four: The Specifics of the Interaction
When I arrived at Ezekiel’s home in far North Minneapolis, located on that atypically quiet and remote residential extension of Penn Avenue unfolding northward from 49th Avenue North (the more typical and well-known stretch runs from I-394 past Dowling), at 1:00 PM on Monday, 19 August 2013, my student of multiple years greeted me with a big smile. This was notable, because during the previous academic year, Ezekiel’s facial expression had more typically revealed the challenges and the associated stresses with which he was grappling.
His sister, Anna, came up to me beaming, with, “Me first, Gary!!!”
Not wanting to show favoritism, I looked at Ezekiel. “It’s okay. She can go first. But I finished the whole book!!!”
“You did!!?” I exclaimed, with genuine admiration. “All 45 readings?”
“Yep.”
“Wow, Ezekiel. That’s impressive! Okay, let me work with Anna first, then you can show me all the good reading that you’ve done.”
My academic sessions with Anna generally flow more smoothly that do those with Ezekiel. Like so many younger children participating in the New Salem Educational Initiative, Anna watched an elder sibling go off with me each week for academic sessions held at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, excitedly enrolling herself and doing the same during her Grade K (kindergarten) academic year of 2011-2012.
During Ezekiel’s trying year of 2012-2013, Anna’s second year of enrollment in the Initiative and her Grade 1 year in school, we began to meet in the Jefferson/ Parks home, so that all of us who constituted the most significant and caring adults in Ezekiel’s life could more readily compare notes at any time, even during the academic session itself. Anna herself at times missing piling into my car for the trip to the very well-appointed classroom at the church. But she is by personality generally open to adult decisions, so she was ultimately accommodating with regard to the setting for our sessions.
And, as on this particular day, she is invariably enthusiastic. She is also precocious in the extreme. In her studies with me during her Grade 1 year, Anna learned to perform additive and subtractive operations, carrying and borrowing respectively with up to three digits. This was at a time when at school she was, and would have continued to be, confined to simple single digit operations. When I met with her on this day of 19 August 2013, she and I reviewed those processes, and also followed up on a bare beginning that we had made in learning multiplication.
I often find that students even at the middle school and high school levels who have been enrolled in the Minneapolis Public Schools, and who are enrolling at a late stage in the New Salem Educational Initiative, do not have full grasp of the multiplication tables that they need to know to do algebraic equations and to work with various geometric formulas. The more I witness the success that even my younger students have in moving from addition to its cousin, multiplication, the greater is my frustration with the skill deficits manifested by latecomers to the Initiative.
With Anna, for example, I explained that if you have nothing of any number, then by definition you have zero. Then I explained that if you have one of number, you have an amount equal to that number. She immediately grasped those explanations and thus had 20 answers of the 100 responses that will be most important in learning the multiplication table up through the number nine.
Then I had her count by two’s to 20 and by fives to 50, running her then through an explanation then of how this skill relates to multiplying by the numbers two and five. Anna also comprehended this explanation immediately and- -- BOOM--- she was on her way with 40 answers of just 100 that she will need to display knowledge of all of the important operations in the multiplication table up through nine. Based On my experience with other students enrolled during their early years of school in the New Salem Educational Initiative, Anna will have full grasp of the multiplication table and could thus explain and give the answers to many middle school and high school students.
Next, Anna and I read a selection from Aesop’s Fables entitled, “The Young Crab and the Mother.” Sentence construction and vocabulary in the version of the story that we read are pertinent to the typical Grade 4 reading. I had Anna read the story aloud first, correcting her at times on words such as “sideways” and “tripped” and “obediently.” Then I read the story aloud, pausing at times for Amya to pronounce the most challenging words. She then read the fable back to me, which she did to perfection. And, having listened to me explain how the instruction, “Do not tell others how to act unless you can set a good example” is a moral, she gave me her own paraphrase, “Don’t tell someone else to do something unless you can show them how to do it,” correctly telling me that a moral is “somethin’ that we’re s’posed to learn and use in life.”
So Anna and I had quite a day. Through her enrollment in the New Salem Educational Initiative, she is a Grade 1 student performing at the Grade 3 and Grade 4 levels.
....................................................................................................
Now came Ezekiel’s turn. He proudly brought me his book and showed me that he had indeed read and completed questions on 45 selections. I had him pick two of these to read to me aloud. The first one was a story entitled, “Ups and Downs with Donut,” about a pet rabbit (name Donut) that disappears for a while at an amusement park but resurfaces to help family members conquer their fear of certain rides. I asked Ezekiel about several potentially new vocabulary items, but he needed only a slight clarification on the word, “hysterically,” for which he already had a general sense and had pronounced perfectly.
Ezekiel then selected, “Sea Dreams,” a poem about a child’s dream of creatures and other aspects of maritime life. From context, Ezekiel had figured out words such as “marine biologist,” “galore,” and “glee.” In terms of understanding the poem, Ezekiel additionally needed mainly my explanation of a reference to Jacques Cousteau. We talked about how the latter’s presence in the memory of the child rendering the poetic tale probably had not met Jacques Cousteau, so that his presence in the poem signaled that the child had in fact dreamed of the creatures and events rather than lived the experience exactly as conveyed.
I praised Ezekiel profusely for his level of reading comprehension, oral expression, and vocabulary. He beamed. I had intentionally begun with the skill of reading rather than math, so as to build his academic confidence as we turned to the skill that has for the last several months been more of a struggle for him. To my surprise, Ezekiel could correctly tell me the five most problematic products from the multiplication table ( 6 X 7, 7 X 7, 6 X 8, 7 X8, and 8 X 8), and he put those to use in practice exercises involving up to three digits top and bottom.
I let that be the extent of our work on math for the day. Ezekiel’s focus had been so astray for much of his Grade 5 year that recall of skills already acquired had at time been a difficult proposition. But today, his face was unstrained, his brain was clear, and he demonstrated that he is not at this time manifesting math anxiety. We will build on that foundation of math recovery as Ezekiel enters his Grade 6 year and takes on more applications of fractions, decimals, percentages, rudimentary algebra, and geometry.
Anna and Ezekiel each demonstrated what they had learned and reviewed for the day to grandmother Sandy. Both of them beamed smiles that at this point symbolize different aspects of the New Salem Educational Initiative. Anna’s smile revealed the confidence in the student who has been fully challenged at the earliest grade levels and knows that she can do anything that school requires--- and more. Ezekiel’s smile demonstrated the love and persistence that never go away, never give up, that follow a student through any travail that she or he endures.
I next caught up with mom Rolanda as she was talking to a friend outside. They were in fact discussing school options for Grade 6 students. Rolanda had been wanting to get Ezekiel into a charter school that would offer a smaller physical setting, new school staff, and a different student population. She asked me what I thought of Compton Middle School. I told her that several of my students had attended Compton and had spoken well of administrative policies and personnel at the school, and who in their reports upon my frequent questioning had described classroom instruction that I identified as often mediocre but occasionally rising as high as very good. I also told her that I thought if Ezekiel could handle a regular school setting, it would be a confidence booster.
Rolanda then spoke a line sounding a theme that I might have had to stress if she had not voiced the same sentiment: “And of course, Ezekiel will always learn what he really needs to by studying with you.” And then she continued, “Gary, you have been such a blessing to this entire family. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for all that you have done. Anna’s skills are just amazing. Ezekiel is going to make it. And you have been such a help in just helping us to make it through some of the toughest months of our lives.”
I just smiled thankfully, and said, “You’re welcome, Rolanda. You know that I love all of you. Keep me posted as to how that back-to-school conference and the new student orientation at Compton go, and I’ll see you in a few days.”
Note: Data privacy pseudonyms are used for all people and schools cited in this five-part series of articles.
Part Four: The Specifics of the Interaction
When I arrived at Ezekiel’s home in far North Minneapolis, located on that atypically quiet and remote residential extension of Penn Avenue unfolding northward from 49th Avenue North (the more typical and well-known stretch runs from I-394 past Dowling), at 1:00 PM on Monday, 19 August 2013, my student of multiple years greeted me with a big smile. This was notable, because during the previous academic year, Ezekiel’s facial expression had more typically revealed the challenges and the associated stresses with which he was grappling.
His sister, Anna, came up to me beaming, with, “Me first, Gary!!!”
Not wanting to show favoritism, I looked at Ezekiel. “It’s okay. She can go first. But I finished the whole book!!!”
“You did!!?” I exclaimed, with genuine admiration. “All 45 readings?”
“Yep.”
“Wow, Ezekiel. That’s impressive! Okay, let me work with Anna first, then you can show me all the good reading that you’ve done.”
My academic sessions with Anna generally flow more smoothly that do those with Ezekiel. Like so many younger children participating in the New Salem Educational Initiative, Anna watched an elder sibling go off with me each week for academic sessions held at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, excitedly enrolling herself and doing the same during her Grade K (kindergarten) academic year of 2011-2012.
During Ezekiel’s trying year of 2012-2013, Anna’s second year of enrollment in the Initiative and her Grade 1 year in school, we began to meet in the Jefferson/ Parks home, so that all of us who constituted the most significant and caring adults in Ezekiel’s life could more readily compare notes at any time, even during the academic session itself. Anna herself at times missing piling into my car for the trip to the very well-appointed classroom at the church. But she is by personality generally open to adult decisions, so she was ultimately accommodating with regard to the setting for our sessions.
And, as on this particular day, she is invariably enthusiastic. She is also precocious in the extreme. In her studies with me during her Grade 1 year, Anna learned to perform additive and subtractive operations, carrying and borrowing respectively with up to three digits. This was at a time when at school she was, and would have continued to be, confined to simple single digit operations. When I met with her on this day of 19 August 2013, she and I reviewed those processes, and also followed up on a bare beginning that we had made in learning multiplication.
I often find that students even at the middle school and high school levels who have been enrolled in the Minneapolis Public Schools, and who are enrolling at a late stage in the New Salem Educational Initiative, do not have full grasp of the multiplication tables that they need to know to do algebraic equations and to work with various geometric formulas. The more I witness the success that even my younger students have in moving from addition to its cousin, multiplication, the greater is my frustration with the skill deficits manifested by latecomers to the Initiative.
With Anna, for example, I explained that if you have nothing of any number, then by definition you have zero. Then I explained that if you have one of number, you have an amount equal to that number. She immediately grasped those explanations and thus had 20 answers of the 100 responses that will be most important in learning the multiplication table up through the number nine.
Then I had her count by two’s to 20 and by fives to 50, running her then through an explanation then of how this skill relates to multiplying by the numbers two and five. Anna also comprehended this explanation immediately and- -- BOOM--- she was on her way with 40 answers of just 100 that she will need to display knowledge of all of the important operations in the multiplication table up through nine. Based On my experience with other students enrolled during their early years of school in the New Salem Educational Initiative, Anna will have full grasp of the multiplication table and could thus explain and give the answers to many middle school and high school students.
Next, Anna and I read a selection from Aesop’s Fables entitled, “The Young Crab and the Mother.” Sentence construction and vocabulary in the version of the story that we read are pertinent to the typical Grade 4 reading. I had Anna read the story aloud first, correcting her at times on words such as “sideways” and “tripped” and “obediently.” Then I read the story aloud, pausing at times for Amya to pronounce the most challenging words. She then read the fable back to me, which she did to perfection. And, having listened to me explain how the instruction, “Do not tell others how to act unless you can set a good example” is a moral, she gave me her own paraphrase, “Don’t tell someone else to do something unless you can show them how to do it,” correctly telling me that a moral is “somethin’ that we’re s’posed to learn and use in life.”
So Anna and I had quite a day. Through her enrollment in the New Salem Educational Initiative, she is a Grade 1 student performing at the Grade 3 and Grade 4 levels.
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Now came Ezekiel’s turn. He proudly brought me his book and showed me that he had indeed read and completed questions on 45 selections. I had him pick two of these to read to me aloud. The first one was a story entitled, “Ups and Downs with Donut,” about a pet rabbit (name Donut) that disappears for a while at an amusement park but resurfaces to help family members conquer their fear of certain rides. I asked Ezekiel about several potentially new vocabulary items, but he needed only a slight clarification on the word, “hysterically,” for which he already had a general sense and had pronounced perfectly.
Ezekiel then selected, “Sea Dreams,” a poem about a child’s dream of creatures and other aspects of maritime life. From context, Ezekiel had figured out words such as “marine biologist,” “galore,” and “glee.” In terms of understanding the poem, Ezekiel additionally needed mainly my explanation of a reference to Jacques Cousteau. We talked about how the latter’s presence in the memory of the child rendering the poetic tale probably had not met Jacques Cousteau, so that his presence in the poem signaled that the child had in fact dreamed of the creatures and events rather than lived the experience exactly as conveyed.
I praised Ezekiel profusely for his level of reading comprehension, oral expression, and vocabulary. He beamed. I had intentionally begun with the skill of reading rather than math, so as to build his academic confidence as we turned to the skill that has for the last several months been more of a struggle for him. To my surprise, Ezekiel could correctly tell me the five most problematic products from the multiplication table ( 6 X 7, 7 X 7, 6 X 8, 7 X8, and 8 X 8), and he put those to use in practice exercises involving up to three digits top and bottom.
I let that be the extent of our work on math for the day. Ezekiel’s focus had been so astray for much of his Grade 5 year that recall of skills already acquired had at time been a difficult proposition. But today, his face was unstrained, his brain was clear, and he demonstrated that he is not at this time manifesting math anxiety. We will build on that foundation of math recovery as Ezekiel enters his Grade 6 year and takes on more applications of fractions, decimals, percentages, rudimentary algebra, and geometry.
Anna and Ezekiel each demonstrated what they had learned and reviewed for the day to grandmother Sandy. Both of them beamed smiles that at this point symbolize different aspects of the New Salem Educational Initiative. Anna’s smile revealed the confidence in the student who has been fully challenged at the earliest grade levels and knows that she can do anything that school requires--- and more. Ezekiel’s smile demonstrated the love and persistence that never go away, never give up, that follow a student through any travail that she or he endures.
I next caught up with mom Rolanda as she was talking to a friend outside. They were in fact discussing school options for Grade 6 students. Rolanda had been wanting to get Ezekiel into a charter school that would offer a smaller physical setting, new school staff, and a different student population. She asked me what I thought of Compton Middle School. I told her that several of my students had attended Compton and had spoken well of administrative policies and personnel at the school, and who in their reports upon my frequent questioning had described classroom instruction that I identified as often mediocre but occasionally rising as high as very good. I also told her that I thought if Ezekiel could handle a regular school setting, it would be a confidence booster.
Rolanda then spoke a line sounding a theme that I might have had to stress if she had not voiced the same sentiment: “And of course, Ezekiel will always learn what he really needs to by studying with you.” And then she continued, “Gary, you have been such a blessing to this entire family. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for all that you have done. Anna’s skills are just amazing. Ezekiel is going to make it. And you have been such a help in just helping us to make it through some of the toughest months of our lives.”
I just smiled thankfully, and said, “You’re welcome, Rolanda. You know that I love all of you. Keep me posted as to how that back-to-school conference and the new student orientation at Compton go, and I’ll see you in a few days.”
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