Posts Tagged ‘dr. rosy’
One day, our professor began class by asking us whether or not we should teach morality in public schools.
It took about 12 seconds for my credential class to decide that yes, we should. We wouldn’t want our little rapscallions running in the streets, taking baseball bats to our windshields and setting fire to hobos just because they didn’t get taught morality at home. In true Socratic fashion, he almost immediately posed another question.
Whose morality?
We thought it was another gimmie.
Why, Judeo-Christian, we said. That’s pretty common and acceptable, and we don’t need to add in all the theology when we teach it.
In true Socratic fashion, that was another setup.
Who here doesn’t think they subscribe to this Judeo-Christian morality, or something close to it?
Just about everyone grunted in the affirmative.
Who doesn’t?
Silence.
Hah. I bet you guys are a bunch of hypocrites.
We insisted we weren’t.
Alright, then. Let’s prove it. Could I have everyone who is married or was married come and stand up in the front of class for a moment?
We did so.
O.K. This question isn’t for the people standing up. This is for the people sitting down. How many of you are virgins?
One of us raised a hand.
The rest of you are hypocrites. According to Judeo-Christian morality, if you weren’t married, you should be a virgin. Therefore, according to Judeo-Christian morality, there is only one moral person among everyone sitting down in this class.
Now my question to you is: How can you teach morality if you don’t practice it?
Good question. Awkward way of showing his point, but a good question nonetheless.
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.
Some people think I’m too tough on my students. Don’t tell them, but students who do their work can’t get an F.
Every time a student complains that the test is too hard, or that I expect too much from them when the rest of the class has no problem, I tell myself and them a little something that appears in every draft of every syllabus.
“It is only when you are pursued that you become swift.”
Consistency is the hardest part of a new teacher’s job, and pithy quotes go a long way to helping one’s consistency.
There are some more I like, but not nearly as much. The above quote and the entirety of this list was taken from that of a credential program professor of mine. He’s a man defined by principles and characterized by orneriness.
“If you make people think they are thinking, they will love you. If you really make them think, they will hate you for it.”
“Truthful words are not always beautiful, and beautiful words are not always truthful.”
“Education is the process of learning how to think, not what to think.”
“What’s popular is not always right, and what’s right is not always popular.”
But the one I want on a T-shirt?
“Stupid is forever. Ignorance can be fixed.”
Moral of the story? Take all advice, and only believe that which works.
