While adults from the Ferguson-Florissant School District were giving the top three superintendent candidates a once-over, students at Berkeley Middle School were doing the same to business and bank executives, authors, a police officer, educators and other role models from the community.
The occasion was Operation Beat the Street. It’s the fifth year for the event, and Principal Steven Lawler said it is more than a career day.
“It’s real talk, about real issues, with individuals whom they can relate to,” Lawler said.
Keynote speaker Rennell Parker, a logistics specialist in the U.S. Navy, talked about his journey as an athlete and a college student, which included lessons in honor, work, courage and commitment.
“My focus shifted, and I lost my sense of humility and I quit listening,” Parker said. “I limited my growth when I quit listening.”
Slacking in school and quitting the basketball team in favor of hanging out, playing video games, smoking and drinking was a one-way ticket to nowhere.
“Instead of going to class, I’d go to my partner’s crib,” he said. “Now my growth had really been stunted, because I was not even growing psychologically or educationally.”
An ankle injury deferred his dream of playing pro basketball, and Parker joined the Navy – a move he said that changed his life.
“When I was on the boat and doing things to better myself and my family, he was still back drinking and smoking,” Parker said of his friend back home.
Some of the students wore dressier attire in order to present themselves and their school in a professional manner to their guests.
“Ya’ll heard the term ‘guilt by association’?” Parker asked the students. “There is also such a thing as success by association.”
Parker described a fivestep process to overcome obstacles: believing in a higher power; letting go of grudges; visualizing new goals, and loving yourself.
“As long as I love myself, there is nothing anyone can do to tear me down,” he said. “If you don’t believe in yourself, who will? Will your teachers?”
“No,” the students said in unison.
“Will your parents?” Parker asked.
“No.”
“Will your friends?”
This question received the loudest “No!” Parker said after the internal appraisal, it’s time to examine how you are viewed by others.
This perception could not be addressed without talking about young men and sagging.
“I’m not going to tell you to pull your pants up… for that man who just got out of prison… when he sees you … but when Big Bubba…” if Parker did finish his point, you couldn’t hear it for the laughter and embarrassed chatter among the students.
Showing your drawers as a display of being in another inmate’s male harem in the penitentiary somehow lost its appeal – at least this day, for one teenager. The young man stood up from his chair and pulled his pants up.
