Local trio organized Gossett’s visit

LYNN – Marblehead author Phyllis Karas and Karen Madorsky, a teacher at Marblehead’s Cohen Hillel Academy, helped – along with Lynn School Committee member Vincent Spirito – to bring actor Louis Gossett Jr. to Lynn Auditorium on Tuesday to talk to more than 2,000 middle school students.And Madorsky and KIPP Academy’s Community Outreach Coordinator Mike Brown brought Gossett’s message of ending violence and racism into scores of North Shore classrooms before the big event.Brown and Madorsky developed “Taking a Stand,” a DVD-based classroom lesson that challenged students from KIPP, Lynn Public Schools and Cohen Hillel, where Madorsky is also the social action coordinator, to define racism and violence.Students were then confronted with a handful of real-life situations that have happened in Lynn during the past year, including the vandalism at Callahan School and the brutal beating of a homeless man by six juveniles last summer.Students were asked to choose one of the situations and solve the problem. As part of the lesson, they paired up and designed an “impact” poster to prevent future acts of violence and destruction.”Listening to Lou Gossett describe his experiences and ideas is great,” said Brown. “But he is a visitor. He’ll come, and he’ll leave. We wanted to get kids in the right mindset.”Brown said that the DVD lesson broadened the themes of the Gossett assembly and tailored the messages to fit situations of the inner-city problems that local kids hear about and deal with.”The idea is to prepare kids to take a stand against racism and violence,” said Brown. “Middle-schoolers never do anything alone. If we set up a positive culture for the group, and give them a chance to be peace-makers and problem-solvers, individuals will step forward and the rest will follow.”To help kids encourage and empower kids in that role, Brown and Madorsky worked with Lynn Police to choose recent examples of violence and racism. They then enlisted Antonio Gutierrez, a community organizer for Essex County Community Organization, to record the DVD.Gutierrez, who has plenty of charisma to spare, walked students through each step of the lesson, pumping up their confidence along the way.At one point in the video, Gutierrez says, “I want to hear your solutions to the problems the city has been having lately – give it 110 percent.”In Lynn schools, students were scheduled to watch the “Taking a Stand” DVD on Monday, but at KIPP, classes saw it Tuesday morning before heading off to hear Gossett at the Lynn Memorial Auditorium.KIPP teachers Jessica Stechmann and Nicci Kadilak worked with a group of about 30 eighth-graders on the lesson, and for many it seemed to hit home.”I think the kids are into this,” said Stenchman. “They can personally relate to a lot of it.”Olga Rodriguez and Serena High completed the lesson assignment with a poster aimed at ending gang violence and the harassment and intimidation they see and sometimes feel.”Sometimes it’s gangs, or it could be just bullying by someone who doesn’t like someone else,” said Rodriquez.High suggested that one strategy teens can use to end some of the violence is to just ignore the things others say to start a fight.”You know who you are, and you don’t need other people to tell you who you are not,” she said.A few desks away, Elva DePena and Alex Huffman tackled the problem of the attack on the homeless man last summer. While they both said it was a horrible story, neither girl found it surprising.”Boys think that when they beat someone up they make themselves into a threat,” said DePena.She added that people need to be aware and not put themselves in situations where they can become victims.But like Huffman, she agreed what happened was not the victim’s fault. “They didn’t have a reason to do that,” said Huffman. “That guy didn’t do anything to them. It’s wrong, but once boys get rolling?”Ken Schulman, head of Cohen Hillel Academy, said the messages and lessons surrounding Gossett and his visit fit