Push Students--and Never Give Up On Them : JAMES C. FLEMING
My fundamental goal is to prove that all students can be learners, that every human being has an innate predisposition to learn. We sometimes get this squeezed out of us over a long period of time when we have to deal with the convolutions of society’s unfinished business.
If, as we have done, you take a kid from the ghetto and tell him you’re going to make him a scholar, you have to be prepared to do a tremendous amount of hard work to bring about positive changes in his behavior.
When a kid has a history of failure, has no repository of successes in her immediate family on which to model her behavior and the school is a foreboding place, then how are you going to turn her around, influence her to acquire the skills to succeed at the college level?
We consider the student as a complex, whole human being: mind, body, spirit. We have to limit the distractions so that the individual can maximize his academic and personal achievement.
How do you do that? Well, you’ve got to have a sound educational program that addresses all of the students’ needs on a consistent basis. We must reward the students when they do well and counsel them when they do not.
Total quality control is what we seek. To this end, our teachers model the expected behavior in all areas. For instance, our teachers greet the students at the classroom entrance and monitor how they take their seats. You can’t just blast into the classroom. You’re taught that there’s a certain way to walk into a place called “classroom,” that it’s a place that you treat with reverence.
You come in open, hungry, eager, motivated, enthusiastic. And that’s not something that’s picked up fast. You rehearse it. A teacher models it. We teach the out-giving of enthusiasm to an instructor in order for that instructor to maximize his teaching strategy. . . . We teach body language. The students listen actively, not passively.
The L.A. Unified School District could open its gates and attract others. There are at least eight or nine major universities and colleges in this area. If USC took, say 60 students a year or booted up to 90 a year or 100 a year, L.A. State took 100 a year, Loyola takes 100, Cal State Northridge takes in 100, UCLA takes in 100, then a critical mass can be established.
We don’t recruit or enroll the top academic achievers. We take kids who can do “C” work across the board. Our theory is that anybody can take a real turned-on, motivated, real bright kid, but it takes dedicated teachers, rigorous research, and a well-designed educational and behavioral model to convert a “C” student into a scholar, one who sees learning as a lifetime process.
And we begin to say, “How do you feel?” Now, telling me how you feel can just be a reaction to something that occurred. But when you tell me why you feel, then you begin to think critically.
Push them. Push them and never give up on them.
The only thing I ask any of these kids is: stay motivated, keep enthusiastic and work harder. Because these are the things that will pay off.
It’s been fashionable to attack the public school, but that is attacking the wrong thing. We still have brilliant teaching and enough curricula developed to address many of the learning problems of the universe. The problem is that we have not kept pace with the needs, aspirations and concerns of the modern student.
You’ve got to get control of the student’s attention, focus, and present a package of learning experiences to keep them motivated and enthusiastic about their own growth and development.
We have to create in the students an innate desire to learn, an innate motivation to learn, a hunger. We function under an organic model at the academy, constantly changing in relation to the learning styles, needs, and ambitions of the students.
We teach students to have a successful vision of themselves, but we also teach them not to think of success on a personal basis only.
Look at Buddha; look at Confucius; look at Jesus Christ. Did they just talk about themselves? No. They took the whole configuration of humanity with them. You can’t bring everybody with you, but you sure can try.
