In 1992 I had the privilege of spending three days at Westside Preparatory School in Chicago, an academy for elementary-aged students on the Westside of Chicago. I’ll never forget what I observed there. Neither will I forget the taxi ride across town from my lakeside hotel. The buildings I saw through the taxi window looked like the pictures of bombed Sarajevo I had seen on the preceding night’s news. I couldn’t believe that I was in America. What good, I wondered, could happen in such a place?
Marva Collins, the esteemed founder and head teacher, scheduled seminars for educators as a way to raise money for the school. By the time I attended the seminar I had read her biography and seen Cicely Tyson’s portrayal of this great woman.
The school, located in an old bank building on Chicago’s Westside, would not have passed health inspections in some states. Collins’ methods would be rejected under today’s state standards. In spite of this, she was doing something magnificent: inspiring young children to read and think.
How did this woman from a segregated school in tiny Atmore, Alabama, become a person worthy of national acclaim? Collins remembers the good things about her life in the segregated South. Her parents encouraged her to learn and to believe in herself. Perhaps she was always a dreamer, ignoring her school’s lack of books and indoor plumbing, the rejection at the door of the public library where no people of color were allowed. She attended Clark College in Atlanta, taught for two years, and around 1960, participated in The Great Migration to Chicago. Collins married and taught fourteen more years in public school before her distress with the attitudes of coworkers and administration toward students left her in despair.
She started Westside Preparatory School in 1976. Collins essentially adapted the Socratic Method for elementary school students. The school offered strict academic rigor and no frills. Students took an hour break for lunch and played in the parking lot out back. There was no physical education, music or art. Instead they read and performed Shakespeare, studied Greek tragedies, history-makers, and enough math and science to get by.
Marva Collins is a hero for rescuing children from the streets of Chicago and inspiring them to learn and have great ambitions. These videos from a 60 Minutes program show what former students have achieved.
These seven-minute videos will blow you away!
Part 1:60 Minutes
Part 2: http://youtu.be/DxsCDyGSU1A
