How To Deal With Schoolyard Bullies

June 8, 2008 in Interview an Elder
Tags: adapt, advocate, amusing, anecdote, belligerent, black, bully, bury, classroom, disruptive, doctoral, dr. rosy, dress, funny, hilarious, horror, how, improvise, laughing, management, mother, need, one, overcome, school, shocking, situations, story, student, teacher, to deal, violence, with

I didn’t get it at first. What could he mean by asking:

Does your mother have a black dress?

No other credential program professor would tell this story. No other credential program professor would have this story. But because he’s Dr. Rosy, he’d tell us how he as a school teacher once dealt with a school bully.

This had to have happened in the mid-90s, in the first few weeks he taught 8th grade English in a high school somewhere in the Midwest.

The way he tells it, he came across an all-state athlete picking on some scrawny kid whose feet weren’t touching the ground. The lineman had the kid up by the collar.

Dr. Rosy — then Mr. Rosy, doctoral student — walked up to the bully and told him to put the kid down. The bully complied immediately. This kid must have been pushing iron since the 3rd grade, recalled Rosy.

This athlete was 6 feet 5 inches, with a solid 300 pounds of muscle, and now focused his attention on the upstart teacher.

A girl off to the side of the scene told the football player to just take care of Rosy already. Rosy wasn’t impressed; he asked the girl for her cell phone. She declined.

In that case, you call 911 and get an ambulance here. Well, maybe two. This guy’s so big he won’t fit in one.

Rosy was at least 43 years old and slightly shorter than the bully. A large-framed man even then, he would have been quite a bit smaller than the massive boy defiantly facing him, as if to challenge the teacher’s authority with a show of muscle.

Rosy, unimpressed, asked the kid a question.

Does your mother have a black dress?

The bully didn’t understand, so Rosy repeated the question.

Does your mother have a black dress?

Rosy must have feigned pondering to himself for a moment. Knowing him, for dramatic effect.

Because she’ll need one in about four days. That’s about when the state buries you.

That’s about when the story ends with my class laughing hysterically, some laughing out of horror.

He never advocated using or threatening violence, of course, and made sure to say that.

You have to improvise, overcome and adapt to these situations.

That’s one way to look at it.

These impromptu anecdotes were the best part of my credential program. The most entertaining, the most useful, the most helpful, the most consoling. I always felt like I learned something from every one of his classes.

First Five Minutes of Class

April 7, 2008 in The Way It Were
Tags: amendment, black, class, classroom, cnn, comments, crazy, culled, establishment, first, five, government, history, journal, management, minutes, obama, packet, pastor, preacher, quiz, relevant, religion, sciences, snagged, social, studies, thursday, white

Good morning, class. I know that it’s a pleasure for me to see each and every one of you, but I know it’s even more of a pleasure for each and every one of you to see me.

Don’t forget that on the board is today’s journal. I’ll read the prompt:

The First Amendment forbids establishment of religion. What consequences, if any, should this have for candidates for the president of the United States?

Continue writing if you haven’t finished your journal already.

Be sure to pick up this week’s packet. Don’t forget that to more than one point on Thursday’s quiz, you must turn in this packet completed. For every opinion article in this packet, remember your Read and Response. For those of you who are new, that requires you to write one paragraph summary and one paragraph reaction. Easy cheesy.

One of the columns is about Martin Luther King, Jr., and is especially appropriate as we begin our week studying the Civil Rights movement and the development of its constitutional basis. We’ll segue into this movement using a fiery pastor with ties to Barack Obama and a discussion of both their free speech and free religion.

I’ll be passing out actual responses to the sermon I culled — that means “snagged” — from comments at CNN.com. If you get one, you’ll get to read it aloud. Be sure you act it out passionately, as if you actually believe it. That way we get the real feeling of what that person is saying.

Say, for example, you get this:

Now it is very clear why sen. obama does not wear a flag on his jacket . Also on why he does not put his hand on his heart when the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE is being said.This also answers why he refuses to say the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE. WAKE UP AMERICA !

I am an Independent .FOR THE LOVE OF MY COUNTRY HE WILL NOT BE GETTING MY VOTE!!

If you’re mumble and monotone when you read it aloud, I’ll make sure you have to get up and do it again. Raise your hand if you’d like to volunteer. Okay, that looks good.

Just a hint: You should probably read it while we wait for the last few people to finish their journal. You’ll have a little bit of time to prepare while we watch and discuss the six-second soundbite version of the sermon. Depending on your quote, you’ll go before or after we watch the seven-minute version of the same sermon and discuss it.

Before we get to that, go ahead and take a minute or two finishing up your journal. I’ll pass out the comment slips, and finish getting set up.

I’ll be here if you have any questions.

****

In other news: George Washington is just too vulgar for school, sometimes; same with JFK.

Obama’s Pastor’s Timely Teachable Moment

April 1, 2008 in Lesson Plans, Reading Response
Tags: actual, barack, biased, black, civil rights, classroom, coverage, education, foreign, jeremiah, lesson, minority, moment, obama, pastor, policy, press, race, rev, reverend, sermons, slavery, speech, speeches, student teacher, teachable, the, timely, wright

For the moment, I don’t care about that speech. I’m listening to another.

Let’s back up. I’ll assume that you haven’t already heard about Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s speech on race as the poignant treatise it is.

Good speech; you should listen to it. I just don’t expect to use it in my classroom anytime soon, despite suggestions that some guy’s grandchildren will study it.

We’ll have decades to parse Obama’s campaign, character and speech on race. Let’s step back and look, if just for a moment, at what made that speech necessary.

Obama’s pastor gave a sermon within a week or so of 9/11. A six-second soundbite from it was first covered by Fox News, and it was that soundbite which prompted intraparty criticism and, ultimately, Obama’s speech.

Watch.

That’s not the only sermon of his missrepresented by the news media; here’s another, if you dare. 

There’s a lesson here, somewhere, and not just about the importance of putting statements in context. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whatever you have to say about his idiom of anger and frustration, covers black and minority and foreign policy history pretty well.

13th Amendment. Dred Scott. Segregation of the military.

Even at least one accusation speaks to whole blocs of vocabulary necessary to understanding the history of civil rights and slavery. Specifically, think his equating George W. Bush to a Dixiecrat.

Unfortunately, because these sermons aren’t boiled down to a reasonable six-second soundbite, they’ll never get the press coverage they really deserve. I figure that every little bit helps.

As excellent as Obama’s speech really is, these are the excerpts I’ll use in my classrooms. They are the excerpts that show the lingering anger and frustration within the black community.

Obama, whatever his merits, just talks about it.