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Pleasure and Peril

By Billy Fried
By Billy Fried

There’s a new video that’s gone viral about a fifth grade teacher from North Carolina named Barry White, Jr. (no relation to the sexy crooner). He has a daily ritual where he greets every student by the door with an individual handshake that reflects their unique personalities. White was inspired by LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, who have a special handshake that fuels their winning camaraderie. “I’m always pumped up and then we start doing the moves and that brings them excitement and pumps them up for a high energy class,” says White. It’s a unique way to look in each student’s eyes and let them know they count. You can see the palpable joy in his students as they enter his classroom.

I saw something similar at the recent “No Suits Allowed,” Laguna Beach High School’s talent show fundraiser. It’s been going on for 29 consecutive years because of one teacher, who retired a year and half ago. His name is Gary Shapiro, and he taught advanced math for 33 years.

This year, like every, the program was packed full of talented high school students – and even alumni, who Gary coaxes back for the event. He MC’s, calls the performers out, accompanies them on guitar, and sings backup vocals. And like Barry White, Jr., Gary has a personal connection with every student. You can feel the easy rapport, where he playfully chides them while also encouraging them to be the best version of themselves. He makes sure to shake every performer’s hand at the end. Some of the alumni hugged him and told the crowd how special he was.

How lucky they are. Because if you’ve been blessed with just one great teacher in your lifetime, you’ve been blessed. You know how influential they are and how they can set you off on a course that makes all the difference. Often they see something in you that you didn’t know was there, and they coax it out. As Geoffrey Canada, the education reformer from the 2010 movie “Waiting for Superman,” said, “When you see a great teacher, you are seeing a work of art.”

I’m presuming Laguna has a few Gary Shapiros. It’s partly why so many families endure the higher cost of living here. Our schools are lauded nationally. And the level of engagement by students and parents is dizzying. I see exhausted, frazzled parents everywhere. I have twin nieces at Top of the World. Besides a rigorous academic schedule, their lucky parents get to schlep them from one after school program to another, including water polo, drama, martial arts, music, filmmaking, science club, and fundraisers.

And then this over-achieving little Mayberry gets rocked on a single night in December, when five 17-year-olds with brains not fully developed pull a prank that has all the markings of a racial incident (whether they were equally complicit or not). Bad enough that they tossed a watermelon, but one was heard to yell a racial epithet.

I’m not here to judge the incident, because it’s far too incendiary, with a grieving, wronged family on one side, and no doubt grieving, shamed parents on the other, in despair over the fates of their kids and how an insensitive and immature insult could tarnish their lives.

So the community is in existential crisis. How could it happen in our hermetically sealed Shangri-La? Well, sometimes it takes a shock to reveal the cracks in the façade. We’ve now also seen a racially insensitive Laguna student film broadcast on LA’s KCAL 9, and people have come out reporting stories of harassment that have happened to them. Gay men and women, non-whites of all persuasion, and even those with disabilities.

We also know of the hard drug and alcohol problem that plagues our kids. And the ennui, apathy and lack of empathy that comes with “affluenza.” They use not because they have so little. But because they have so much, except sometimes the love and guidance of parents who may be distracted by the many shiny objects they can acquire. Broken homes know no socio-economic bounds. Neither does bad role modeling. There are bigots everywhere, and in this dangerously corrosive culture, cruel behavior is being modeled right at the top.

Whatever happens, I sincerely hope everyone can heal. For the perpetrators, it’s a shame that their fates might be determined by some faceless county district attorney, and not somehow adjudicated by our own community in a more civilized, compassionate and teachable way.

In the humanist Ubuntu philosophy practiced by some South African tribes, when someone does something wrong, he or she is trotted out to the village center for two days. Instead of being denounced, punished, or even asked to apologize, the village does something radically different. They shower him or her with praise, expressing all the good things about them. It’s a love bath, and perhaps nothing can turn a person’s life around than to discover how much they are loved. Oh, that we could be so evolved.

 

Billy Fried hosts “Laguna Talks” on Thursday at 8 p.m. on KX 93.5, and can be reached at [email protected].

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