By Derrick Brown (follow on Twitter @dbrowndbrown)
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Grand Rising … And Falling (When Containment Masquerades As Concern) (1488 Words)
(61st Day Of School)
(Monday, November 3, 2025)
By Derrick Brown (Join Our Mailing List!)
Empath Remixes #89 – Grand Rising … And Falling (When Containment Masquerades As Concern) (61st Day Of School) (DB EDIT) (1488 Words)
The message arrived before the moment could breathe.
“Grand Rising … my boy is at your door and you are not answering it.”
The words appeared on my phone while I was speaking to my first-block class … well
after the first bell had stopped echoing down the hall.
I pay no attention to my phone during class, so I missed the alert that another wave of misunderstanding had arrived.
The sender was a grandmother (EB), well-meaning and “old school” … in this case, though, misinformed and duped by the same manipulative instinct that drives so many adolescents to escape accountability … by creating false urgency for adults who love them.
By the time her second message arrived ... “Now he’s definitely not late but why aren’t you answering the door?” ... I had already opened the door, and stepped outside.
Stepping outside allowed me to tell OP privately that he was not going to be marked tardy … though he clearly was tardy … … which he later admitted to … in fact, he is tardy for most classes … and it is usually his fault … which confirms that he was trying to “run game” this morning by making EB think I was denying him access to my room … so that I could refer him to administration for being tardy … even though I explained to EB during our talk last week that I was “bending the rules” and giving him benefit of the doubt … even though I am required to refer him … because I know the load she bears in caring for him and his siblings.
I told OP about the talk EB and I had last week, offered condolences for the life he has had to live (as told to me by his caretaker) … shared how important my grandparents were to me, and told him that I had just had a serious talk with the class about academic honesty … prompted by his whispered comment last week that sounded like him trying to explain how to use the cellphone to cheat on tests … all while standing in the area where he usually sits.
I then let him listen to “Re’sume’ Say” … he listened quietly, and rose from my chair without saying a word.
I asked him what he remembered … he said “a lot of rhyming.”
I now know that his reticence and silence were both likely due to his guilt … guilt borne of what I was about to discover … that he had already tried to sacrifice me to save himself.
All of this happened while EB’s texts … and LS’ email (keep reading) … sat in my respective inboxes.
Within minutes the second wave arrived ... this time not by phone but by email.
The melodramatic subject line read … “High Importance.”
My new evaluating administrator had forwarded the grandmother’s complaint with the language of concern … but the tone of investigation.
“Please provide a bit more context,” she wrote.
“When did the student arrive? Was he marked tardy? Was he allowed into class?”
The request was procedural, but the subtext was prosecutorial.
Concern, cloaked as containment.
The familiar feeling of being studied … rather than supported.
I paused and breathed before replying.
This was “patience practice.”
Then I responded with clarity and care.
I explained that the student had been late, that he had entered without penalty, and that I had already spoken to him and to his grandmother.
Her reply came swiftly … “Thank you, Mr. Brown.”
Nothing more.
No acknowledgment of the premature accusation.
No recognition of the calm I had preserved.
Just the polite punctuation that signals administrative completion without emotional comprehension.
The exchange was over, but the residue remained.
Another reminder that the system’s reflex is surveillance, not trust.
I delayed sending my reply to the administrator so I could call the grandmother myself … during my class.
Her voice softened when she realized that her grandson was fine, that he was not being targeted, and that her text had traveled faster than the truth.
She apologized gently.
I assured her that all was well.
It was, and it was not.
The immediate fire was out, but the smoke of suspicion lingered in the air we all now breathe.
In yet another ironic twist of fate, another administrator then called for OP and assigned him to detention … because his 1B teacher had referred him for excessive tardies.
I cannot make this stuff up … and it is incessant.
Each event like this feels small in isolation.
Together they form a pattern … a choreography of containment that repeats across the year.
A student errs.
A family member intervenes impulsively.
An administrator amplifies the alarm under the banner of “concern.”
The teacher becomes both the gatekeeper and the scapegoat ... responsible for maintaining order … but presumed guilty of causing the disturbance.
It is a cycle polished by repetition … protected by procedure … and powered by fear.
What troubles me most is not the inconvenience … but the erosion.
Each exchange chips away at the fragile architecture of trust that teaching requires.
My patience remains, but my faith in the institution trembles.
The same pattern that once humiliated … now only exhausts.
I have learned to respond without reacting, to document without defending, and to remain visible without becoming volatile.
These are survival skills, not professional growth indicators.
My new evaluating administrator resembles my former one in tone and technique ... furtive, transactional, performative, and “professional.”
Both operate through carefully timed inquiries that frame support as scrutiny.
Both maintain plausible neutrality while signaling disbelief.
Both seem to value compliance more than comprehension.
Their communication style feels less like leadership … and more like risk management.
Every “thank you” reads like a period placed before the sentence is complete.
I recognize now that this is not personal; it is cultural.
The culture of containment thrives on optics.
It rewards those who appear to “handle situations” swiftly … even if the situations were fabricated by fear or adolescent cunning.
It punishes those who demand context before judgment.
It thrives in the gray space between empathy and authority.
It requires educators like me to perform serenity … while absorbing insult.
When I read the grandmother’s opening salutation ... Grand Rising ... I felt the irony.
The phrase, rooted in affirmation and awakening, had become a summons to another unnecessary confrontation.
The “rising” was real, but it was not grand.
It was the elevation of anxiety, the inflation of a false emergency, and the latest reminder that truth now travels slower than accusation.
Still, I choose to read her words symbolically.
Grand Rising can also mean rise above.
It can mean meet manipulation with maturity.
It can mean guard your heart … even as you open your door.
The rising must be internal when the external world prefers to fall.
I am in my last days.
Not of life, but of tolerance for a structure that mistakes obedience for peace.
I have reached the point where documentation feels like prayer ... an act of preservation more than persuasion.
Each written response, each dated note, and each saved email becomes another stone in the altar of endurance.
I continue to teach, to write, to breathe, but I do so with the awareness that I am walking toward release.
Peace, not permission, will mark my exit.
The student who sparked this incident has already moved on to his next class, his next story, his next opportunity to test the boundaries of adults who care more than he understands.
His grandmother has returned to her morning routine, convinced that she protected her boy.
My administrator has logged the incident in whatever invisible ledger measures teacher temperament.
Only I remain in the echo, hearing the deeper lesson … that grace must be structural, not sentimental.
Grace is allowing the latecomer in without allowing the lie to linger.
Grace is answering the accusatory email with facts instead of fury.
Grace is calling the grandmother back, not to defend yourself, but to preserve
relationship.
Grace is rising internally even when external forces conspire to pull you down.
As I close this reflection, I imagine the scene replaying from a higher view … a door, a knock, a message, a misunderstanding, a measured response.
The choreography is simple, the symbolism profound.
The door represents boundaries.
The knock represents need.
The unanswered moment represents the sacred space between reaction and reflection.
That space is where peace resides.
It is where teaching truly happens.
So, yes, Grand Rising.
Rise above the noise.
Rise through the misunderstanding.
Rise beyond containment that masquerades as concern.
Rise with the quiet strength that documentation provides.
Rise until the system that doubts you must look up to find you.
Because in the end, the only rising that matters is the one that keeps you whole.
Selah.
(The "Follow The Leader (changED - Volume 2)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
(The "changED (Volume 1)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
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I am a “standup storyteller.”
I fuse rap, spoken word (poetry), oration (traditional public speaking), singing, and teaching into messages of hope, healing, and change that I write, direct, and produce to help people who help people.
Everything must change - and stay changED.
Tradition begins and ends with change.
Change begins with me and the renewing of my mind ... then continues through efforts to effect small-group discipleship (equipping others to equip others) with audiences that respect and embrace mentoring, mediation, and problem solving as tools of change.
I am the product of my mentoring relationships, peacemaking (and peacekeeping), and problem-solving ability.
My education began when I finished school.
After school, I enrolled in a lifelong curriculum that includes classes in ministry, entrepreneurship, stewardship, literacy, numeracy, language, self-identity, self-expression, and analysis / synthesis.
My projects execute a ministry that has evolved from wisdom earned through lessons learned.
I want to share this wisdom to build teams of "triple threat" fellows - mentors, mediators, and problem solvers.
We will collaborate in simple, powerful ways that allow us to help people who help people.
I now know that power is work done efficiently (with wise and skillful use of resources, interests, communication, and expertise).
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