Marva Collins: the Collins creed

Ebony, Dec, 1996 by Joy Bennett Kinnon

FAILURE is the one word that has no place in Marva Collins' extensive vocabulary. She will neither accept it for herself nor tolerate it from her students. Like Sojourner Truth, she tells her students: "Every tub must sit on its own bottom." Like Harriet Tubman, she thunders: "You will learn--I won't let you fail."

The Chicago educator has been in the business of saving Black children's lives for more than 30 years. Yet a visitor to one of the schools that bear her name finds her still in the trenches--still on the battlefield. A photographer brushes a dab of chalk dust from her cheek--"That's what I'm here for," she says, "the chalk." Work equals chalk dust to Collins who says, "All you really need for teaching is a blackboard, books and a pair of legs that will last through the day."

The work still drives Marva Collins, 21 years after her personal leap of faith that started the Westside Preparatory School. That school and her hands-on methods have achieved worldwide recognition. After two profiles, the television news show 60 Minutes recently validated what Marva Collins knew all along--her children don't fail, not just on standardized tests, her children don't fail in the major course--Life.

"It's about the choices we make," she tells her students. "We all have two ends--the one you think with and the one you sit on," she says to some giggling, which she quickly quells.

An "excellence addict," Collins runs a strict classroom. She will tolerate no foolishness. In the tradition of master teachers like Benjamin E. Mays, Collins reaps greatness from her charges. She expects no less than their personal best. "You please me when you're all you can be," she says.

Her philosophy is deceptively simple. All children are capable of learning. Period. End of lesson. Class dismissed.

"People ask me, `How do you get the children to memorize The Canterbury Tales in Old English?'" says Collins. "I say, `It never dawned on me that they couldn't learn it.' Kids don't fail. Teachers fail, school systems fail. The people who teach children that they are failures--they are the problem."

Teachers at Marva Collins' schools have high expectations. Average is unacceptable. "No one is looking for average people. I have never had average students, and I'm not going to start now," she says.

Students are praised and frequently given positive reinforcement. "Pretty, blight girl, sit up! You can't hold up the world if you can't hold yourself up," she tells one slouching student.

Self-esteem is also promoted through proverbs. Teachers in all grades display inspirational signs on their classroom walls.

"The more we do the more we can do."

"The quest for excellence gives dignity to a person."

"Failure is just as easy to combat as success is to obtain."

"I was born to win if I do not spend too much time trying to fail."

Film discipline and self-discipline are emphasized. There is a lunch hour; but no recess. Collins is fighting those great imagination thieves--television and video games. Over and over she drives home the lesson that the students must limit their TV viewing if they want to achieve.

With brutal candor she gives them a choice: "You can either watch television and grow up to be poor and stupid, or you can go home and turn the television set off and grow up to be a creator, bright and wealthy. Bright children who know vocabulary words grow up to create their own video games," she says.

Vocabulary and reading are highly stressed at Collins' schools. "If you can't read, what else can you do?" she asks. Phonics are used to teach reading, and values such as hard work and teamwork are discussed in class. No proponent of audio-visual equipment or new age "quick-fix" reading tools, Collins sticks with what she believes works.

"Over the years, I saw that children became better readers and spellers when they learned by phonics. But they had to learn intensive phonics, all the regular and irregular sound patterns in the English language., not some bootleg version for sounding out the first and last letters of a word. I saw that if a child knew the rules for vowel and consonant sounds and for syllabification, and the exceptions to the rules, then that child could pick up anything and read it."

Oral reading and creative writing are practiced daily. Students are expected to memorize a poem a week and recite it in front of the class. A book report is expected every two weeks. "I don't worry about welfare ending," she says. "I've taught my students to fare well."

In 1995 60 Minutes returned to her Westside Preparatory School and reinterviewed 33 of her original students. They found young people living successful lives; some are in college, graduate or law schools; others own businesses, have good jobs or are pursuing careers. Statistically, one of that group should have been murdered, at least two should be in prison and five on welfare. All of the group are alive none is on welfare, none is in jail.

Success stories are the rule at Collins' schools. Her former pupils go on to achieve at prestigious high schools and colleges locally and throughout the country. She has been known to take students who had graduated from college and teach them what they should have learned.