Chapter 4.Marva Collins way

Marva Collins offers a beacon of hope in the midst of America's educational crises. Collins recounts her 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.

Chapter 4.

In June 1959, at the close of the school year, I left for Chicago to visit my grandmother’s cousin, Annie Townsend, for a two month vacation. I did not plan on getting a job, finding a husband, starting a family, and settling down in Garfield Park.

After a few days in Chicago, I got tired of being a tourist. On an impulse I read through the want ads in the newspaper and applied for a job as a medical secretary at Mount Sinai Hospital. I was hired. I didn’t know anything about medicine, but I began teaching myself Latin to understand the medical terms. The job was so exciting I decided to stay in Chicago. I took an apartment in a large, U-shaped courtyard building on Hamlin Avenue, overlooking Garfield Park. It was a small apartment with a Murphy bed and a sunny kitchen. It seemed elegant to me, but the best part was that this place was truly my own. My first apartment was close to the hospital, close to Cousin Annie, and close to Clarence Collins.

Clarence lived with his parents next door to Cousin Annie. I was first attracted to him by his devotion to his family. He was one of eleven children, eight boys and three girls, a close-knit family. When I met Clarence, he was working as a draftsman in the Sunbeam Appliance Company, a job he would keep for close to twenty years. While he did not have a college education and was not as well-read as I, he was just as determined. He was also more level-headed. And he was kind and gentle. All the neighborhood children gathered ground him, and several went with us to Riverview Amusement Park on our first date. I knew that any man who could be so patient with someone else’s children was bound to be a good father and a good husband. Within a year we were married.

I continued to work as a secretary, but soon I missed teaching. I missed the classroom. I missed the excitement of helping students discover the solution to a problem, of seeing the pieces fit together.

I went downtown to the Board of Education and filled out a teaching application. All I had to do was send for my college transcripts and my Alabama teaching credentials. Since I had not taken methodology courses, I was not eligible to take the certification exam. It didn’t matter because teachers in the Chicago school system didn’t have to be certified. There was a teacher shortage at that time, so as long as you had a college degree, you could teach. If you weren’t certified, you worked as a full-time-basis substitute which meant you were assigned to a school but had no seniority and were not guaranteed permanent placement. Years later the Chicago Teachers’ Union pressured the school board to grant automatic certification to those who had been in the school system for three years.

I received a letter telling me to report to Calhoun South Elementary School on Jackson Boulevard, where I was given a second grade class. I didn’t have any experience teaching such young children, but I assumed the principles were the same as in teaching older students. I had to motivate the children, create a desire for learning. I had to make them understand why it was important to learn. And I had to make them feel worthwhile and confident.

I drew on my own childhood memories, recalling the things that had made me feel happy, sad, excited, hurt, or afraid, the things that made me want to laugh or cry. And I tried to be sensitive to those feelings in my students. I found that hugging and touching and saying “I love you” immediately made them feel secure and comfortable in the classroom, establishing a bond between us and also among the children.

Children are quick to mimic adults. If a teacher ridicules or picks on a child, chances are

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