Indomitable Spirit

By profession I am a technical writer. On the side, I have also published some short stories and some novels for kids. I also teach English every now and then at our local technical college..

Teaching English is probably my first love, though it takes a lot out of me. I taught at Tech for five years, and four of those years I received presidential commendations for service from Tom Barton, the president of the school. Still, teaching English (if you teach it right) is time consuming because of the vast amount of paper grading, and it is low paying compared to tech writing.

One semester I was assigned to teach a pre-101 course to the Machine Tool Technology students. This course was the hot potato of the English Department, as none of us could figure out why in the world that Machinists needed to take an English course. The Machine Tool Technology students couldn't figure it out, either. So the poor English teacher who was picked to teach it got stuck with 30 students, mostly male, who had no interest or motivation to learn the material. And the poor students were thrust into a class with little explanation or justification as to how this was going to help them.

My number came up, and I was assigned to teach the class. My first goal was to make it pertinent to them, so I made writing a resume and a cover letter two major goals, and then I decided that--in addition to some basic rules of grammar--I would teach them to use the library (if they did not know how) and I would show them all the trade periodicals available to them. Weekly assignments would consist of a couple worksheets of grammar, and an index-card sized report of any article that they read in a trade journal. By this method, they woudl be doing some writing every week, getting in some basic grammar practice, and also learning something that might help them in their careers: how to stay current on their trades and how to track new developments and changes.

On the first day I passed out the syllabus and started to preview the assignments with them. From the back of the room, one of the young men started a running series of comments under his breath as I talked, and I asked him to stop. When he did not but rather deliberately turned to his friend, jerked his head towards me, and said something that made his friend laugh out loud, I walked to the back of the room.

I looked him in the eye, and the rest of the class fell silent. "I asked you to stop," I told him.

His response was a sort of open leer and his friend laughed again.

I was unimpressed. This was college, not high school, and it was not going to turn into high school. "Get out," I told him.

He was a little surprised at this, but I stepped closer. "Out," I said again. He got up and left. I glanced at his friend. "You too."

To my surprise, his friend folded his arms, settled himself in the seat, and looked me in the eye. It was a definite statement that he was bigger than me, stronger then me, and I could not make him leave. For a moment I was stunned to realize I had a student physically intimidating me, but the moment was so brief he never even saw my surprise.

I stepped closer, and I remember thinking, "Buddy, if you and I end up on the ground wrestling with each other, one of us is getting out of here." I simply could not back down in my own classroom. I taught in a dress and heels back then, but it didn't matter. I knew if this kids got an inch of surrender, I would lose the entire class to him.

But I felt no hesitation, only the assertive decisiveness that I would push this issue to its conclusion, whatever that would be. We had a battle of wills for a moment. After a moment, he got up and left.

I continued the class, and afterwards I went to my mentor in the school's writing center and talked with her about it. She very nearly panicked. One of the boys, she was fairly sure, had been charged with assault as a juvenile and had been sent here to school by a judge as an alternative to time served in a juvenile detention center.

I went on to the dean of students. He was a tough, stocky man who had graduated from Sterling High years and years ago. Sterling High was the segregated high school for local black residents back in the old days. I've had older students from Sterling High who could still recount the Periodic table from memory after 20 years of being out of school. It was a hallmark school, a pearl somehow produced in the tragedy of segregation, a school where the teachers held up an incredibly high standard of learning. This man had fought his way through segregation in college and had little patience with people who waste time in school or who disrupt classrooms.

I told him what happened, and after discussing the matter with me thoroughly, he approved of my promptness in dismissing disrespectful students out of my class. I insisted that they could not come back in without apologizing to me, and he agreed and took it on himself to meet with the boys separately and insist that they apologize. He commended me for not putting up with nonsense. I mentioned the rumor that I'd heard, and he was concerned. He knew of the one student, and he told me frankly that the one boy was all bluff and probably would not come back even to apologize. The other boy he did not know.

I thougt about it a lot. I'd heard of another teacher at another tech school being assaulted by a student over a grade dispute. Both boys that I had dismissed were bigger than I am (and I'm six feet tall), and they were very muscular and tough looking. The rumours about the one boy's alleged assault were far ranging and probably inaccurate, but I had no idea how to get to the truth of the matter.

I went to one of my fellow black belts, the young man who was instructing the morning class in those days. Barry was a soft spoken young man who had fought and won two successive "Tough Man" contests in our town. Soft spoken, pleasant to talk to, and avidly fond of Spanish, Barry did not come across as tough (in spite of nineteen inch biceps and a nineteen inch neck). But in the first Tough Man contest, he knocked out one opponent in 32 seconds with a left back kick, setting a record. In the second Tough Man, every other fighter refused to kick against him, including Ray "The Kick Man" Rice, but Barry still won, just using fists.

At twenty-one, Barry was quiet, modest about his accomplishments, and even tempered. He dressed in cotton sweats most of the time, and because he was so tall, the close, soft cotton hid his superior muscle development. With his long, lean build, you'd have to look at him twice to realize that his shoulders were actually very broad and his neck thick. I'd never seen him lose his cool. I'd never even seen him brag to anybody. You could trust him to listen, and you could trust him as a friend.

I thought about the problem for a couple days. I'm a Christian and I am supposed to believe in turning the other cheek. If either or both of these guys came after me and I were unsuccessful in defending myself, it would be wrong to get revenge on them. At the same time, the sheer crime of a man assaulting a woman occurs again and again in our society, and not much is ever done about it. I told Barry what had happened in the classroom. I asked him--if anything happened to me--to find the boys and avenge me. He told me that he would go see them right then and warn them off, but I said no. I'm a black belt, and that requires a high standard of conduct, and I don't want to get into vigilantism. Besides, guys warning each other off is like throwing gasoline on a fire to put it out. It only makes things worse. When I told him this, he laughed and agreed.

"It's my problem," I told him. "And I want to handle it through professional channels. But if professional channels fail, I don't want them to get away with anything. Assaulting women is a terrible crime."

He nodded.

"They're white," I told him. "So be careful if anything happens."

I'm white, and Barry's black. We both knew that the sight of a black guy confronting two white guys could cause trouble on entirely new fronts, unrelated to this issue. But Barry's clever, and his wide-eyed, gentle expression makes him look like an easy target. I knew perfectly well that he could be clever enough--if he had to--to get an aggressive, hostile white guy to attack him first and thus make any counter attack a clear case of self defense.

I wrestled with this issue for a long time, even after it became apparent that I had scared both bullies off by sheer strength of will and determination of spirit. On the one hand, I did learn that most of fighting is psychological. Simply refusing to be bullied gave me the upper hand, and I chased both boys out by possessign and using indomitable spirit.

On the other hand, I was as subject to the psychological effects of battle as they were. Suggestions of revenge really unnerved me.

And then there's the question of vigilantism. On the one hand I am an English teacher who prides herself on professionalism and the amount of positive student feedback that I get. Students would highly recommend my classes to each other, and those presidential commendations I received were always based on student input, and not on peer observations. Yet my peer observations were also good, and I introduced some new teaching methods in the ENG 101 classes that are still used at Tech. In fact, my outlines and methods of having the Machine Tool students do periodical summaries was picked up and used by other teachers for that class. The idea of having to physically fight students bothers me, and the idea of having to go to another black belt as back up really bothers me.

But I am also a woman who is determined that nobody will ever successfully assault me. I hate the danger that women are in continually, and I hate it that our legal system does not protect us from assault. Most assaults against women are carried out by repeat offenders. I vowed a long time ago (after the beatings my father gave me) that the buck stops here. I am my own deterrent to assault, and if a man assaults me, I will be his last victim. He won't do it again to another woman, no matter what happens to me as I stop him.

The boys both quit school. Neither one approached me again--not to apologize and not to harass me. The Dean of Students paid me a great honor when he told my department head that they needed more teachers like me, and after it was safe to laugh about the matter, he often did, finding it very funny that a woman threw two big strapping men out of her classroom.

Until today, nobody has even known about the private discussion I had with Barry. It all turned out okay, but I still wonder about the ethics of what I did.

I named the article "Indomitable Spirit" because my example was one of a person refusing to lose in the long run. Essentially, I knew from the first moment of the confrontation that--no matter what it took--I would not let these guys subjugate me. Even--when it became known that I might have endangered myself-- if they put me in the hospital, they would be the ultimate losers in the conflict.

The question it raises in me is this: To have indomitable spirit (and thus end the confrontation by sheer strength of will, ending it without violence) was it necessary to have that end in mind from the beginning? I've been censured by other martial artists for my promptness in deciding that no matter what, no assailant will ever be ultimately successful in assaulting me, yet I wonder if that is not a necessary ingredient in attaining indomitable spirit.

Before you can act on a commitment to never be beaten (and by definition, "indomitable spirit" means the refusal to be subjugated) you have to make the commitment to never be beaten. Yet if you make the commitment to never be beaten, you have to then act on it and ensure that you never actually will be beaten, no matter what physically happens to you. This is essentially what I did.

A couple people have accused me of taking a contract out on the boys, but that is not what I did. I did not carry the violence to them. I wanted to avoid it. I was firmly resolved that he/they would have to carry the attack to me, and I decided to stand alone to defend myself, no matter what that was going to cost me. But I did ensure that if he/they carried assault to me, he/they would ultimately lose.

Somebody else told me I was paranoid. I tend to not think so. I mean, there was physical intimidation going on at first, and one of the boys had some type of conviction for assault. I don't think it was paranoid to think that crossing them might get me into trouble.

Yet first and foremost I want to point out that violence did not happen. The kid tried physical intimidation, and he failed against a smaller, weaker woman. So it gets into this causal relationship. In order to win, do you have to be willing to die--or to kill? If that is true, the paradox is that it seems that psychologically, the person least likely to need to defend himself/herself is the person most willing to fight the last degree. In other words, the person least likely to die in a fight is the person most willing to die in a fight.

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