Listen To The Story

By TESA CULLI

tesa.culli@register-news.com

MT. VERNON — Mentoring students and teaching them the power of education was the theme in a town hall meeting held Tuesday night at Mt. Vernon Township High School.

Louis Martinez, senior consultant for the International Center for Leadership in Education, said students learn when teachers have a universal belief that all students can, and do, learn when the focus is on “what” and “when,” and when there is a daily demonstration of strong mutual respect.

Martinez said students — even those in poverty with little to no support at home — can learn to take responsibility for their own educational opportunities when they learn the power of education.

“I talk to gang members and they say the power is the money,” Martinez said. “They are afraid, have a high mortality rate and can’t be in public. Their life span is 30. ... I tell them it’s not about the power of money, it’s not about the power of being an authority figures, it’s about having the power to think.”

Martinez said he will be telling students at the school about the “Bill of Responsibility,” based on the Bill of Rights.

“We all have a responsibility as parents,” Martinez said. “We have to raise the expectations, establish standards and close the gaps. ... Where are the parents we need to talk to? Without the parents, it becomes incumbent on us to teach children that you, at some point, will become a parent. There’s no difference between you and I.”

Martinez said in teaching children in schools, they have to be allowed to fail.

“To assist your child’s development of responsibility, I suggest to parents to let them fail, not fall off,” Martinez said.

“I believe that without coffee tables, most children would never walk. ... When they are small they pull themselves up and inch toward the end of the table, holding on tight. Then they move to the end and invariably, they fall. As parents, we pick them up and put them back in the position they fell from. ... Children have to learn to overcome adversity.”

Letting children fail doesn’t mean they have no consequences, Martinez said.

“If you just let them fail and don’t have a recovery plan, we fail. It does no good.”

Behavior expectations should be simple, starting with respect and responsibility, Martinez said.

“And as a part of those, they have to understand the consequences of behavior,” Martinez explained. “When you do this, you show how everyone around you is affected. A way to do this is that every one of us is responsible for one other person.”

Martinez said parents should ask themselves four critical questions: What should my child know and be able to do? How do they know? What will you do when they “don’t get it?” What will you do when they know it before they come to you?

“We shouldn’t be saying that ‘all students can learn,’ but turn it around to ‘all students are learning,” Martinez said. He said the way to achieve the goal of all students learning is by making education relevant to society and a student’s place in society, making sure students with potential have mentors, teaching them that how others are treated matters, and training teachers and staff on how to build relationships.

“Literacy isn’t about teaching children to read — it’s about teaching children how to think,” Martinez said.

Martinez expressed several points relating to empowering children, including, “The rules of the culture of power are a reflection of the culture of those who have power” and “being told explicitly the rules of that culture make acquiring power easier.”

Taking the time to use different ways to teach material for students who are not learning is an important step to the mentoring process.

“Most students believe that when they are not getting it, no one cares,” Martinez said. “They start coming in late. ... They stop coming to school ... Then they get detention or suspension. Tell me how that consequence and behavior match up.”

Instead, educators should ask, “Is there anything I can help you do?” instead of “What can I do for you?”

Martinez said he wanted to leave the group with the charge to wake up every morning and tell themselves, “This is important, I can do this and I won’t give up on us. Not me, but us.”