Through simplified versions of the classics she challenges youngsters to consider ethical and psychological problems, Reading leads, tangentially, to discussions of history, geography, and the profound moral teachings of the ages. She reads aloud she asks questions she challenges the children to think, to speak up, to write, and to compare plots and characters in the stories they read. Drills on phonics and syllabification are chanted over and over again. Her first goal is to teach the children to read. And she assures them again and again that they can learn. She seeks to instill confidence in students by saying something nice to each of them every day. Each one will make mistakes, but a person who doesn’t make mistakes won’t make anything. Every youngster is responsible for his or her own future. Marva Collins likes to begin a class, even of the very young, by reading and discussing Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance.” Life is a straggle, she says.
When the doors opened, she had only four 7- to-9-year-olds-her own daughter plus three public school misfits. And it was there, in 1975, that Marva started her own school. Yet it was there that Marva lived with her husband and three children. The black “ghetto” of Chicago had been ravaged by the riots after Martin Luther King’s death in 1968. But teaching had become her life it was in her blood. When Marva could no longer take the harassment, she resigned. But her very success with students created antagonism on the part of other teachers. Yet Marva persisted in pursuing her own proven method. ” As a result, apathy prevailed alike among teachers, administrators, and students. straightened the shades and desks, filled out forms in triplicate, punched all the computer cards. Teaching was the last priority, something you were supposed to do after you collected the milk money, put up the bulletin boards. “The longer I taught in the public school system,” she writes, “the more I came to think that schools were concerned with everything but teaching. However, as time passed, Marva saw the attitude of teachers change. During these years, she discovered her own love of teaching. In time her methods bore fruit the children responded, and vied with one another to show her how much they had learned. With kindness and praise she encouraged them to learn.
She worked hard to motivate her students.
Collins spent fourteen years, in inner-city public schools, learning how to teach. She also loves children and has a strong conviction that none is so dull that he or she cannot learn. She also has a profound love of reading, a sincere interest in history, an infatuation with life, and a desire to share her enthusiasm with children. Marva Collins may not be a “super-teacher” as some have claimed. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Ave., New York 10010