yikes. so busy, msbelle.
In the past 10 days, I lead 17 hours of PD. I had a totally weird moment on Tuesday when one participant complained about Obama's oratory patterns and an African American woman got offended and called him on it (called him negative all the time, told him to be quiet etc...). He then said something about "People like you" which he had also said at another meeting where I was not present. She got rightly offended at that. He then tried to explain it wasn't a black thing and he isn't racist, after all his parents worked to integrate his neighborhood as a kid and he was the first kid to befriend the African American kids.
I didn't know how to respond except to try to cluck them back into writing (which is what we were doing). It was a classic example of things NOT to say. I apologized to the woman for not intervening more forcefully and she apologized for disrupting my class. Though the truth is, I'm not sure what offended her about his comment about disliking the oratory pattern of Obama.
It was uncomfortable. I handled it poorly. But I expect adults to be adults. And I think some of this sprung from underlying tensions or previous issues.