OPINION

Published Monday, May 10, 2004
The Ice Queen Melteth
By Rhonda Henderson

Damien doesn’t like light-skinned people. Light-skinned black people, that is. He said so one afternoon as I sat next to him in his French class, where I was substituting for his usual teacher, Ms. Taylor. When I looked at him, he said his comment was not directed at me, but was instead a general statement of his own opinions to his classmates. In response to my probing, Damien explained that light-skinned folks were uppity, acted like they were better than other people, and other things. But again, the comments were not directed at me, he assured me. I didn’t believe that then, and four months later I still don’t believe him. In the days preceding this incident, he had become increasingly more disengaged from class activities despite a very positive and cooperative start. That his classmates’ behavior was no less than horrific did not de-escalate the situation. It turned the class into an ice box and me into an ice-queen. My response to his, and his peers’ behavior was to tell them firmly to stop, to conference with them about his work, and at times to ignore it and work with those students who were willing to work. The teacher in me was not surprised by his comment. When a teacher comes down on a student for their behavior, a knee-jerk reaction from the student is not surprising.

However, the light-skinned person I am was surprised. His statement was very personal. Damien noted a very specific characteristic—skin color—that applied to me. While students will say mean things, particularly in anger or in conditions of anonymity, you get better at letting it roll off your back, with the mantras “never let them see you sweat, it’s not you, it’s them” rolling through your mind at the same time. You learn not to take things personally. But maybe Damien said what he said because he wanted to get personal with the Ice Queen. Working with Stephanie, another student in a morning class, led me to rethink my actions and attitude, and Damien’s intentions in our exchange.

Stephanie was a member of class almost three times the size of Damien’s that drained almost all my energy trying to manage. I somehow had a reserve that allowed me put one foot on the gas pedal to drive home in the evenings. Given these conditions, and my particular management style, my relationship with the members of this class had the potential to end up in the same freezer as mine with Damien’s. Her classmates were just about doing their own thing, but with the courtesy of having history books on their desks. This continued for a few days, and I responded to their behavior in a manner somewhat consistent with Damien’s—impersonal, calm, all comments directed toward actions, not people.

The joy of teaching is that everyday brings something new. One morning Stephanie broke ranks and volunteered to explain an assignment, and then the following question. The ice between she and I began to melt. Finally, after school one day she waltzed into the classroom where I was puttering around, and struck up idle chatter. When we first started talking, I sat upright in the teacher chair, made sure to enunciate all of my words. But it was late in the after noon, I was tired, and decided to let Ms. Ice Queen Henderson go home. I talked to her like I was Rhonda, a graduate student on winter break, a D.C. girl at home. And at first she looked at me kinda askance, as if to say, “Who is this woman sitting here now, being a regular person?” but then she just kept talking, all the way to the bleachers to watch the junior varsity basketball team cream a rival school. When I saw my best friend, who is also a colleague, instead of the usual “Hello, Ms. Robinson,” I said what Rhonda says, “What’s up, dawg?” The next morning, Stephanie greeted me the same. Her peers were amazed.

I, too, was amazed. I had “let down my guard” before I felt like I’d established a strong sense of mutual respect, before I had the class “under control.” Was I violating the “too friendly” rule? Was I “smiling before Christmas,” as the adage goes? I had been substituting at the school only a few days, and I wasn’t sure how she would behave in class. My fears were unfounded, as nothing happened. Actually having one ally made school much friendlier, and her class a little more tolerable.

I had not had these experiences with Damien, or the other students in the class. There was no opportunity to talk, to chat, or to be myself. In fact, I presented only a stoic, stern exterior. The rowdier they behaved, the more concrete became my response. Refusing to scream or yell, I waited in silence until they decided to stop. If it took the entire period, it took the entire period.

But in the end, I think it was my own stoicism that did me in, and pushed Damien to say what he said. By not acknowledging Damien and his classmates’ rude behavior with responses they understood as standard (yelling, screaming), the students may have interpreted my response as ignoring them entirely, an act that disrespects their humanity. Could it be a far stretch that Damien thought I was being uppity? What if I had told them I was experiencing the human response of frustration with their behavior? Would that be “letting them get to me” or letting them get to know me? I interpret Damien’s response as an act of resistance to a gesture from me he perceived as dehumanizing: “if you’re not going to say anything about me being loud, then I’m going to get a response to you somehow. You are going to notice me.”

I thought for a long time it was essential to show the students no emotion in class—chuckle, but be careful not to laugh, show little anger or disgust with their behavior. Everything should be about the work, I thought. But the intense consideration I’m giving to what Damien said leads me to think otherwise. Everything does not have to be about the work. That’s what machines do—spit out work, issue directives. People don’t do that, and teachers are people who laugh, who get frustrated, who make small talk. Teachers are people just like the students are. Without believing in a teacher’s humanity, without understanding the teacher is a person, just like them, who wants to share knowledge with them, person to person, students will not give the same of themselves to learn. And it took a student to teach me that lesson.

Rhonda Henderson is an Ed.M. candidate in Learning and Teaching.