Marva Collins did it her way

In the 1980s, Marva Collins was a shining light in the education firmament. Her pioneering methods became a full-length movie. Her Chicago inner-city school, Westside Preparatory, was a model for teachers who wanted to buck the status quo. Her books were best-sellers, especially Marva Collins’ Way, which told the inspiring story of an iron-willed woman with a tender heart for young minds.

Born in 1936 in the segregated South, Collins later graduated from Clark College in Atlanta. After teaching school in Alabama, she moved to Chicago, where she worked as a medical secretary before applying to be a substitute teacher in the city’s school system. Substituting gave her a unique perspective on the state of urban schools, as she experienced firsthand the bureaucratic hurdles, meaningless paperwork, time-crunching administrative demands—and worst of all, student failure. No one would have blamed her for getting out of teaching altogether.

Instead, in 1975, she cashed out her pension savings of $5,000 and used it to start her own school, with four students, including her own daughter. Westside Prep grew quickly, adding students, grade levels, and eventually three separate buildings, one of which was named for her. Collins never applied for or accepted government money: “Determination and perseverance will move the world; thinking that others will do it for you is a sure way to fail.” She wanted to do it her way.

Marva Collins’ way meant an intense focus on literature and math, relentless drill, daily recitation, and continual questioning and answering. But it was also personal. A 60 Minutes segment from 1980 showed Collins in the classroom, hugging, touching, smiling, applauding. “Speak up honey, you’re brilliant,” she said, lifting a child’s chin. When asked about their favorite authors, the fourth-graders mentioned Chaucer, Dante, and Shakespeare. In 1995, 60 Minutes’ Morley Safer returned to Westside and spoke to 33 of the 34 students featured in his original 1980 story. All were either in college or successfully employed—none in jail, none on welfare.

Though the school, which was eventually renamed the Marva Collins School, closed in 2008 because of dwindling enrollment and funds, her influence lives on through former students who started alternative schools of their own. Even after retiring to Hilton Head, S.C., in the 1990s, Collins kept educating. Prince sponsored one of her last gigs, giving her $300,000 to conduct a series of teacher training seminars.

Her death on June 24, at the age of 78, went almost unnoticed in a week dominated by headlines about Supreme Court decisions and social upheaval. But it’s worth noting. She was an American original who had a profound influence on her students—and her teachers, although she could often be brusque with adults. Former Westside teacher Darlene Smith said it was “less about Marva Collins the human being, and more about Marva Collins the vessel through which the divine grace of God flowed through.” Collins often insisted she wasn’t after money or fame. All she wanted, she told her local newspaper eight years ago, was “to be able to say I got an A-plus on the assignment God gave me.” That’s the highest ambition anyone can have, and the payoff sounds like this: “Well done.”