+OK 8744 octets Received: from smtp01.nwnexus.com (smtp01.nwnexus.com [198.137.231.16]) by mail3.halcyon.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id WAA27318 for ; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 22:58:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from onn.pair.com (onn.pair.com [209.68.1.67]) by smtp01.nwnexus.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id WAA22783 for ; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 22:54:19 -0700 Received: (from slist@localhost) by onn.pair.com (8.9.1/8.6.12) id BAA19183; Thu, 15 Apr 1999 01:53:10 -0400 (EDT) Resent-Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 01:53:10 -0400 (EDT) X-Envelope-To: arthurhu@halcyon.com Old-X-Envelope-To: Message-ID: <002601be8703$cda5cf40$91d194ce@quantex> From: "Albert Himoe" To: Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 00:47:19 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2014.211 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2014.211 Subject: [Upstream] Marva Collins today Resent-Message-ID: <"Lr2HMD.A.zoE.V4XF3"@onn.pair.com> Resent-From: upstream-list@cycad.com Reply-To: upstream-list@cycad.com X-Mailing-List: archive/latest/1786 X-Loop: upstream-list@cycad.com Precedence: list Resent-Sender: upstream-list-request@cycad.com Status: There is an informative story on the Marva Collins school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin by Mary Zahn, a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who spent a semester as a teaching assistant at the school. http://www.jsonline.com/news/edu/marva There is also a long interview of Mrs. Collins by Zahn. The Marva Collins Preparatory School in question is a "back-to-basics" school with apparently an exclusively black inner city student body, one of the three original "charter schools" sponsored by the city of Milwaukee. Marva Collins herself has retired to Hilton Head, South Carolina [nice], but franchises schools in several cities including Chicago [run by her daughter] and Cincinnati, which use her methods. The interview is quite revealing of the personality of Mrs. Collins. Mary Zahn repeatedly tries to pin her down to specifics, but Collins likes to stick to broad philosophy and sometimes gets quite testy. A few excerpts: Marva Collins Interview Transcript Audio: Part 1 | Part 2 Collins: Children must know -- they live in a world that doesn't make sense. They must know consequences - choices and consequences. And everything I do this -- every time you touch that stove, it's hot. It's not cold one day, lukewarm the next day. Every time you touch it, my bright one, it's going to burn you. Zahn: Okay. So, how does that translate from classroom to classroom? Zahn: After teaching in your school for almost a semester now -- I'm not quite done, I'm on my last month and a half -- it strikes me that there is nothing that is being done in your school that could not be used in other schools. Collins: Well that's the thing that I've always said. Of course, values can always be replicated, excellence can be replicated, but it has to begin that everything is about me, not about the other person. I mean, being proud of my work, being proud of my product. It's not just about school. It's the way we run a Fortune 500 company. It's the way we do -- you can either say, well the machine didn't work right, that's why the products are bad. I didn't feel well today and that's why this -- whatever it is -- doesn't work. Zahn: Let me ask you. This has become a major issue and that is the exceptional education issue and how they're treated within the classrooms. There is no testing. I understand that you don't believe in testing children for learning disabilities or cognitive disabilities. Is that correct? Collins: Well, I didn't say --- Zahn: Well, this is why I'm asking the question, because --- Collins: Exactly. I didn't say that I don't believe -- I think you need to see where children are. But then you don't need to use that as an excuse. It 's like saying to a blind person, I hope you like dogs because you're going to have to be with them the rest of your life. I think what the good teacher does, the reason I didn't say not test for learning disabilities, but I think what you do with the learning disabled child needs a better teacher than any of the other children. I had a learning disabled class in the public schools and that class -- I kept them for 3 years -- and that class, every year, scored higher than any of the other children in the school, because I didn't take that they were learning disabled. Zahn: But there's a balance here, isn't there? For example, we have a student who is working up to his -- what appears to be, at this point, his potential. He doesn't remember concepts from one class to another. And he is - we've have been told to grade him "N", no matter what he does; whereas in a public system you would have an individualized education plan and they would be able to get A's and B's. Collins: Where has that individualized education plan - I've been, you know, working with those three public schools in Chicago. The way I brought them off probation was that's just the problem, because they were in special education, they write all outside the margin, no one speaks in complete sentences. It's called repetition drill, repetition drill. First of all, I'm not able to get inside your mind. I don't know what your potential are. And we're so quick to say I've done my best. It takes many ways to get to something. You have to come home and figure out -- the young lady that graduated from the University of Virginia, was called a learning disability in the other schools. Zahn: Okay. But you're not saying that there are not such things as cognitive disabilities or learning disabilities? Collins: I didn't say that. Zahn: Right. Collins: You see, my belief systems is I taught an autistic child to talk. Okay. And is doing very well is now --- Zahn: Within the regular classroom, while you're doing all the other children ? Collins: Within the regular classroom. Zahn: So, you were teaching all the other children at the same time you were teaching this autistic child? Zahn: Is that part of your - see, what I'm unclear of and I think what some of them might have been unclear of - is, is that part of your philosophy that there are no breaks or prep times? Collins: No one said that they should not have breaks or prep times. Our teachers at our school -- we have a Spanish teacher -- when the Spanish teacher comes in, that's their break time. I'm going to go back again. If you are a well-achieved surgeon -- teachers are the only people that have been taught that we have months off in the summer. We're the only profession almost works 6 hours a day. Now this is my belief. Please, I'm not trying to get anyone else to believe this way. To get a job done, to do this house and to be able to get that yard done, no one made me work all day, no one made me work until three or 4:00 in the morning. I wanted to do that. And I only did that for a short time, because I pulled up all the dead juniper, I got all the leaves, I clipped the trees, I clipped the branches --- Zahn: Right. Could you have done that for two years? Collins: No, I don't say two years. But again it is what we are willing to do. But my family are hard workers, period. No one can really outwork us. Zahn: But get the --- Collins: Let me just finish. I remember the stories my grandfather told me - of my mom told me how her dad peddled meat from door to door during the day and farmed with the lantern at night, to make sure that his family never had to work outside the home, and to succeed. Again, it's what one is willing to do. Teaching is the only profession that I know of -- I guarantee you a Bill Gates does not work 6 hours a day. I guarantee you, and I'm glad I've been able to serve on the boards. I've learned so much from --- Zahn: But Bill Gates is also compensated extremely well. --- This is a message from the Upstream mailing list. Visit the Upstream Website at http://cycad.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/ Visit the Upstream Mailing List archives at http://cycad.com/upstream-list-archive To subscribe to this list send email to the address upstream-list-request@cycad.com with just the subject subscribe To unsubscribe from this list send email to the address upstream-list-request@cycad.com with just the subject unsubscribe . +OK 3700 octets Received: from smtp03.nwnexus.com (smtp03.nwnexus.com [206.63.63.41]) by mail3.halcyon.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA28521 for ; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 10:05:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from onn.pair.com (onn.pair.com [209.68.1.67]) by smtp03.nwnexus.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA20262 for ; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 10:05:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from slist@localhost) by onn.pair.com (8.9.1/8.6.12) id MAA09329; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 12:59:50 -0400 (EDT) Resent-Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 12:59:50 -0400 (EDT) X-Envelope-To: arthurhu@halcyon.com Old-X-Envelope-To: Message-ID: <3714CCC8.2EB6BDB8@cycad.com> Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 13:13:44 -0400 From: Gavan Tredoux X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (WinNT; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: upstream-list@cycad.com Subject: Re: [Upstream] John Taylor Gatto Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------ED9BA56258B27F834D9EB8FE" Resent-Message-ID: <"uaVvrC.A.HOC.QjMF3"@onn.pair.com> Resent-From: upstream-list@cycad.com Reply-To: upstream-list@cycad.com X-Mailing-List: archive/latest/1776 X-Loop: upstream-list@cycad.com Precedence: list Resent-Sender: upstream-list-request@cycad.com Status: This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------ED9BA56258B27F834D9EB8FE Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit --------------ED9BA56258B27F834D9EB8FE Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Received: (from slist@localhost) by onn.pair.com (8.9.1/8.6.12) id MAA08588 for gavan@cycad.com; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 12:50:12 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 12:50:12 -0400 (EDT) X-From_: igoeja@hotmail.com Wed Apr 14 12:50:10 1999 Received: from hotmail.com (wya-oe20.hotmail.com [207.82.253.85]) by onn.pair.com (8.9.1/8.6.12) with SMTP id MAA08574 for ; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 12:50:10 -0400 (EDT) X-Envelope-To: Received: (qmail 10751 invoked by uid 0); 14 Apr 1999 16:50:23 -0000 Message-ID: <19990414165023.10750.qmail@hotmail.com> Received: from 206.231.84.10 by wy1lg.hotmail.com with HTTP; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 09:50:22 PDT X-Originating-IP: [206.231.84.10] From: "James Igoe" To: upstream-list@cycad.com Subject: Re: [Upstream] John Taylor Gatto Old-Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 09:50:22 PDT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain X-Diagnostic: Not on the accept list X-Envelope-To: upstream-list X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 Hi! Marva Collins' claims were never corroborated. The accomplishments of her students weren't compared to a control group or tested. She was featured on 60 minutes, the program was reaired several years ago, although I wasn't impressed. Her class could have been an exception and their accomplishments were not particularly exceptional. Regards, _______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com --------------ED9BA56258B27F834D9EB8FE-- --- This is a message from the Upstream mailing list. Visit the Upstream Website at http://cycad.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/ Visit the Upstream Mailing List archives at http://cycad.com/upstream-list-archive To subscribe to this list send email to the address upstream-list-request@cycad.com with just the subject subscribe To unsubscribe from this list send email to the address upstream-list-request@cycad.com with just the subject unsubscribe .