The teacher was over six feet tall. He walked around with a scowl on his face and was always angry with everyone. One year he was assigned a classroom down the hall from me. By then I knew him well. Suffice it to say I was not one of his favorite ethnic groups. It didn’t bother me, but that dislike included the majority of the students that made up our middle school. His hate targeted the young men who looked and acted like street gangsters. Most of those kids were just that – kids. Some did have more street smarts than they had school smarts, but their attitude almost always was a front to cover their inability to do the class work and the homework. He picked on those boys in the privacy of his classroom, but when they fought back and sassed him, it spilled out into the hallway. The teacher would yell close to their faces, goading them to hit him. Once they took a jab at him the teacher then had a “legal right to defend himself.” His anger toward these boys was so intens