Marva Delores Collins (née Knight; August 31, 1936 – June 24, 2015) was an American educator. Collins is best known for creating Westside Preparatory School, a private elementary school in the impoverished Garfield Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois which opened in 1975. Early life Collins was born in Monroeville, Alabama, to father, Henry Knight, a businessman who owned a funeral home and worked with cattle, and to mother, Bessie Knight (née Nettles). She grew up in Atmore, Alabama, a small town near Mobile, Alabama, during the time of segregation in the American South. When she was young, Collins went to a strict elementary school in a one-room schoolhouse in Atmore, Alabama, an experience which influenced her later in life. She graduated from Clark College (now known as Clark Atlanta University) in Atlanta, Georgia. Career Collins taught school for two years in Alabama, then moved to Chicago in 1959, where she taught as a full–time substitute teacher in inner–city Chicago Public Schools system for fourteen years. Westside Preparatory School Dismayed at the low levels of learning that she felt some students were experiencing in particular areas, Collins took $5,000 ($25,910 in 2021 dollars) from her own teacher's retirement fund and started a private school on the top floors of the brownstone in the West Garfield Park neighborhood where she lived in 1975. The school she started was called Westside Preparatory School. Westside Prep became an educational and commercial success. Collins created her low-cost private school specifically for the purpose of teaching low income black children whom Collins felt the Chicago Public School System had mislabeled as being learning disabled. Collins said she had the data to prove that her students were teachable and were able to overcome obstacles of learning via her teaching methods, which she said eliminated behavioral issues and allowed students to flourish. The one-room schoolhouse of her education influenced her methods. At home her father gave her assignments she believed built her confidence and gave her a sense of responsibility. She felt time spent with students was more valuable than distance-creating audio visual information. Collins and her daughter ran the school for more than 30 years until it closed in 2008 due to lack of sufficient enrollment and funding. Media coverage Collins became well-known due to the 1981 TV movie based on her life's work entitled The Marva Collins Story, starring Cicely Tyson and Morgan Freeman. She also