Bad Influence

There is something to be said for responsibility. I came to understand a new point of leadership tonight, but before I talk about it I will fill in the details.

A few days ago I had just finished up teaching my 11th grade class about the Battle of Marathon, the Battle of Thermopylae, the Battle of Salamis, and the Battle of Plataea. I had decided that a movie would be a good thing to give them at this point so why not show them some of the clips of 300!?! That's a great idea, right?! Wrong.

I cut out a lot of the stuff that happened in the movie, but still there really isn't much to 300 than blood and fighting. One of my students told me that she couldn't sleep the night before because the of the fighting in the movie. She is an exaggerator by nature, but still there is an element of truth in every extravagantly told story.

The following day after the movie, I apologized to my class for the stuff in the movie. The guys yelled and hollered about how they wanted to see the rest and the girls gave me a nod or a "that's ok Mr." I decided that since the guys didn't get to see all of their movie I might as well show them an action movie back at my house. Hey another great idea, right?! Wrong.

I feel like I was the epitome of that verse in Proverbs tonight- "Just as a dog returns to its vomit, so one man returns to his foolish acts." At first I was going to show them a relatively innocent film- "Transformers"- but then one of the SM's suggested we watch "Equilibrium" instead. I'd seen "Equilibrium" before and I knew that there were some intense scenes in the movie, i.e. the hero chops another guy's head in half. You'd think that would have been warning enough for me, but NO I decided to show it anyways.

This was an interesting experience for me. I know why I showed it. I gave into my friend and my two students that wanted to watch a killing movie. The rest didn't really care and were more in favor of a comedy, but since I'm closer to the two students and my friend, I didn't want to make them upset by choosing something else. Although, I knew that it wouldn't be good to show them this movie. I knew it.

There were a few key lessons I learned from this:
1. Don't make promises you are unsure that you want to keep.
2. When I know that something can be harmful then I have to put my foot down and make the right choice. This is the true form of leadership. I'm not trying to "toot my own horn" but I am the unspoken leader of the villa. They look to me to be the decision maker, even though I look to Daniel because he is the oldest and he has been here for two years.
3. I, and only I, can make my decisions. They wanted to watch a movie that I knew wasn't the best. I was in charge and so it was my responsibility to make sure everything was "kosher".

Anyways, we started watching the movie and we were about 1/3 of the way through when some of the 9th graders came in with Miguel. I wasn't too opposed to the 11th graders watching it, but the 9th graders it is something different. The Egyptian students aren't NEARLY as desensitized to violence as American kids are. It doesn't even bother me if a guy gets his head chopped off and a spear jammed through his butt in a movie. I'm used to it.

So these guys start sitting down to watch and my head was screaming at me, "JUST TURN IT OFF!" I didn't have the balls to stand up and make a choice. About half way through the movie Dwight came in and he came in at the worst possible seen in the movie. The guy in the movie is beating the crap out of a ton of henchmen and blood is flying everywhere. In complete definition of the word, I felt ashamed. It didn't bother me so much that Dwight was seeing this, but that his presence was an blunt amplification of what I was already feeling. Dwight told Daniel to make sure they were all in bed in the next hour and walked away. Dwight had put the responsibility on Daniel, but I knew it belonged to me.

About 15 minutes later, I finally got my kahunas together. I stood up, walked over to the projector, and turned off the movie. I apologized to them for showing them this crap in my house and that in a few weeks I would make it up to them by showing them a decent movie. Two of them really wanted to finish the movie, but I feel like the rest agreed with me. They got up said, "Thanks" and even one of them said, "I used to watch stuff like this, but I don't anymore. Thanks for stopping it."

After the students left the house I did something I didn't really ever see myself doing. I deleted all my trash movies. If I can't show my students this stuff, then how can I watch it myself and not be a two-faced fake? Dwight called Daniel to make sure the students had gone home and Daniel told him that we had stopped the movie. I apologized to Dwight for showing them the movie and I'm never going to forget what he said- "That's alright. In the future let's avoid stuff like this, but for now we'll just leave it as an experience."

That's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to leave it as an experience that I can learn from and use it as food to feed my growth because that is all I can do.