Marva Collins - 15 Minutes of Wisdom

CHARTER SCHOOL

Besides my book, my most recent adventure and passion is the development of our new Charter School–The Elite Scholars Academy.  The school has been a dream for me for two years, and it is now becoming a reality.  I am most excited about the amazing opportunities I will have to influence many generations of students at our school.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

As the principal of this new Charter school, I have been driven to develop relationships with the best education minds on the planet.  I am so very committed to surrounding myself with excellence, and then to provide the teachers I hire with the same opportunities.  It is my belief that our school will succeed because of quality teachers, not an expensive program.  So all of our available resources will go into the teachers at our school through professional development and such.

I have been strategically planning on ways to ensure that our staff has direct experience with trailblazers in the field of education.  This year, I have narrowed it down to three primary people:  Harry Wong, Ron Clark and Marva Collins.  I have had the unique opportunity to correspond with each of them throughout 2008/2009, and I have become a better educator as a result.  They each bring to the table their own unique approach and educational philosophy, and this is what makes getting to know them so wonderful.  Ron Clark has built an amazing school culture–you gotta go check this school out; Harry Wong has become the guru of classroom management and teacher training around the world; Marva Collins, well she brings an entirely different flavor to the table.  Her use of the Socratic Method in the urban community of Chicago is probably one of the most astonishing stories in education.  She literally started a school in her home with her life savings of $5,000, and did it for 30 years–Wow!

MARVA COLLINS

My most recent dialogue took place just over two hours ago with Marva Collins.  I went through her company to contact her, and then a couple of days later I checked my voice mail to find that she had called me–personally.  At first, I must admit, I thought it was a joke, but it wasn’t.  She actually called me back–of course I was very excited. 

I returned her call and spent approxmately 15 minutes on the phone with her, and I listened.  Really, I didn’t have much to say, except that I wanted her to come to speak and to help train our teachers.  However, my brief discussion with her humbled me, signficantly, and I became a student by teleconference.  I barely got out my request to have her come to our school, because I was so engaged with the wisdom that she freely gave.  She was very easy to talk to, and very down to earth.  It was a true honor to have someone of her reputation take the time to speak with me. 

If you don’t know who Marva Collins is, I suggest you go to her website at www.marvacollins.com, and then rent the movie The Marva Collins Story with Cecily Tyson and Morgan Freeman.  The movie will touch you, and her story will definitely motivate and inpsire you. 

WISDOM FOR EDUCATORS

While speaking with her, she told me a few things that were priceless, yet very very simple:

1. Children only do what they know.  They will never do anything different, until they learn something different.
2. We should be preparing our students to attend Ivey League Schools.  Whether they go or not is another issue, but we should be committed to ensuring they are prepared to succeed in these environments.
3. Excellence is never easy.  This is why so many of our children give up.  We must help them cross the bridge to excellence.
4. Always ask God for direction.  You can’t do it on your own.
5. What will your teachers do to make their classroom our your school universally excellent?  We must stop practicing education as if it is only local.  If our schools are excellent in our communities, then they should be excellent anywhere else in the world.  Practice to build schools of excellence, no matter where they are.
6. Find ways to implement the Socratic method to help our children think.  Reading and engaging the classics will open the minds of our children, enabling them to develop goals for their lives.   When a child has embraced meaningful goals, they have no time to indulge in mediocrity.
7. Settle for nothing less than excellence.

These were not the exact words of Marva Collins, but pretty close.  I paraphrased and fleshed out her wisdom the best I could. 

I plan on engaging her deeper, and I really look forward to her visit to our school.  She is an amazing woman, and a dynamic educator….no–an excellent educator. 

Please do a little research on Marva Collins today, and let me know what you think.  In the meantime, seek to be excellent in everything you do. 

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Graysen