Marva Collins biography

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Educator. Born Marva Deloise Nettles on August 31, 1936, in Monroeville, Alabama. Marva Collins is a pioneering school founder, whose ambitious education methods have transformed the lives of thousands of students.

Raised in Atmore, Alabama, in the heart of the segregated South, Collins was more than familiar with the educational inadequacies associated with black schools. She was also well aware of the mediocre access black students had to the resources that were readily available to white students. Libraries were for whites only, and many black schools lacked enough books or even indoor plumbing.

But Collins' father Alex Nettles, a successful businessman, had high standards for Marva and her younger sister—and even higher expectations of them in the classroom. "We were expected to be excellent," Collins once recalled. "We didn't have a choice."

Marva went to Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia, where she studied secretarial skills, and then after two years of teaching in her home state moved north to Chicago, where she eventually met a young draftsman named Clarence Collins. The couple later married and had two children, Patrick and Cynthia. /p>

In Chicago, Collins eventually found steady work as a substitute teacher. She worked as a substitute for nearly 14 years, and what she saw as both an educator and a parent of two small children who were attending high-end private schools, appalled her. So, with $5,000 she'd withdrawn from her retirement, Collins opened the Westside Preparatory School in the second floor of her home in the Chicago neighborhood of Garfield Park.

It was a modest opening; coupled with her own two kids, she had just six students. Yet Collins made it clear that her classroom was available to any child who'd been failed by the bigger school systems, especially those who'd been diagnosed with impossible-to-overcome learning disabilities. "If Abraham Lincoln were enrolled in public schools today, he would probably be in a learning disability program. Lincoln didn't learn to read until age 14. No one should rule any child out of the educational picture," Collins told Ebony magazine. "Parents, particularly Black parents, have to be willing to make sacrifices to make sure their children are educated properly." The results from Collins' debut year were hard to ignore, with every child scoring at least five grades higher than they had previously.

The Collins Method, as it came to be known, centered on phonics, math, reading, English, and the classics. Homer, Plato, Chaucer, and Tolstoy, were all part of the reading list. "People ask me, 'How do you get the children to memorize The Canterbury Tales in Old English?'" Collins said.