Tag: speaking out

Be Brave, education, Humour, Pop Culture, Princess, Raves, Teacher

Show Me How BIG Your Brave Is: Why Sara Barellis’ “Brave” should be our new national anthem

suburbanprincessteacher

For a group of people who talk all day for a living, teachers are often a very silent bunch. We save our comments for the staff room and then grumble about how no one listens to our opinion.

Teachers across the United States are in crisis. Morale is at an all time low. Politicians are treating teachers like children who need to be monitored and disciplined with threats of job loss and salary reductions.

It’s disgraceful.

As a Canadian teacher, I know that we have it better than our friends to the south, but I can see us headed in that direction and it scares the hell out of me.

Business people with no links or background to education are being tapped by politicians to find ways to “fix” our education “crisis”.

Forgive me, but we are neither broken nor in a crisis. Yes, there are things we can improve upon. And guess what? Most of us know exactly what needs to be done. Most of us have multiple degrees in everything from child development to curriculum and evaluation. We do regular professional development on everything from reading and math to bullying and nutrition. We can help make things better. We need money and time to make positive changes, not outside “experts”.

But before we can help others, teachers need to find the courage to stop whispering and start speaking up. Our students want to look up to us. They want us to be role models. We need to model bravery so that they can grow up to be brave as well.

We live in a world where people overshare all the time. Videos and pictures that you might have once only shared with family and friends are now put on the internet for the world to comment on. But despite all of this new ‘openness‘,  I don’t think it’s made us any braver.

We still watch what we say and worry about what people will think, what they might say. What if someone doesn’t agree with me or doesn’t approve of what I say? What if they get mad at me? What IF not everyone likes me???

Guess what? The world will keep spinning. You will continue to breathe. Life will go on. And you will be better for having spoken your mind. The world will be better.

Being brave doesn’t mean you have to rescue a baby from a burning building. It could be as simple as standing up for a colleague when they are being harrassed or supporting a student when they need someone in their corner. Bravery often shows itself in simple acts of kindness.

I stopped watching music videos sometime after Michael Jackson’s Thriller because I have no interest in seeing women dance around half-dressed while men sing about degrading them. But this? Brave is the best video, the best song, the best…everything I have seen in a long time. 

It’s not deep or complicated or edgy. It’s just honest and true and fun.

If this song can’t be our new national anthem, let’s make it our new mantra.

Watch it, love it, live it.  I want to see you be brave.

“Brave”

You can be amazing
You can turn a phrase into a weapon or a drug
You can be the outcast
Or be the backlash of somebody’s lack of love
Or you can start speaking up

Nothing’s gonna hurt you the way that words do
When they settle ‘neath your skin
Kept on the inside and no sunlight
Sometimes a shadow wins
But I wonder what would happen if you

Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
With what you want to say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave

I just want to see you
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I wanna see you be brave

I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I wanna see you be brave

Everybody’s been there,
Everybody’s been stared down by the enemy
Fallen for the fear
And done some disappearing,
Bow down to the mighty
Don’t run, just stop holding your tongue

Maybe there’s a way out of the cage where you live
Maybe one of these days you can let the light in
Show me how big your brave is

Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
With what you want to say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave

And since your history of silence
Won’t do you any good,
Did you think it would?
Let your words be anything but empty
Why don’t you tell them the truth?

Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
With what you want to say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave

I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I wanna see you be brave

I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
See you be brave

Pop Culture, Rants

Use your words, ladies. Why we need to stop worrying about being embarrassed.

suburbanprincessteacher

writing113Today is the day San Diego Mayor Bob Filner starts his two weeks of intensive therapy to help cure what he called the “monster…inside me.”

A few weeks ago, the man known as Headlock Bob found himself in hot water over his alleged instances of “unwanted sexual touching”. It seems Big Bad Bob likes dragging women around the office in a ‘friendly’ headlock while asks them for a little love. He has also been known to ask the women in his office to come to work without their panties. To be fair, perhaps he feels this will help them type faster or something…sort of like swimmers who shave off all their body hair in order to shave off a few seconds of time.  (Honestly, if I had a nickel for every time my panties have slowed me down at work, well, I’d be sitting on a beach in…uh…nowhere because I’d have NO FREAKIN’ NICKELS!)

Mayor Herbie Headlock has a long history of serving the people of San Diego, including 20 years in Congress and six years with the city council. He is well-known as being a serial sexual harasser.

Now, to be fair, he has admitted to doing the things he is charged with but he says it’s not his fault. At 70 (!) years of age, he says he didn’t know any better. He blames the City of San Diego because they did not pay for him to attend sexual harassment training seminars.

(No, seriously. I could not make this stuff up.)

In fact, his lawyer is arguing that because his employer didn’t send him for this training, they should pay his legal fees as fights the charges these (now) 10 women have brought against him.

First of all, let me be the first to say…two weeks, Mr. Mayor? Seriously? It’s only going to take two weeks (!!!) for some therapist to beat the douche-baggyness out of you? And then you get to go back to work as the Mayor of the great city of San Diego? Where is this therapy taking place? Hogwarts?

While this story made me laugh in a head-shaking, tongue-clucking sort of way, it also made me wonder how a story like this could even occur in this day and age.

The women who have filed suit against Headlock Bob sound like strong, relatively powerful women. One is a communications consultant, another a dean at the University of San Diego, while still another is a retired Navy rear admiral who also served as San Diego’s former chief operating officer.

They all say he made them uncomfortable, embarrassed and/or scared.

And yet it took some of them YEARS to file a complaint.

So why didn’t they report him? Why weren’t charges filed years earlier?

I have no idea. I would guess they feared some sort of retribution from a very powerful, well-connected man. B ut I would also guess there was another factor at play.

We are all deathly afraid. Women especially.

And do you know what we are afraid of?

Being embarrassed.

We don’t want to make a scene.

So we laugh nervously and get the hell out of the situation and hope that we never have to go through anything like that again.

And yet, sometimes, we end up going through it over and over again.

So, here’s what I suggest.

First of all, check out your surroundings. Are you safe? Are there people around? Exits you can use? Yes?

Now use your words. Sometimes it works best to speak softly. I love whispering. I find it often works like a charm. But if that doesn’t work or you just don’t feel like it, speak up. Loudly, if necessary.

It’s OK to say, “Take your hand off my leg. Now.”

It’s OK to say, “No, you may not kiss me. Ever”

It’s OK to say, “If you ever put me in headlock again, I will knee you in the gonads and then march to HR and file a complaint.”

Don’t worry. You can’t die of embarrassment. Trust me. I would be dead a million times over if that were the case. I can barely make it to the bathroom in the morning without embarrassing myself and I’m still here.

So what if people stare? So what if he gets mad and says, “I was just joking” and gets huffy?

Again, I’m not talking about situations where you are in danger. That’s a different story for a different time. I’m talking about situations like the ones these women were in.

In most cases, they were in public places, where other people were present, where they were physically safe.

One of my biggest goals as a teacher is to teach young people (girls AND boys) that it’s OK to speak up for yourself.

Over the years, I have seen girls as young as 8 who can’t end a sentence without lilting their voice at the end so every sentence ends up sounding like a question.

“I like…cats..?”

The sentence becomes a question as she looks around the room to see if everyone (especially the class bully) likes cats and if it’s OK to like cats and if she really should say she likes cats or just wait in case anyone says they like dogs more.

I always tell my students, “Tell me what you think and say it like you mean it.”

“I LIKE cats!”

So, ladies?

Say it like you mean it.

Perhaps that will keep future mayors and others from thinking it’s OK to put women in headlocks and pat their butts and basically degrade and dehumanize them because they know think they can get away with it.