The son of Sumter desegregation leader, Rodney Rocker heads a school for trouble
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The son of Sumter desegregation leader, Rodney Rocker heads a school for troubled youths
By CHRISTINE GIORDANO, DAILY SUN
WILDWOOD ' A mob of black teenagers collected in the parking lot outside their high school with fists bared, seeking justice. It was 1971, two years after Wildwood schools were fully desegregated. But racial tension still cut through the school's hallways, tainting the teenagers' school days, reminding them of brutal prejudices that still existed.
The all-black mob of some 150 students was gathering to defend one of its own. The day before, an eighth-grader was brutally beaten in his physical education class by a gang of older white boys.
The school bell rang and the mob began to walk toward the school. Eighth-grader Rodney Rocker was in the pack, even though his father was the assistant principal of the high school. He knew he'd face his father's belt at home, but to him, the cause was well worth the punishment.
June Rocker's office window faced the schoolyard. Seeing the mob, the hulking 6-foot-10-inch, 320-pound assistant principal walked outside and faced down the riotous horde.
'My dad walks out in front of all of us and stops us, tells us what we're not going to be doing, what we're not going to have,' said Rodney, now a principal himself.
June sympathized with the teenagers' feelings of injustice, told them that he knew the beating had been unfair, but warned them that violence was not the answer.
'The situation that happened yesterday shouldn't have happened,' June said, 'but what you are wanting to do now is not the right way to deal with it.'
Then he told the teens to 'go to class,' adding 'you better not get into any trouble.'
He calmed and disbanded the mob.
'We knew what 'or else' meant,' Rodney said.
By acting out, the teens would be risking a spanking by one of the school's teachers, who carried the paddle as they walked the halls. It also meant that their parents could be notified.
'School was a nice corporal punishment,' Rodney recalled. 'If he would call your parents, good gracious, you'd rather get it at school than at home.'
It wasn't the first or the last conflict.
But as the first assistant principal of Wildwood High School after the schools were integrated, June Rocker knew parents in the black community and often used his ties to 'smooth over' conflicts during the transition period, Rodney said.
'He was kind of a neutralizer,' Rodney recalled.
More than 30 years later, June's son is the principal of Sumter County's West Street School ' a school that helps some 50 children manage their behavioral problems.
Like his late father, Rodney has found a way to navigate turmoil and lead youths to a better life. Like his father, Rodney stares down racism and anger, and turns challenges into success stories.
In Gadsden County, he helped transform a failing school by asking the students what would inspire them to pass.
Their answer? A trip to Six Flags Over Georgia amusement park.
Rodney recalled his response: 'I don't have the money, but I'll find it.'
'If testing is what you're being judged by,' he said, 'then you've got to find a way to motivate and get some buy-in from the kids.'
The children attended school on Saturdays in order to improve their test scores and reading grades soared from 64 percent to 88 percent, which lifted the school from three years of consecutive 'F' grades to a 'C' grade.
In Bushnell, Rocker, now 47, eases the behaviorally challenged through a positive incentive system. He takes kids out to the movies or to McDonald's, and tries to teach them about the real world.
'Other principals think it's easy because I don't have 500 kids, but when you have kids that may curse an adult out, they're a handful,' Rocker said. 'No kid wants to come to this school.'
The school of second- through 12th-graders has four levels that measure a student's improvement. The children are taught life skills from simple hygiene to anger management.
'They may have severe outbreaks. We try to teach them that just because they get mad, you can't do what you feel,' Rodney said.
Rocker began his career as an assistant principal in Gainesville in 1988. But on his first day of work, his father died. The superintendent offered him his father's assistant principal job at Wildwood High School. He turned it down.
'I wanted to be my own person,' Rocker said.
But after seeing that the job in his hometown paid $10,000 more than the one he had, he stepped into his father's shoes at 29.
The fear that he'd forever be in his dad's shadow never materialized, but he still wonders why he hit a ceiling when he applied for the principal position at the school. He was one of three finalists, but after the two others dropped out, Sumter County schools 'readvertised the position,' he said.
The principal they chose was Caucasian.
'That's when I went to Tallahassee,' he said. 'I felt like the assistant principal position at Wildwood High School was the black position.'
He left his hometown, worked three years for the Department of Education as a team leader for school improvement, the point person for four school districts, but decided his passion was in working with children. He headed to Thomasville, Ga., where he worked as an assistant principal, then took on a school of his own.
'I felt like it was time I turned some of my ideas into practice and made things better,' he said. He described turning the school from an 'F' to a 'C' school as the hardest job he's ever had.
Then he headed back home to Sumter County, where he took a job as principal of Wildwood Middle School for the 1997-1998 school year.
Echoing his father, Rodney said, 'A lot of those kids, I knew their parents because I graduated from Wildwood High School.'
Then, after test-driving a position as curriculum director, he took the principal's job at West Street to again get back to the children.
With three years left in a 30-year career, he says he's satisfied.
'When I see a kid who is troubled, and I see a change in their behavior, that's rewarding to me. That's what drives me. Because I know somehow we've had an influence,' Rocker said.
At West Street, he has an opportunity to effect change, to break the cycles of prejudice that are often handed down from older generations.
There have been times when hateful, racist terms have been spat out of the mouths of the troubled youth. At times the 'N-word' has been flung his way. But like his father, Rocker beats it back by giving it no power.
'I see their bare anger when they first come here,' he said, describing an incident when a student had to be physically restrained and the teen hurled racial insults at those who held him down.
The principal told the youth, 'Well, I've been called worse. You're still going to do what we are telling you to do.'
After the student calmed down, the boy rethought his actions.
Rocker recalled, nodding slowly, 'Later that day, he came back to me and said, 'I apologize for using the N-word.'
'And I said, 'No problem, but I want you to know that when you use that word, it kind of raises the anxiety levels in a lot of people. Be careful.'
That same day, the student made it a point to ask forgiveness of each of the teachers he had insulted.
To Rocker, the student's apologies made all the difference.
'It's just things like that that kinda keep you going, that put another log on the fire. They keep you motivated,' he said.
Christine Giordano is a reporter with the Daily Sun. She can be reached at 753-1119, ext. 9071, or christine.giordano@thevillagesmedia.com.
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