Good Cop: A True Act of Heroism

We’ve seen a lot of “bad cop” news lately, so seeing something good is refreshing.

It seems like the bad stuff has been pervasive, and if you’re like me, it’s hard to overcome. It weighs on me. Despite the passing of time, I keep picturing the New York police officers choking Eric Garner for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes. I picture the video of the South Carolina officer shooting Walter Scott in the back as Scott was running away. I picture the Baltimore police giving Freddie Gray a “rough ride” that appears to have broken his spine and killed him.

When you see these videos, it can be hard to have much faith in police. The warm fuzzies are just not easy to conjure up.  Yet enter a new video that you should see. It features Detective Ken Carter, a 12-year veteran of the Evanston Police Department, acting quickly and saving the life of a 22-year-old man who appeared likely to jump from the top of a parking garage.

Det. Ken Carter speaking to WGN TV

This happened over Memorial Day weekend in Evanston, Illinois where I live. On Sunday May 24 about 5 p.m., Detective Carter was off duty. He was out to dinner at a Chili’s Restaurant with his fiancé. As they left the restaurant at Maple Avenue and Clark Street, his fiancé spotted a man standing on a ledge of a nearby parking structure, some 70 feet above the street. 

Carter called his fellow Evanston Police officers, who arrived quickly. They made a plan in which Carter played a key role and managed to pull the young man to safety.

Several Chicago news outlets carried this story following a press release from the Evanston Police department. When I saw Carter’s picture in the newspaper and on WGN-TV, I realized that I see him often at the gym where I work out. We don’t know each other, but I recognized him. I often see him talking to people, smiling and then getting down to business with his exercise routine.

Carter is clearly a fitness guy – a weight lifter. He’s not one of those stereotypical police officers you might picture in the doughnut shop. As a former journalist covering crime in Chicago for several years, I saw plenty of the big-around-the middle officers who certainly were ill-equipped to give any offender a decent chase around the block.

Detective Carter, on the other hand, is a former Marine and member of the Illinois National Guard. He looks like he could chase a bad guy down, tackle him, handcuff him and read him his rights without breaking much of a sweat.

His fitness certainly paid off as did his quick thinking and action. Once on sixth floor of the parking garage, Detective Carter scurried in a crouched position along the base of a short concrete wall toward where the young man stood on the ledge.  Carter moved swiftly, out of view from the young man, while his uniformed colleagues spoke to the man, trying to get him to step down.

Carter said that the young man had thrown his cell phone and wallet down to the street. It appeared he was ready to jump. Without much time to react or waste, Detective Carter closed in, jumped to grab the man and held on while his fellow officers raced in to help.

Security camera footage of the May 24 rescue

Detective Carter told the Chicago Tribune, "I said a prayer, and once I got close enough, I grabbed him and held him and the assisting officers managed to get him off the ledge." He added, “When I grabbed him he kind of lurched forward. I held on for life. It took the assistance of my co-workers to get him off. It was a struggle. He was very upset. He did not want to come off the ledge.”

You can watch a grainy security camera video of the rescue on YouTube (during the first minute, nothing happens, so jump forward to the 1-minute mark of the 2-minute video).

As you will see, the plan worked.  Not only did he save the young man’s life, but through his action, Carter saved others down on the street who also may have been injured. He saved bystanders coming out of restaurants and stores from seeing the disturbing image of a man jump 70 feet to his death on a crowded street.

What an awful sight that certainly would have been.  I have been to that parking garage on Maple Avenue a thousand times. My wife and I walk with our two daughters past that garage constantly. It’s by the movie theater and several popular restaurants.

Detective Carter acted bravely. To me, what he did was heroic, and it’s something that the Evanston Police Department and the City of Evanston should recognize and thank him for. Would everyone do what Detective Carter did – especially on their day off?

As an Evanston resident, I know I feel proud of him. The next time I see him at the gym, I’ll make sure to tell him in person.

Odd Footnote: At the top of the parking garage on Maple Avenue in Evanston where this distraught young man intended to jump is a massive iron sculpture. The sculpture is long beam that spans across the top of the 6-storey, 600-space parking garage. On each end of the beam is an iron silhouette of a person…balancing sort of like a tight-rope walker.

The sculpture certainly is unique and it draws the attention of onlookers below. As I looked up at it a few days ago, I couldn’t help but wonder: Was it suggestive to the extent that it inspired this troubled young man to step up to the garage’s top floor and nearly jump?

Obviously, I don’t know. People are going to do what they’re doing to do. Maybe it’s an outlandish thing to even consider. But I think it’s worth the City of Evanston, in light of this near tragic event, to ask the question of whether in this case life imitating art might be reason enough to consider a change to the public garage that it owns.  

Cozy Table for Two...iPads

You’ve probably seen this too. You’re at dinner – perhaps even a nice place. You’re enjoying the food, some wine, the conversation and then you spot people at a nearby table staring at their respective electronic devices.

Just last weekend in fact, I saw this. My wife and I were walking together along Main Street in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was a beautiful, warm evening. The sidewalk cafes were crowded with people, the air was filled with delicious smells of food. A street performer on guitar was also actually playing a fairly respectable version of the Talking Heads’ song “Psycho Killer.”

We were trying to decide where to eat. Those of you who have been up and down Main Street know the options abound. Seafood? Italian? Indian? French Bistro? As I peered into the window of a fairly high-end restaurant, I saw a couple seated at a white cloth covered table. The table was adorned with sparkling silverware, tall wine glasses with generous pours and directly in front of the man and the woman were dueling iPads.

"Let me look deep into your...screen."

I stopped, of course, to take a picture and to comment to my wife, “Check this out. A night out on the town to….play Candy Crush.”

Now, I honestly don’t know if they were playing Candy Crush or not. I didn’t get that close. I didn’t want to intrude on their moment together – one they were sharing by completely ignoring each other. Instead they were focusing with a somewhat lost, trance-like gaze on their glowing, 64-bit 9.7-inch high resolution retinal displays.

I realize this is not a crime. Plenty of people, for example, sit in complete silence across from each other. They simply chew their food, say nothing, and take in the ambiance. The same result is accomplished, I suppose.

My question, though, is this: Are these amazing devices – smart phones, tablets and now watches – revolutionizing our world in just about every way imaginable and simultaneously destroying human social interaction?

I will refrain from hazarding an educated guess to this piercing question. Instead, I’ll simply suggest you go to Google (preferably when you are not out to dinner with someone) and type in “smart phones killing social interaction.”

You will see an array of results, including scholarly articles that are predictably hard to understand. You will see other articles that make the point that, yes, in fact these devices are electronic heroin. We’re addicted to them. We can’t do anything until we get our fix and we’re losing the ability to interact with others because, frankly, phones are just more important.

So, back to the couple at the window table in the fancy Ann Arbor restaurant. I’m thinking that they were Facebook friends and when they finally sat down together and realized that the other was an actual flesh and blood person, they both panicked, lunged for their iPads and logged in. Once their anxiety of being together “in person” subsided, they began exchanging messages with each other from across the three-foot-long table.

I’m thinking that it went like this:

Woman: (typing in the “What’s on your mind?” box) Wow. Menu looks amazing!

Man: (seeing her comment post in his newsfeed, he first “likes” it then he types) Totally. Thinking about appetizers. Do you like Carpaccio?

Woman: Hmmm. Not sure. What’s that? It is soup?

Man: No! OMG. It’s raw meat. Really yummy.

Woman: Gross! I’m a vegetarian. You don’t know me at all… L

Man: Sorry! But it wasn’t on your profile. So I assumed…

Woman: Whatever. I’m jumping over to Twitter.

Potential Solution

Clearly, this is bad, but don’t despair because I think I have an answer. I thought of this the other day, so it’s not totally worked out.

Let’s assume, though, 10 more years go by and more and more people lose the ability to interact with real live people. My observation is not scientific, but what I see in the world is people walking, sitting, and standing while simultaneously they are both peering at their phones and listening with their ear buds snuggly nestled in their ears.

"So glad we have this time to catch up....on Facebook."

I say let’s develop an app that can read social situations. It will take in both auditory and visual information. This data will be routed to a cloud database where it will be subject to analysis, sophisticated parsing techniques and feedback algorithms. In essentially “real time” the app will provide us instructions through our earphones that tell us what we’re supposed to say and do.

So, if at dinner for example, two people are logged into the app at the same time, then, voila, they will be having what historically has been called “a conversation” in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

For instance, we may struggle to know how to respond to a question like, “How are you?” To help with this, the app’s synthesized voice will provide us with lines, a la Cyrano de Debergerac, without missing a beat so that we can reply with , for example, “Pretty good. Thank you” in our very own calm, human voice.

I’m excited about this. I’m thinking a good name might be something like “iHuman” or “iCanTalk.” Maybe “iHaveBrain” is too sarcastic. But it’s catchy, don’t you think?

This is Paradise

If you’ve been to LaGuardia Airport in roughly the last 40 years, odds are you’ve seen John DiCicco.

Mr. DiCicco has been shining shoes for a full 4 ½ decades. He has four stands located at four different terminals in the airport. Before him, the business belonged to his father, John Joseph DiCicco, and before that to his grandfather, John Joseph DiCicco.

“I’m a third,” he told me, applying black polish to my beat up shoes as I sat in his chair in the American Airlines terminal. “My grandfather, when he got off the boat from Italy, he lived downtown in Little Italy. He cleaned shoes on the Staten Island Ferry, so this business now is 105.”

Mr. John Joseph DiCicco III

The DiCiccos have been at LaGuardia 68 years. In 1947, the year his grandfather moved the business to the airport, he moved his own family from Mulberry Street in Little Italy to Flushing. By 1960, the elder DiCicco and his wife had 32 grandchildren within 10 blocks of their house – 17 boys and 15 girls.

According to Mr. DiCicco, his family has the oldest small business in any airport on the planet. I’m not inclined to disagree with him.

“We go in the Guinness Book soon…which is really cool,” he tells me, glancing up from his work as a parade of passengers hurry past his stand. “And no matter what airport you go to in this country, this is the least expensive that you’ll ever see.  This place is paradise.”

Apparently “paradise” was not good enough for his cousins, though. In fact, they considered the work of shining shoes as, well, beneath them.

“My cousins never wanted this business,” Mr. DiCicco explained. “They were embarrassed. They thought it was not the proper thing to do. I found out why – because in the 40s, 50s and 60s, grandpa’s stands were in the men’s room. My first day, they were taken out of the men’s room in 1970. Next Wednesday, I’m working here 46 years.”

He continued: “When they took the stands out of the men’s room, I said ‘Thank you, God.’ I knew this place…I didn’t want to work in there, but that’s where all the men were. My cousins still never came back and I worked through high school. In the 46 years I’m here, I’ve met a million nice people and only 50 idiots in my life. This place is paradise.”

Paradise. He said it again. You might think to yourself, “Ah, he’s just kidding” or perhaps painting a rosy picture. But when you talk to him – when you hear his enthusiasm, the genuine optimism in his voice, you quickly realize he’s not kidding around. He’s totally serious.

Apparently, the price for shining a shoe in paradise is $3. You have to stop and remind yourself this is New York, after all. What is still $3? I know for a fact that a packet of peanut M&Ms at the gift shop some 50 feet from his stand costs about the same.

But because Mr. DiCicco’s rent to the New York Port Authority is grandfathered in, it hasn’t increased since 1990. In those 25 years, he’s kept his price the same. Three bucks. The Port Authority wanted to throw him out and usher in a company that would charge $10 (and justify higher rent for them), but Mr. DiCicco, no doubt channeling the resolve of his father and grandfather, refused to go.

“I told the Port that this is only 4 minutes of work. It’s not a beauty parlor,” he told me. “I can’t justify more money because I can’t justify more time. How much could you actually do to the shoe? You clean them, protect them and move on.”

He proudly explains that former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani came to his defense in his battle with the Port. He credits Mr. Giuliani for why he’s still in business.

I’d say there are other reasons as well, though. You’re likely never going to meet a more genuinely pleasant guy. Mr. DiCicco has a charm, a quite confidence and good sense of humor. As business men walk past, Mr. DiCicco calls out to them in a slightly sarcastic voice, saying, “See, look. No one cares about their shoes anymore.” Or perhaps, as he said to me,  he will suggest, “Your shoes need me more than I need them.”  People smile, as I did. He smiles back.

Amidst the frenetic movement of passengers, rolling bags in tow, smart phones in hand, rushing to catch their flights or striding purposefully for an exit to grab a taxi, the one thing that is not moving is Mr. DiCicco and his business. I expect that will be true for many years to come.

For the record: On Wednesday of this week, May 27, John turned 60 years old. Happy birthday, John. 

When Jazz is Alive (not dead)

One early winter Sunday morning when I was a kid, my father, sporting a slightly crazy look on his face and carrying an overstuffed canvas bank bag, walked through the front door of our home.

He was wearing his trademark blue parka with a bright orange lining and fake fur collar. As he closed the door behind him and stomped the snow off his boots, a rush of cold air rolled across the blue shag living room carpet where I sat, watching him curiously, as he pulled several large stacks of bills from the bag, threw them wildly into the air and yelled with a exuberant smile, “It’s time to play ‘Pick up money!’”

My father owned a jazz nightclub on Rush Street in Chicago in the 1970s so much of this made sense. Around this time, legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis is rumored to have declared jazz was dead, but to my father it had actually given him a new life.

At the age of 30, Robert E. Hackett, Sr. ditched his 9-year career selling insurance, got a loan and bought The Backroom for $20,000 from a man named Goodie Singh. For the better part of the decade, he managed to support his wife and three children on cash from cover charges, two-drink minimums and last calls  from customers who frequented the tiny club six nights a week, often until the 5 a.m. close.

The Backroom drew musicians like Eddie Higgins, Monty Alexander, Ramsey Lewis, Judy Roberts, Eldee Young, Red Holt, Kim Martell, Shelly Torres and others.  I know he loved it because I talked to him about it years later. He loved being the boss. He loved the music and the night-life scene, where judges, crooks, celebrities (some local, some national) and average Joes sat shoulder to shoulder at the bar.

He said it was like throwing a party every night. Being called “boss” gave him the feeling of respect that he longed for and also – as I look back – a chance to re-live his 20s that he missed being a young husband and then father of three boys starting at the age of 21.

 My father died in July 2011 at the age of 68. It was unexpected to all of us, but I don’t think to him. He was sick – cancer in both of his lungs. Knowing him, the stubborn lifelong smoker, he very likely just didn’t want to tell anyone so he could go out on his own terms. That’s just how he was. He loathed hospitals, having lost his wife (my mother) to cancer 24 years earlier.

The crappy thing for all of us certainly was not being able to say goodbye, thank you or anything for that matter. And in the four years I’ve spent reflecting on how I feel about this, I’ve thought about a lot of things, but I’ve also found myself listening to more and more jazz.

My favorite right now is Bill Evans, widely considered one of jazz’s most influential piano players. He played on 5 of the 6 tracks of Miles Davis’ landmark “Kind of Blue” album in 1958. He broke from Davis a year later, and in 1961, The Bill Evans Trio – featuring bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian – recorded “Sunday at the Village Vanguard,” which is routinely ranked as one of the best live jazz recordings of all time.  

The Bill Evans Trio at the Village Vanguard - 1961

Last week, I was in New York for work and decided somewhat spontaneously to hop a cab from Midtown to Greenwich Village and catch a late set at the Vanguard.  From what I can tell from old pictures, the dank basement space of the Vanguard, which is celebrating its 80^th anniversary this year, does not look like it’s changed much over the years.

As I nursed my drink and listened to the 75-minute set, I thought of the great artists who have played on the tiny stage – Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Stan Getz and, of course, Bill Evans. Pictures of many of these artists are on the walls. As I stood to leave, I saw a picture of Evans high up on the wall and snapped a picture.

1970 photo of Evans on the wall of the Village Vanguard

After I paid cash for my $13 drink and $30 cover charge, I walked up the narrow stairway leading to Seventh Avenue South and found myself thinking of that Sunday when my father showered our living room with nightclub money and how my brother and I grabbed at the fluttering bills at first, then dropped to our hands and knees to frantically collect them all.

I found myself as well thinking of Bill Evans leaving this very building on the night of June 25, 1961. He and his bass player, Scott LaFaro probably said a reasonably mundane goodbye, likely shaking hands as they went their separate ways, not knowing that they would never see each other again.  

LaFaro, a brilliant 25-year-old musician who Evans had grown close to, was killed 10 days later in a car crash. “Sunday at the Village Vanguard” captured their final performance together. Evans was devastated. He did not record or perform again in public for many months. As I stood on the street, looking up at the red neon “Vanguard” sign, I knew how Evans must have felt. He was crushed. He had no idea it was coming. And he never got to say goodbye.

Crowd outside the Village Vanguard

If I’m honest, I know my decision to listen to jazz that night was not exactly spontaneous. I know it was and continues to be my way of conjuring up the past. For me, hearing the beauty of the music is my way of breathing life into my father’s memory.

I like to picture his stout frame behind the bar of The Backroom. Jazz music would be reverberating off the brick walls of the cramped room. He’d no doubt be smoking and more than likely having a drink…or two. And he’d certainly be proud to be the boss, keeping track through the night as the till rang – dollar after dollar – filling that canvas bank bag with bills to bring home to his family.

A Blast from the Past

I am getting dressed in the locker room of the gym after my workout. It’s 6 a.m. I’m leaving and a guy next to me has just arrived and is pulling his workout gear out of his bag. All is quiet and sufficiently mundane. Then, he farts.

It’s not a weak, wispy fart, mind you. This is the real deal – a robust, stereophonic, authoritative, almost bellicose fart. It’s equal parts duck snort, a heavy cotton sheet tearing in two and that moist, chaotic reverberation that the last squeeze on a nearly empty plastic ketchup bottle gives up without fail.

I’m standing, pulling on my pants. He’s sitting down, dressed only in his boxer briefs and white socks, wrestling his microfiber t-shirt overhead when his blast rattles and ricochets off the wooden bench, snapping my otherwise drowsy head into rapt attention.

No one else is around. It’s just us. I look over at him. He does absolutely nothing – just keeps getting dressed, sliding on his shirt, shorts and begins lacing up his Nikes. No acknowledgement of me or of the fart. It’s as if nothing happened at all.

A Two-Part Dilemma

So, as I dress, I now have a dilemma – the first of my young day, which until this point has been decidedly routine. This is not a simple dilemma either. It’s a two-part dilemma.

First – do I call out the elephant in the room – or more accurately the elephant fart in the room? Should I acknowledge this profound act of flatulence, or should I just let it slide – write it off as just something men do occasionally in a locker room without any acknowledgement, let alone discussion?

The second part of my dilemma is trickier. I know this guy – the farter. Yet by his passive disregard of me, it appears he’s entirely forgotten who I am. We’ve met before – in fact, multiple times. Let me explain.

His name is Larry. We went to the same high school together – a Jesuit, all-boys school. He was 3 years older than me and served as one of two student aides in my freshman theology class. Mr. Joyce was our teacher, a man of slight stature and a  calming yoga-instructor voice who had impeccably combed wavy brown hair and an impressive array of brightly colored sweaters that he wore regardless of the temperature or season.

I was impressionable then, I guess. Prior to the locker room blast, Larry burned a spot in my cerebral cortex that stores my long-term memory. I, on the other hand, apparently did no such thing to him. I know this because a few years earlier I saw him standing by the coffee lady at the commuter rail station. I shook his hand, introduced myself and reminded him of high school, Mr. Joyce and our mutual theology class. His response was a foggy, polite and a quite perfunctory, “Oh, right…” as he weakly shook my outstretched hand.

While I was nonplussed, I figured, “Well, whatever.” It was 30 years ago. He’s a lawyer now, I learned, during our short chat. I cut him some slack. He’s been busy, plus lawyers need to remember a lot of stuff. We parted ways at the train station that day, yet here we were again, both half-naked in a locker room at 6 a.m. and seated a mere four feet away from me, he unleashes the mother of all farts, then proceeds to pretend it didn’t happen, leaving me with the dilemma I’ve just described.

"Did You Say Something?"

Seconds after Larry’s fart, I felt compelled to speak. Somehow the first response that came into my head was Shrek’s simple but profound, “Better out than in, I always say.”  But I kept quiet.

Then I thought of saying, “Sorry….did you say something?” I held off, though.

I then considered saying, “That’s my point exactly!” but I backed off because it seemed out of place and somehow rude.

Larry was a slow dresser. This afforded me some time to think things over, actually. He was in no hurry. Fortunately for both of us, this atomic gastrointestinal event was curiously odorless. Had it not been, I suspect it would have hastened both of our departures.

As the awkward silence continued, I came to realize quickly that Larry could care less – not just about the fart, but about me. There was no, “Excuse me,” or “Sorry, those Brussels sprouts get me every time” He didn’t come out with even a slightly boastful claim of, “Now that’s what I’m talking about.”  Nothing.

Any of these phrases would have been fine, but he was like a Trappist monk seemingly reflecting in his own mini mental monastery, focusing exclusively now on making the most perfect knot possible in his white shoelace.

My desire to interject faded. I realized that if I were I to speak, I’d need to remind him of our common past. I’d have to mention high school and then the train station. It seemed like a long, burdensome conversation, one entirely not worth having. So, I left.

It’s just as well. I’d heard enough. I needed to start my day. I had no desire to dredge up the past – at least with an unrepentant, flatulent attorney with an aloof demeanor and a sketchy memory to boot.

#LearningFromMistakes

I admit it. I might have jumped the gun calling for ESPN to fire reporter Britt McHenry.

The month-long drumbeat of Tweets calling for #firebrittmchenry has been strong and steady. To her detractors, glamorous blonde Britt has become the most hated reporter on TV, the consummate mean girl and the embodiment of snobbery.

I jumped into the fray with:  

Quick background: 28-year old Washington D.C.-based McHenry had her car towed. In retrieving it, she was spitting mad and unleashed a tirade of judgmental, caustic, insulting remarks at the female tow company employee. She basically told the lady she was fat, stupid and ugly and characterized herself as the brainy girl with looks and skills who has made it to the big time on TV.

McHenry’s tongue-lashing was recorded by the company (Advanced Towing) and, by the magic of our smart phone, social media world, the one-minute security cam footage was posted on April 16 and quickly went viral.

The story soon hit CNN and other major news outlets. McHenry Tweeted an apology. ESPN suspended her for a week, and she then resurfaced asking for people (via Twitter) to “give me a second chance to prove to you how much I value integrity, character and treating people with respect.”

Britt had a bad day. Her life blew up big time. But I’ve been doing some thinking around two things:

1.  People deserve second chances (because they can learn from their mistakes)
2.   We all have a chance to learn a great deal from other people’s mistakes

Second Chances

We are a country of second chances. Nothing makes that case better than the late Marion Barry.  Barry, as you’ll recall, served as Washington D.C.’s mayor in the 1980s. In 1990, he was videotaped smoking crack cocaine, arrested by the FBI and eventually put in jail for 6 months. After he got out in 1992, Barry was elected to the Council of the District of Columbia running on the slogan, "He May Not Be Perfect, But He's Perfect for D.C." Clever and it worked. In 1994, he was elected mayor again and served in that role until 1999.

I could make a pretty good case that the crimes of Britt McHenry don’t rise to the level of Marion Barry’s. So, on that basis alone, I’d say she’s worthy of a second chance.  If I’m honest with myself, I can say I’ve had some less than stellar moments. I can recall an event from my past in which I lost my temper a bit and had a few choice words for someone who I thought treated me unfairly.

When I was in my 20s, I was a reporter working with the now defunct City News Bureau of Chicago as a crime reporter. One night, my car was towed by “Lincoln Towing,” notorious on the city’s north side for its aggressive practices. I was pissed. It cost me over $200 to reclaim my 1983 Buick Regal, and I’m pretty sure I let the tow employee have it with a few choice words through the foot-thick dirty Plexi-glass window while I signed the credit card receipt and he dropped my car keys down into the dingy, dented metal tray.

It wasn’t my best moment. I was worked up. No video of the incident exists that I’m aware of (granted it was the late 1980s), but if one was taken and it made its way with the speed of light to my boss, my family, my friends and the general public, I am sure I’d have been equally contrite and embarrassed, wanting people to cut me some slack and give me a do-over.

Learning from Britt

When you listen to the video and consider McHenry’s statements, it’s hard to have much empathy for her.  She said a lot of bad things. Here’s a quick sprint through her quotes.

•  “I’m in the news, sweetheart.”
• “I will f#*&ing sue this place.”
• “That’s why I have a degree and you don’t.”
• “I wouldn’t work in a scumbag place like this.”
• “Makes my skin crawl even being here.”
• “Yep, that’s all you care about is just taking people’s money. With no education, no skill set, just wanted to clarify that.”
• “Do you feel good about your job?
• “So I can be a college dropout and do the same thing?”
• “Why? Because I have a brain? And you don’t?”
• “Maybe if I was missing some teeth they would hire me, huh?”
• “ ‘Cause they [the employee’s teeth] look so stunning … ‘Cause I’m on television and you’re in a f&*%ing trailer, honey.”
• “Lose some weight, baby girl.”

So, if we’re going to extract a few lessons learned here and move on, what can we agree are the salient points? I’d offer the following:

1.  Elitism – Don’t ever think you’re better than someone else because of education or because, in your view, you have a better job. Worry about yourself.  Avoid being condescending and disrespectful to other people. It almost always results in making you look bad. 
2. Classism – Don’t insult what someone does for a living. People make snap judgments too often without knowing any facts.  A lot of circumstances combine to lead to what someone does to get by in the world. If you’ve accomplished something in your life, be humble, grateful and proud, but don’t define yourself or elevate your image by stepping on someone else’s head whom you feel is inferior. That just sucks. 
3. The Ugly Truth – Our society puts entirely too much value on physical beauty and appearance. Criticizing someone’s weight or missing teeth, for example, says more about your own insecurity and distorted sense of what’s important than it does about the other person. As writer and poet Dorothy Parker once said, “Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes right to the bone.”

The reaction against Britt McHenry has been intense. But I think more than hating her, people really hate what her comments represent. They speak to being entitled, classist, judgmental and self-focused. These kinds of topics get reactions - big time. 

Now, full disclosure, my prior Tweets on this matter have led to @BrittMcHenry blocking me. I get that. If you’re trying to rebound and patch things up, you don’t want to hear the haters. But to her, to ESPN and those still rallying for her termination, I’d suggest the following are worth considering:

• #ForgiveBritt
• #LearnFromMistakes

Or in her own words:

• #IntegrityCharacterRespect

What Makes a Great Teacher?

 In 2013, Ayad Akhtar won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play “Disgraced.” When he was asked during an interview about his play and his other writing, Akhtar, a 44-year-old New Yorker, said, “I’d had a wonderful high school teacher who made me want to be a writer. Everything I do is an homage to her.”

When I heard him say this, a series of images in passed through my head about what his teacher must have been like, how she ran her class, what she must have felt like when she learned her student won the Pulitzer Prize. Through these images, though, I found myself staring at the face of my 7^th grade teacher at Springman Junior High School – Mrs. Stephan.

She was a kind, matronly woman who kept wadded up tissues in the sleeve of her sweater. Her reddish brown hair sat like a beehive on the top of her head. She had a pleasant, understated smile, unusually warm hands and she smelled like the fragrant soap balls my grandparents kept in a seashell dish in their master bedroom.

Ayad Akhtar - (Photo by Nina Subin)

I thought of how through her quiet confidence in me she managed to fill me with more energy and enthusiasm than I thought possible. Granted, I was only 12, my voice cracked with startling regularity. I had not quite discovered deodorant, had persistent acne and was stumbling awkwardly into my early teenage years.

This started me thinking about great teachers. Truthfully, I actually think of this subject often. But let’s just say this comment from Akhtar and my mental tumble back in time to Mrs. Stephan's classroom prompted me again to ask myself the question, “What makes a great teacher?”

Like you, I have my opinions, but I was curious what others thought. To get answers, I posted this question to a few discussion groups on Linked In. It’s a great place, Linked In – full of thoughtful, well-spoken people, I’ve found. I asked the educators, “What qualities make a great teacher?”

I received many replies. Here are a few that I thought hit the mark.

• Professional trainer Jason Sturges of Alexandria, Virginia wrote that great teachers “focus on the participant needs (versus) just getting through the content.”

•  It’s a simple thing, but he’s totally right. How many instructors have you had that seem bent on plowing through the content come hell or high water? I have had more than a few. Great teachers focus on what the students need first. 

• Ann Adler, a learning designer and facilitator from Cumbria, England wrote several things that I loved. She noted that great teachers “understand what it means to be a learner and how to develop learning capability in those they teach”. She also stated that great teachers “draw out, rather than pour in, learning.” 

• I agree completely. You can’t forget what it is to learn and expect to be a great teacher. We can all tell when teachers have lost the desire to learn. They become jaded, lecture and frankly dial it in. Old-school lecturers attempt to generically dump information into our head – with alarming inefficiency.  Great teachers, in contrast, draw out – they draw us out, draw out our energy, our curiosity, our capabilities. 

• Dr. Martin Carnap, a longtime educator and coach in Costa Rica, wrote that you can best define great teachers by focusing on their students. Do the students take initiative during class? Do they make decisions? Do they feel the importance of what they’re doing? Do they look for alternative points of view and modify ideas, focus and strategies? If so, he wrote, you have a great teacher. 

• Well said, Martin. All I can add is that to great teachers, it’s truly all about the students and less about the teachers. Their own ego fades into the background. I wish more of the teachers I had (and continue to have) subscribed to this idea, don’t you?

• Kathy Miller, head of the English Department at Coulsdon Sixth Form College in the UK had many great thoughts, but the two I liked the best were: (1) Be open to and ask for feedback from your students and (2) Love the students- care about them- there are many ways to demonstrate this.

• What can beat this? Teachers, first off, should never stop learning, so feedback is a must no matter how many years they’ve been in the classroom.  In my view, someone who is not open to feedback likely has a distorted sense of his or her own effectiveness or is afraid to hear what he or she already expects or knows.

• Second – we all realize when someone cares about us and when that person does not.  If a teacher cares, you know it right away and you’re very likely to care more about learning. It’s like my friend Tammy Berman told me recently, “Kids won’t care what you know until they know that you care.” I would only add that in addition to kids, we can include adults as well.   

So, was Ayad Akhtar’s teacher all of these things? My bet, quite honestly, is yes. Did she focus on his needs? Did she act as a learner, draw out instead of pour in? Was her ego in check and did she love and care for him as a student?

I would say absolutely. If she hadn’t, would he still have been a writer? Would he have won the Pulitzer Prize? It’s impossible to say, but it’s a question worth considering as we think about the power teachers have and the influence they can have in people’s lives and their importance to the broader success of our society.