The Marva Collins Story: “A Brilliant Child In Every Student”

Kids don't fail. Teachers fail, school systems fail. The people who teach children that they are failures, they are the problem.´- Marva Collins

By: Avriel Taylor and Christian Porcher

• Educated in Alabama when schools were segregated• Attended college in Atlanta at Clark Atlanta University.• She has taught in Alabama for two years and then moved

to Chicago where she taught for fourteen years.• She was dissatisfy with the quality of education that her

two youngest children were receiving that convinced her that children deserved better than what was passing for acceptable education.

• That led to her decision to open her own school on the second floor of her home.

• She out $5,000 balance in her school pension fund and began her educational program with an enrollment of her own two children and four other neighborhood children.

• The name of her school was Westside Preparatory School.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

Marva Collins created her low cost private school specifically for the purpose of teaching low income African American children whom the Chicago public school system had labeled as being "learning disabled.

MARVA COLLINS CONTRIBUTION TO EDUCATION

VIDEO PRESENTATION

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSbYS8alPGU

MARVA COLLINS METHODS OF TEACHING!

Marva Collins used the Socratic Method when teaching.

-The first step is to select material with abstract content to challenge students' logic, and that will therefore have different meaning to different students, in order to aid discussion. This is done specifically to teach children to reason.

-Next, the teacher should read the material, because unknown material cannot be taught. New words, the words to watch, should be listed, and taught, for pronunciation, use and spelling before the material is read. Without this step, the reading is meaningless.

-Next, one begins a series of pertinent questions as the reading progresses, starting with a reference to the title, and a question about what the material is about. Predictions should use logic, reasoning and evidence without fallacy. The reading must be out loud, so the teacher can ask questions at pertinent points. Students are taught to test their reasoning. Afterward, they write daily letters to the author or characters, and write a critical review. Why is the work important to them? The child must be taught to refer to what was previously learned to support their opinions.

THE SOCRATIC METHOD

She believed direct teaching does require new behavior by both the teacher and the students, therefore it does require some degree of behavior modification.

Once teachers try the Socratic Method, or direct method, of teaching, they will never again return to anything that cannot produce the “magic.”

Her methods of teaching has the advantage of establishing an intellectual environment that promotes: the gaining of textual information conversational information vocabulary building idea building idea sharing and expansion it demands the attention of all participants.

TEACHING METHODS

Direct teaching expands the mind beyond the two covers of a book and the four walls of the classroom.

Textbook word-for-word, lock-step methods never make good critical thinkers. There is a difference between word reading and word understanding.

And, there is a difference between knowing how to read, and loving to read.

MARVA COLLINS BELIEVED!

AWARDSMarva Collins received many awards throughout her life time a few of her awards include…

The Jefferson Award for Benefiting the Disadvantaged The Humanitarian Award for Excellence Legendary Women of the World Award Many honorary doctoral degrees from universities such

as Amherst, Dartmouth, Notre Dame, and Clark University The prestigious National Humanities Medal from

President Bush in 2004

She has turned the responsibilities of running her school over to her daughter, Cynthia B. Collins, who was one of the first students in the Westside Preparatory School. Today, Marva Collins trains teachers in her educational program and methodology. Her curriculum is based on classical literature, and other subject material that contain ideas, lofty thoughts, and abstract concepts. The purpose is to teach children the values that hold societies together and that present to students thoughts that may be interpreted differently.

CURRENT DAY

VIDEO PRESENTATION!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tlp7UvLvqXI

THANK YOU FOR

WATCHING!!