Thinking Citizen Blog — Marva Collins (1936–2015) — Teaching Legend — High Standards and High Expectations
Thinking Citizen Blog — Friday is Education and Education Policy Day
Today’s Topic — Marva Collins (1936–2015) — Teaching Legend — High Standards and High Expectations
Marva Collins, like Rafe Esquith and Jaime Escalante, was one of the miracle-working inner-city teachers whose story should be better known. In 1975, frustrated with the low standards and expectations of the Chicago public school where she taught for fourteen years, she set up a private school that had astounding success with students previously deemed “learning disabled.” She used traditional methods — memorization and classic texts judged too challenging for students in public schools. But the real key to her success was her ability to get students to believe in themselves. Do not miss the first three videos below. The first link is to Part One of a 1995 “60 Minute” program addressing the accusation by sociologist Charles Murray that Marva Collins was a fraud. (Seven minutes long.) The second is link is to a 28-minute video made in 1981 featuring Marva Collins doing her stuff in the classroom. (Notice a lot of touching of her students. Was that part of the magic? Would that be allowed today?) The third link is to the 1981 TV movie “The Story of Marva Collins” starring Cicely Tyson as Collins and Morgan Freeman as her husband, Clarence. The film is 1:41 minutes long. Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
THREE QUOTES — students should write every day, make oral presentations regularly
1. “Every student should write a composition every day starting in kindergarten.”
2. “And they should make regular oral presentations, speaking standard English in grammatically correct sentences.”
3. “As long as the average student hates school, we have failed our children.”
NB: “Retest or retrain every teacher every two years. This step would keep teachers learning and prevent them from falling into complacency.”
THREE MORE QUOTES — build up each child’s self-esteem every day
1. “Kids don’t fail. Teachers fail, school systems fail. The people who teach children that they are failures — they are the problem.”
2. “I believe in my children. If a teacher believes her students can not learn, then her students will not learn.”
3. “Find something positive to say to every student every day, such as “What nice gym shoes” or “I missed you yesterday.”
NB “The first thing we are going to do here, children, is an awful lot of believing in ourselves.”
THREE MORE QUOTES — no tolerance for negativism
1. “If you can’t make a mistake, you can’t make anything.”
2. “Character is what you know you are, not what others think you have.”
3. “Trust yourself. Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Speak for yourself. Be yourself. Imitation is suicide.”
NB: When I saw clips of Marva lifting up the head of a downcast student, I couldn’t help thinking of Maria von Trapp (Julie Andrews) in “The Sound of Music” when she stopped Gretl from crying after dropping a tomato, or irresistibly cheerful Heidi (Shirley Temple) teaching disabled Klara how to walk — against the protests of Frau Rottenmeier who insists it is impossible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK7GUSISFjY
Success! The Marva Collins Approach (1981)
60 Minutes: Marva Collins 1995 Part 1
Marva Collins | American educator
Marva Collins, Educator Who Aimed High for Poor, Black Students, Dies at 78 (Published 2015)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marva_Collins_Story
HER BOOK
“Why is this book by Marva Collins so important? It is because this book represents her life, her convictions, and her work. Indeed, America would be infinitely better served if Marva Collins’ philosophy of education somehow could become franchised and implemented on a national scale.” — Alex Haley
Amen.
https://www.amazon.com/Marva-Collins-Way/dp/0874775728
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned in the last week related to education or education policy. Or the coolest thought however half-baked you had. Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to education or education policy that the rest of us may have missed. Or just some random education-related fact that blew you away.
This is your chance to make someone’s day. Or to cement in your own mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something that is dear to your heart.
