Marva Collins' Way - Softcover

Collins, Marva

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0874775728 ISBN 13: 9780874775723

Publisher: Tarcher, 1990

Synopsis

"America would be infinitely better served if Marva Collins' philosophy of education somehow could become franchised and implemented on a national scale."--Alex Haley, author of ROOTS

Marva Collins offers a beacon of hope in the midst of America's educational crises. MARVA COLLINS' WAY recounts Marva Collins' successful teaching strategies and offers inspirational advice on how to motivate children to fulfill their potential. This updated edition contains a new epilogue for parents and teachers.

"The first things we are going to do here, children, is an awful lot of believing in ourselves." With these words, Marva Collins greets her students and opens them up to a potential many never thought possible. It is her constant "You can do it" that convinces her students there is nothing they cannot achieve. This independent-minded teacher's drive, courage, and dedication has helped her students reach high levels of accomplishment,. Her story can be any parent's or teacher's model.

MARVA COLLINS' WAY is a prescription for effective teaching and graphic indictment of what is wrong with much of American education today. More than just an account of one teacher's struggles and successes, it demonstrates a teacher's technique that can be applied in every classroom and home.

In 1981, this book was made into the TV movie The Marva Collins Story starring Cicely Tyson and Morgan Freeman.

About this title

About the Author

Marva Collins taught school for two years in Alabama, then moved to Chicago, where she taught in public schools for 14 years. Her experiences in that system, coupled with her dissatisfaction with the quality of education that her two youngest children were receiving in prestigious private schools, convinced her that children deserved better than what was passing for acceptable education. She took the $5,000 balance in her school pension fund and opened her own school on the second floor of her home.

The Westside Preparatory School was founded in 1975 in Garfield Park, a Chicago inner-city area. During the first year, Collins took in learning disabled, problem children and even one child who had been labeled by Chicago public school authorities as borderline retarded. At the end of the first year, every child scored at least five grades higher proving that the previous labels placed on these children were misguided.  60 Minutes, visited her school for the second time in 1996. That little girl who had been labeled as border line retarded, graduated  from college Summa Cum Laude. Marva's graduates entered colleges and universities, such as Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. They became physicians, lawyers, engineers, and educators. In 1996 she began supervising three Chicago public schools that had been placed on probation.

In 1981, she received the Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged, an award given out annually by the Jefferson Awards. In 2004 she received a National Humanities Medal for her teaching and efforts at school reform.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Marva Collins' Creed
"Society will draw a circle that shuts me out, but my superior thoughts will draw me in. I was born to win if I do not spend too much time trying to fail. I will ignore the tags and names given me by society since only I know what I have the ability to become.

Failure is just as easy to combat as success is to obtain. Education is painful and not gained by playing games. Yet it is my privilege to destroy myself if that is what I choose to do. I have the right to fail, but I do not have the right to take other people with me.

It is my right to care nothing about myself, but I must be willing to accept the consequences for that failure, and I must never think that those who have chosen to work, while I played, rested and slept, will share their bounties with me.

My success and my education can be companions that no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, and no enemy can alienate. Without education, man is a slave, a savage wandering from here to there believing whatever he is told.

Time and chance come to us all. I can be either hesitant or courageous. I can swiftly stand up and shout: "This is my time and my place. I will accept the challenge."

Edition details

• Publisher: Tarcher
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0874775728
• ISBN 13: 9780874775723
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 242