Cosby: Each can be a genius
By Diane Mastrull
Inquirer Staff Writer
GERALD S. WILLIAMS / Inquirer Staff Photographer
Lori Rohrbach had all the comforts of a suburban public school education. She sounds almost embarrassed by it.
"We had carpeted hallways," the 22-year-old Gilbertsville resident said with a quick roll of her eyes. "And four or five computer labs."
Odd as it sounds, it's why Rohrbach, a 2003 Boyertown High School graduate, wants to be a teacher - in a Philadelphia public school, preferably one in rough shape with students bearing rough edges.
"I think they deserve teachers who care," the Temple education major said.
That's why, instead of cooling off at a pool yesterday, Rohrbach was in the front row in Room 222 at Temple's Center City Campus yesterday, with notebook, pen and camera.
She was one of about 60 educators and soon-to-bes at a seminar on teaching in a violent community. The session was hosted by Temple's enthusiastic - and perhaps most famous - alumnus, Bill Cosby.
The backdrop could not have been more accommodating: the Philadelphia homicide tally for the year stood at 199 and the school district had just wrapped up an educational year fraught with violent eruptions in the schools, including an assault on a teacher who was left with a broken neck. Cosby's 27-year-old son, Ennis, who had aspired to teach special education after overcoming dyslexia, was shot and killed in January 1997 as he changed a tire on a Los Angeles roadside.
"This is a city where a conversation like this is timely and important," C. Kent McGuire, dean of Temple's College of Education, said in opening the two-hour session.
He was followed by Temple president Ann Weaver Hart, who referred to the city's "cycle of violence" as "a tremendous plague in our society."
It is important for Philadelphia teachers - or any for that matter - to understand that there are things that can be done to steer students away from threatening and feeling threatened, to achieve, a series of experts in education and adolescent violence told a room captivated as much by the topic as the celebrity who spoke with a mix of urgency and his famous comic ability.
In even the most troubled student, said Cosby, who has a doctorate in education, there is "genius."
"You have to find a way," he implored, "so that the genius comes out."
New teachers are not adequately prepared for the social challenges they face when they step into an urban classroom, Cosby said, and more programs such as Temple's are needed.
Robert Johnson, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry and an expert on adolescent issues at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey joined Cosby.
Based on 35 years of working with adolescents, especially in preventing violence, Johnson said he was confident about three things: that a child who shows violent tendencies at age 6 is far more likely to follow a path that leads to prison or worse than a child who first engages in violent behavior at 13; that a strong family relationship will help keep children away from violent behavior; and that the most important thing schools can do to decrease violent tendencies among students is to develop their reading skills.
"Regardless of what house they come out of, we can always make a change," Cosby told the audience.
Rohrbach took notes furiously, as though for an exam.
Her big test is at least five months away - when she expects to graduate and enter the world of teaching. None of what she heard yesterday dampened her enthusiasm.
"I'm not afraid," she said. "I still want to change the world."
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