We Do It In Your FACE!

One of my students asked me to come to her step competition. Since it’s Saturday, I can’t make it, but I went to her practice this evening. I rolled into Clanton Park, the usual scene of the gang fights that spill over onto our campus, with slight apprehension. But around me, the park was full of kids playing and adults watching. I was proudly introduced as her history teacher, and then plopped on the grass to watch the step routines.

Step, I explained to my mother earlier this evening, is to dance, what rap is to music. The girls stomped and clapped fiercely, shouting in rhythm and creating a cadence I couldn’t resist nodding to. There were three coaches: the head, named “Coach,” walked and spoke slowly. His track pants sagged and his gait matched it in mellow, artistic coolness. Then there was Robbie, a frenetic youngish guy in skinny jeans and a baseball cap that fell off when he showed the girls the steps. Lastly, a man named “Pop-pop” in a baggy pinstriped suit with red lining poking through took individual girls aside for coaching.

They kept telling the girls to show more attitude. The girls looked mean, and fierce, and screamed, “we do it in your face!” to end the show. They combined discipline with a street style. I could have watched all night. My favorite was the very serious girl of eight or so, standing to the side of all the high schoolers and matching their every motion. After practice, I noticed, walking back to my car, that the parents were standing in a circle with the coaches, having a town hall about the way the step teams were broken up. Even though it was clearly a confrontation of some kind trying to solve an issue, there was a nice feel about it, as though it was a town meeting and everyone was invested.

Earlier this morning, a student of mine looked morose as he walked into the library to wait for health class to start. I headed over to the table where he had his head buried in his elbow, and parked myself beside him.

“How about you tell me what’s been biting you since yesterday, and I tell you that you can handle it because you’re awesome?” He looked up.

“Look, I know there are some things... I can’t solve everything. But it’s killing me to see you so sad, and I have to know if there’s something I can do.”

He waited a second, then answered. “A kid’s been riding me about my skin color.” A pause. I knew who it was. In fact, he’d written an essay about it earlier in the year. Being told he’d been baked too brown so he was black, and comparisons to dark animals. I’d shut it down in class, and called the perpetrator’s mom, but apparently it was still going on: the kid acting up is too much of a funny-man to know when someone’s hurting.

 

“He’s still doing that?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s not going to do that anymore. I’m going to take care of it. You don’t have to worry about that.” There’s something else I want to say, what is it? Oh, there it is.

“Listen, only you can give someone permission to make you feel bad. You’re the one who thinks they’re legitimate. Man, you have beautiful skin—people would kill for skin like yours. But there are going to be times in the future out of school, where people are going to ride you about your skin color, or your accent, or your nationality, or whatever—the basic parts of you that you can’t change and don’t want to. But you just have to remember that you are wonderful, that you are one of my most beautiful students, inside and out, and that if they’re so cracked they can’t see it, well, that’s their problem, not yours. Because you are above that.” Pause. “Okay. I’m going to copy your guys’ work today, and then I’m going to work it out with that kid.”

He went, and I pounded out some frustration on the copy machine, and then sat and waited. And waited. And waited. Sure enough, a good half hour after school started, the culprit strolled through the library doors. I called his name, and beckoned him to follow me to the back tables by the media specialist’s office. He’s a smart kid. He saw my face, and said, “uh-oh.” We walked towards the back tables, and again, “uh-oh.” I cocked an eyebrow at his apprehension, and he let loose another, “uh-oh.” It was those uh-ohs that told me how to approach it. The sweetness of them, the awareness that he knew this was something serious, something he couldn't mess with, allowed me to just talk to him straight. We sat at a table and I watched his expression.

“Look. I love that you’re funny. You make our class funny. But there’s one joke that you took too far. Making fun of this guy’s skin color. I know you’re friends with him, and I know you josh him about it, but it’s become too much. He’s feeling really bad. That’s something serious. That’s race—he can’t change that, and shouldn’t want to.” He was watching me intently, not making a joke, just listening. Probably a world record for him on not interrupting. But the way to seal the deal was with participation.

“Did he say anything to you? Let you know how he was feeling?” Implied: If he had, you are a good person who would stop doing that.

“No, he just joked back. I didn't know.”

“Yeah, he keeps a stiff upper lip. But I know right now that it’s added up and he’s feeling bad about it. So I want to make sure you’ll cut it. There is no place for that in our class. Okay?”

Serious nod. If this kid’s not talking, he’s got it.

“Okay. Get to class.”

We stood up and I felt the joy that finally, finally, I'd run up against a problem that could be solved merely by words. 

“Hey, Ms. W?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you tell my teacher I was with you? So I’m not marked late?” Smart kid. Excuse all that half hour of late with one teacher’s nod.

“Sure.”

And school rolled smoothly on.