Call Me “Ugly”? Knock Me Off my Joyful Journey?
It’s Only Wind, and Wind Makes Me Strong
by Chris Carlson Kuehn
I was seven, a first grader at the bike racks after school when an older, bigger boy I didn’t know left two of his buddies on the playground and approached me.
He stopped in front of me and stared me down. “You’re ugly.” Then he slapped my face.
Standing my ground, shocked and confused, I watched him return to his buddies. He laughed with them and looked back at me. If they’d made a bet about making a girl cry, someone had lost. I didn’t stick around for round two’s smackdown. I pedaled home and told my stoic half-Norwegian mom about it. She cradled my chin, checking my face for redness and swelling — there was none. Staring into my clear, angry eyes, she shook her head.
“He has no power over you. And he never will. I bet you somewhere in his life, most likely at home, he feels powerless and picked on. He’s just a troubled boy testing his control over someone he thought was weaker than himself. He failed, didn’t he?” She told me to tell an adult about it at school, someone I felt could make him stop.
But I was no “narc” — as was the social taboo, so no teacher ever learned of that injustice. I never cared to know the boy’s name. I remembered his face though. Whenever I saw him in the halls at school, he ignored me.
Years later, in a crowded hallway at high school, I spun around, yelling “Stop It!” in the faces of two upperclass jocks — one had just goosed my ass. Over the years I’ve either addressed or let go of numerous sexist comments and nonphysical harassment aimed at me. Most of those memories are fleeting in a mind that has practiced allowing such slights to pass right through like wind.
Decades later, it was my turn as a mother, navigating my child’s bullying problem. My fourteen-year-old daughter was working her first-ever job for a major fast-food chain. Within days of starting, she came home to report unimaginable verbal sexual harassment at work from two male managers. Disheartened and furious, I remained calm and channeled my mother.
I asked my daughter, “Is there a female manager at work you trust?”
There was, so I coached my freshman daughter through due process in resolving this awful abuse. She alone reported the harassment to the woman, asked for it to stop, and allowed management the time and opportunity to fix the problem. On Friday of that week, my daughter came home early from her shift.
“Well, I’m fired.” She was trembling with anger.
I shook my head, imagining the self-satisfied, harassing managers at her workplace, high-fiving each other.
“No, you’re not.”
My spouse, our daughter, and I met with the restaurant owner in a business office across the street from the fast-food joint. My daughter reported the verbal abuse and her efforts to stop it. In the end, one older manager was fired. The younger male, a senior boy at her school, was retained. My daughter stayed at that job long enough — as a favor to me — to show employees, especially females, the importance of advocating for oneself and doing the right thing. After three months, she found another job.
She’s over thirty now, a strong, independent, professional woman, who at times has had to use her voice, wisdom, and experience to encourage better behavior from colleagues at work and from friends in social situations.
For many children growing up, navigating bullying behaviors was or is still left for them to figure out on their own. In my era especially, complaints about male bullies often elicited adult responses of “Boys Will Be Boys” and “Just Stay Away from Him.” As a mother and a teacher, I had to change that narrative.
In my last years of teaching, my middle school launched an anti-bullying campaign at the start of a year. To me, the colorful anti-bullying posters in the hallways were not enough. The mantra: “Report Bullying to an Adult” was not enough. I felt compelled to use my role as a classroom teacher to help guide young students to confront bullying at school and throughout their lives. It wouldn’t be a quick “deep dive” unit. I budgeted the time to spread the topic over weeks alongside the students’ required studies to allow them better integration and practice of the material.
I had no prepared curriculum for this. So, first, I shared with students my daughter’s and my personal stories about being bullied. Seventh-grade bullies, the very subjects of the middle school campaign, sat among their peers. I presented sobering statistics about dysfunctional home life and bullies. The psychological concept of “defensive projection” helped students comprehend how some bullies projected negative qualities onto others instead of recognizing those same traits in themselves. It was important for students to understand bullying more than just fear it. They also learned about available and effective solutions — guidance staff had their “restorative justice” interventions, a student advocate training program, and private counseling for bullies as well as the bullied.
Then, daily, weekly, and often on the fly, I gathered and presented studies, literature, and media clips and relied on the creative contributions of my students to go deeper to address bullying. Students needed knowledge to navigate difficult and intense situations, in and outside of school. They also needed rehearsal to build courage and confidence.
Class discussion got lively over excerpts from don Miguel Ruiz’s second agreement: “Don’t Take Anything Personally” from his book The Four Agreements. From there, students wrote scenes combining bullies and “targets” — not “victims” — because verbal abuse doesn’t have to “stick” but can pass through or entirely miss its target. Students role-played and critiqued the scenes they wrote. They learned and practiced how to de-escalate and stop a bully, a gossiper, or backstabber — online and in person — both as a target alone and especially, as a group of bystanders in witness to bullying in public where it often occurs. We watched a PSA showing a confident young girl intervening with bullies on a target’s behalf. Students role-played seeking outside help, too.
I shared the Biosphere 2 experiment where scientists concluded that a “lack of wind” in a manufactured biosphere made trees weak, unable to mature, and prone to collapse. The study found that the presence of wind triggered the growth of “reaction wood” (aka “stresswood”) to make a tree strong enough to sustain the greatest stressors it faced in its lifetime. Students drew connections from wind to life’s challenges in human terms. They concluded that like trees, people need challenges to strengthen themselves to handle stress to live longer, healthier lives. The ability to confront bullying behavior at any age was among those challenges.
By the first quarter’s end, my seventh graders possessed a full, bully-buster bag of tools and had rehearsed confronting bullies and seeking help for bullying in the real world. I repeated the program the years till my retirement in 2016.
When I left public school teaching, common classroom assessments and lock-step curricula were just becoming the norm. It pains me to feel I experienced a pinnacle of teacher autonomy, authentic assessments, teachable moments, administrative and community support, classroom workshop approaches, and creative (sometimes spontaneous) curriculum development.
Today, very few of my teaching colleagues with whom I regularly keep in touch believe they have those freedoms and backing. Many teachers are also navigating tough, unpleasant situations at their schools. Some operate under authoritative “bullying” and censorship. Some feel restricted and trapped in their positions. Others have already left the profession. But some are still hanging in there, doing what has always brought them joy while waiting for a shift to occur.
The last dozen or so years have seen some cold, hard winds for public school teachers. But wind makes us strong. And as the seasons change, the winds switch direction.
A shift is coming, my teacher friends. Warmer winds will prevail again. I feel them advancing. In the meantime, this retired teacher wants to know if she can help stake your listing trunk, feed, or somehow nurture you. For I am in awe of your magnificent resilience. You continue to dig deep, reach upward, and lean into the stubborn winds that keep you ever strong and thriving.
