His presentaion was for all Pyle students and staff, not parents, so I coundn't listen it. But School provide summaried message in Pyle-net( communication method between school and parents through e-mail).
The message is not whole, but we could learn his thought and we could think about that issue carefully.
This message summarizes Dr. Michael Fowlin's presentation to Pyle students and staff from yesterday (Monday, 10/5). his award-winning presentation entitled, "You Don't Know Me Until You Know Me." Dr. Fowlin performs nationwide to school audiences focusing on concepts related to tolerance, diversity, and acceptance. He touches on difficult issues that pre-adolescents and adolescents face. Dr. Fowlin is a psychologist, actor and poet and travels widely bringing his performance pieces to schools and communities. More information about Dr Fowlin can be found at www.michaelfowlin.com.
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Dr. Michael Fowlin: "You Don't Know Me Until You Know Me"
*As an introduction, Dr. Fowlin spoke about how his middle school years were the most difficult time for him. He recalls having concerns about his own image and how he thought people wanted him to be. When we thinks about who helped shaped his life, he thinks about his parents, his pastor, and his teacher. He spoke about his young daughter and how she is his best teacher about history. He relayed an incident about how his daughter's use of curse words triggered memories of how his own parents disciplined him as a child in a harsh and sometimes humiliating way. He spoke about how having his own daughter caused him to reflect on his own history and change the dynamic. Rather than using punishment, he discussed issues of respect with his daughter and worked on creating a atmosphere in which she felt safe. He related this to the student audience by encouraging them to reflect on their own history of how they treat others and others treat them. Dr. Fowlin then recited the poem Still Here," by Langston Hughes. He continued to return to lines in this poem to link each section of the program. (The poem can be found at this link: http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Langston-Hughes/2394# )
* Dr. Fowlin raised the issue of bullies and acknowledged to the students that this certainly a predictable topic. He went on to tell students that "bullies are not the problem, zebras are." Zebras? Yes, zebras. What happens, he asked the students, when out in the wild, a lion attacks a zebra--what do the other zebras do? The audience replied "run away." No, he answered, they stand around and watch; the zebras watch a member of their own herd being torn apart by a lion. Dr. Fowlin explained that victims of bullying are less concerned with bullies than with the other kids who, like zebras, stand around and watch and don't say or do anything to help the victim or stop the bullying. He challenged the students to "find their own voice" when witnessing bullying behavior.
* The next section of the presentation was in the tradition of a one-man show in which Dr. Fowlin portrayed different characters. In a series of dramatic vignettes, each character spoke about how they were confronted with bullying and prejudice. Each gave very specific descriptions of their thoughts and feelings about this hateful behavior. Although these portrayals involved much humor, the intense emotion in the stories was most compelling.
1) The first character was a six-year old child with ADHD who was subject to both teasing and racist remarks by his classmates. Through this characters often amusing ramblings, the students were clued in to the pain this boy felt and the brave way in which he responded.
2) The next portrayal was a football player who was a senior in high school. This character told a story about how his team was down by five in the final seconds of a big game. Although it went against conventional wisdom, the coach called a running play. The football player thought this call misguided, but the coach's call prevailed and his team won the game with an unexpected touchdown. The character explained that even after the big win, he was perplexed by the running play call and approached the coach asking why the coach didn't call the expected passing play. The coach went on to explain the difference between what one was supposed to do versus what one needed to do. In order to be successful in life, the coach told him, this difference must be understood. The football player's dramatic monologue continued as he related the coach's words to how his buddies casually use the word "gay" to describe anything they think is dumb. It made him think about his brother/friend who was gay and how the use of this word was an extreme insult. He gave examples of how it would feel to use someone's name as a generic term for something they didn't like. The expected behavior here is to laugh and ignore, but to say something to stop the supposedly casual use of the word "gay" is what is really needed.
3) Another character was a 23-year old, wise-cracking young man who told a story of being stopped by the police. The character was treated in an derogatory and threatening way by the police officer who made nasty comments about not wanting "his kind" in town, etc. Well into this story, the audience learned that the character was Jewish and had been subjected to anti-Semitic and hateful activity when he was in high school. Although this character came off as confident and witty, it was evident that he felt deep pain from the discrimination he experienced. He refers to the simple 1st grade exercise of looking at a group of items on a worksheet and having to put an X through the one thing that is different, that doesn't fit in. This exercise does not need to be repeated in later grades, he says, since kids are taught well early on to point out and exclude those that are different.
4) The final monologue was a high school girl's part of a conversation with the therapist that her parents had sent her to due to a school suspension. The audience learns that the girl was engaged in a discussion on gender and equity in history class. In response to her passionate participation in the discussion, another student calls her a "feminist-nazi." She becomes enraged and is sent to the principal. The principal declares that her behavior was not "ladylike," which only further angers this character. This girl, also seemingly confident and witty, goes on to talk about her emotional pain. She tells how she is biracial, with one parent being Indian and the other Korean. She talks about how she looks different than other kids, and how she suffers from extreme anxiety caused by pressure to always do well in school. Just because one gets straight A's, she says, doesn't mean that your life is perfect. She goes on to lament the behavior she witnesses between girls in her school. She says girls are often fake to your face and then talk behind your back. No wonder, she concludes, that guys don't respect girls when they see this insincerity. She concludes with an appeal for girls to band together as sisters, to support one another, and to demand respect.
* At the conclusion of these dramatic presentations, Dr. Fowlin returned to an animal analogy. Which creature, he asked, is 1000 times more valuable when injured? This time, the students in the audience knew the correct answer: the oyster. Only when an oyster is injured, does it release the chemical needed to turn a grain of sand into a precious pearl. Likewise, when we're injured, we often release our pain by either making someone else feel worse or making ourselves feel worse. Dr. Fowlin talked about how in middle and high school, he used his talent for doing different voices and acting to make crank calls, shoplift, and worse. He encouraged the students to engage in positive actions as a response to feeling injured: start a group or write/draw/run out your pain. He gave the development of his presentation as an example of what he did as a positive response to his own pain.
* In conclusion, Dr. Fowlin gave the audience a challenge: In the next 24 hours, smile and say hi to 10 people you normally don't interact with (you never know whose day you'll make). In the afternoon presentation, he referred to an article in The New Yorker magazine ("Jumpers") about people who jump off the Golden Gate bridge. After one man jumps to his death, his psychiatrist goes to the man's apartment to look for clues as to why he jumped. The doctor finds a note that says, "if on my way to the bridge, one person smiles at me, I won't jump." Dr. Fowlin related a comment by a 9th grader from NJ in response to hearing this chilling anecdote in one of his presentations: the hundreds of people the man passed on the way to the bridge were doing what they were expected to do rather than what they needed to do. Dr. Fowlin also talked about unconditional love and a book entitled "One Child," about an abandoned child who herself engaged in violent behavior and the one adult who showed her unconditional love. Finally, Dr. Fowlin again recited the Langston Huges poem, told the students that they are beautiful and repeated his challenge to make a difference in someone's day: break the trend; pay attention; ask someone who looks sad or scared if they're okay (even if you don't really know them); tell someone something they said or did touched you; look out for one another!
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