by Tony Danza
I can’t believe Katerina let me go through my whole birthday song and dance without reminding me this was coming. It’s going to completely derail my lesson plan for this period. But what am I supposed to do? The kids are psyched. Besides, as I watch this loving mother lighting candles for her daughter’s wish and beaming at the rare opportunity to see Katerina in her element, I think of my daughter Emily in her junior year of high school back in California without me anywhere near her. Swallowing hard, I keep my mouth shut and wait for my piece of cake.
It so happens that a friend of mine has just sent me a DVD of some of my old bouts as a professional boxer. So while everyone is eating, I slide it into my laptop and turn the projector up to the screen. “Anybody want to see some of my old fights?” We’re having a fine old time when there’s another tap on the door.
Assistant Principal Sharon McCloskey steps into the room, sizes up the situation, and summons me into the hall. “Mr. Danza, what exactly is going on in your class?”
I try to explain, but she doesn’t need my explanation. Ms. McCloskey’s not ordinarily as gruff as Ms. DeNaples, but at this moment they could be twins. “Mr. Danza, if we allowed every mother in this school to bring a cake for her child’s birthday, we wouldn’t get much done, would we?” Again she doesn’t let me answer. “And what are you showing them along with their cake?”
I stammer something unintelligible and watch her turn away. “Don’t let it happen again,” she throws over her shoulder and walks down the corridor shaking her head.
Back in the classroom, the kids can’t wait to hear how much trouble I’m in. So much for heroism. Katerina and her mother stand and chime in unison, “Sorry, Mr. Danza.”
PARENTS ARE A FORCE in education, whether they realize it or not, for better and for worse. I prefer meeting them over a birthday cake, even if I do have to pay for it, than over the phone, but when my kids are in trouble, I don’t have much choice. I delay calling Al G’s mother as long as I possibly can. But he’s a handful, constantly talking, joking, and—my pet peeve—he yawns loudly. I’ve moved him from seat to seat in hope of finding a sweet spot next to just the right person. But you move one kid, and it can start a chain reaction that messes up the whole class. I have one student, Paul, a calm, steady sweetheart who’s my go- to guy. I can almost always put a problem next to him or move him next to a problem, but not even Paul works with Al G. I’ve finally resorted to sticking Al right in front of Mr. Cohn. That at least quiets him down, though it doesn’t get him to work. Meanwhile, the rest of the kids are miffed at me for giving him so many chances. I can’t tell them that I do this because Al G reminds me of myself, or that I’m afraid if I come down hard on him, I’ll lose him completely. But that’s why it takes me so long to make the call. Finally I have to tell his mother what’s going on. I ask her to come to school so we can talk about her son.
Al G’s mom is young, like many of the mothers in the neighborhood. We meet downstairs in the lobby so I can escort her to my classroom, and my first impression is that she looks a little too glamorous for the occasion. She has long, flashy fingernails and a hairdo right off the cover of Essence. Then I remember; we are filming a TV show. The kids and I don’t even notice the cameras anymore, but that note hasn’t reached Al’s mother and the rest of the community.
Upstairs the walls of my room are filling with student work, and ordinarily I’m proud to show them off. However, there’s nothing to show from Al G. “You know,” I tell his mother, “I think I get your son. He’s a kid who doesn’t realize he needs school yet and at the same time thinks he knows it all. Am I right?”
She eyes me warily. I hurry up. “Because I was the same kind of kid. I thought it was uncool to act like I cared about anything the teacher said.”
“Al G doesn’t want anybody to know how smart he is,” she says slowly.
“I know that. But you and I know that he is smart. He’s very smart. He just doesn’t do the work. When I ask him about it directly, he tells me he’ll do it, then he just doesn’t. We’re three weeks into school, and he still hasn’t handed in the assignment from the first day.”
“He has a lot going on,” she says.
Is she defending him? “I need your help,” I tell her. “School is important to his future. It’s the only chance he has. He’s smart. He can have a good future if he will just do the work. I won’t give up on him, but I need your help.”
She listens, nods, doesn’t say much more, and I can’t tell if I’ve made a dent or not.
Al G’s mother must have some power. The next day he slinks into class and drops on my desk quite a bit more than the half page I requested about his personal experience. It would be pushing my luck to ask him to read it aloud, so I read it to myself. It describes a basketball court in a park near where he lives.
The day he’s writing about began normally. Al was playing in a pickup game, with winners holding the court and losers forming new teams to try to upset the winners. There were the usual altercations, disputed calls, and hard fouls of playground basketball, but this day deteriorated into an urban nightmare. One of the boys, unhappy with the outcome of the game, left the park and came back brandishing a gun. He was threatening some of the players on the winning team when another youth pulled a pistol. Both boys started shooting, and Al G hit the ground, crawled to cover, then hightailed it out of the park.
I finish reading and remember that the memory I gave the class as an example for this assignment was about the time I helped my uncle Mike lay linoleum in my mother’s kitchen. Talk about a different world. My reality as a kid was a tough neighborhood, but nobody was getting shot at. I mark the paper, and when I return it I ask Al if he ever goes back to that park.
“ ’Course,” he answers. “It’s right by where I live.”
The gap between my life and Al’s widens even further. Maybe stories like this are what his mother meant when she said he has a lot going on. I remember now that when I called to request the conference, her first words were “Is he okay?”
“Well, you did a good job on this,” I say. “It’s well written. You’re good at this, and I want you to keep writing.”
Al G smiles to himself. It’s barely detectable, but I think the praise pleases him. I know it does.
A FEW DAYS LATER Al G is given an in-school suspension by another teacher and has to sit all day with other problem kids in one of the three portable classrooms maintained for this purpose at the back of the school. I go out and knock on the door where I’ve been told I can find him. “Okay if I come in and see Al G?” I ask the teacher on duty.
This man is older and wears a been-there-seen-it-all expression. “Sure,” he deadpans. “Come on in and join the party.”
In-school suspension is for relatively low-level infractions. More grievous offenses warrant home suspensions and last longer than a day, but it strikes me that being stuck out here is the harsher of the two punishments. It’s dead time. The portable is colorless, cold, and blank. There are rows of desks and about ten kids, boys and girls, drooping in various stages of boredom. Nothing is happening. Certainly, no learning is going on. When I make my way back to Al’s row and ask if I can sit next to him, he just shrugs.
A few of Al’s friends are here, too, and this makes it difficult to talk to him, since they’re always watching and he’s fronting. “Why you here?” he asks me.
“I always visit my friends in jail.” He hides his smile by dropping his head low between his shoulders, but I don’t mean it as a joke. I want him to make the connection. We sit in silence for a while. Then, as if there’s been no break in the conversation, I say, “Look around. Do you think this is where you belong? This where you want to be?”
Al doesn’t answer. I don’t really expect him to, but the point’s been made. Now my job is just to be here and not say anything else. We sit in silence. Still nothing from him verbally, but I feel like he’s happy I showed up. It’s as if I’ve been suspended, too.
After a h
alf hour or so, I get up to leave. He looks up and says, “Thanks for coming by.” He speaks clearly enough that I can actually understand what he’s saying. No smirk. This is a considerable concession, especially in front of the other kids.
As I return to my classroom, trying to figure my next move, I run into Al G’s math teacher, Ms. Green. She’s young, energetic, and generous, and I have a little crush on her. Oh, and she’s also concerned about Al. She reinforces what I already know, that he can do the work but doesn’t think it’s cool to excel. Her seventh-period math group is especially tough for him because he has friends in the class. She describes Al G as a show-off who can also be an endearing kid. I haven’t seen the endearing kid yet, but I know the show-off. We agree to work on him together.
Ms. Green’s strategy for getting Al working is to have him teach her class. I ask her if I might come and observe that. We devise a game plan.
The next day I enter Ms. Green’s class dressed like Al. I wear a backpack like his, a hoodie, and his brand of Nikes—shoe style being paramount to these kids. I take a student seat and put my feet up on a nearby desk, showing off those familiar sneakers. From the head of the class, Al spots them and smirks. Direct hit. I loudly unwrap a sandwich, which I proceed to eat as he watches from the teacher’s spot and tries to do his job. He writes a math problem on the board. I raise my hand, and when he calls on me I ask a question about bacon, which for some reason he’s always talking about. He ignores me the same way I do him when he asks dumb questions. Then I give him my Sunday punch: I yawn as loudly and demonstratively as I can. Just like him. He shakes his head.
The math class is having a good laugh at Al G’s expense, but then he gets serious and really does try to teach. The kids continue to act out, and Al threatens to throw people out of the class and call the dean, all to no effect. I raise my hand and ask him to help me with the math problem sheet. Math is not my subject, and I’m not acting. He makes a real attempt to explain the problems to me, and like a real student, I struggle. He stays with it, attempting to get me to understand while trying to control the rest of the class, which is not easy. When I still don’t get it, he’s clearly frustrated. I know that feeling.
I ask him, “What do you think about teaching now? Not that easy, right?”
He won’t admit it, but his face softens. The bell rings, and his classmates razz him as they leave. They make Ms. Green promise, no more student teachers. Al G is complaining to Ms. Green, but when I get up to go, he stops me. “Thanks for coming.” That’s the second time he’s said that to me. Then he adds, “Keep working on that problem.” He can be endearing after all.
Small victories, I think, as I make my way down the corridor in my cool sneakers.
IN ADDITION TO all their other classes, most teachers are assigned advisory—today’s term for homeroom. I don’t have any official advisory students, but I soon begin acquiring unofficial ones, and as soon as I do, that term, advisory, makes perfect sense to me. This is the period when teaching is all about advice, when you serve as part counselor, part friend, part surrogate parent. As one of the teachers in my SLC told me, counseling can be a bigger part of the job than teaching. “In poor schools, the teacher has to pick up the slack created by less involved parents and more kids with problems.”
My first unofficial advisory kids are strays. I meet them in the hallways or cafeteria, or when I’m working with one of the teams or clubs. Then they start turning up and camping out in my classroom. First one, then two and more. I do have air-conditioning, and that’s a lure. I also give out half sandwiches to anyone who needs one at lunchtime, but they also seem to like hanging with me, and I’m a sucker for that. Soon they’re coming every day, first thing in the morning, during fifth-period lunch, or any time they can finagle a hall pass. I ask, “Where are you supposed to be?” And they all have the same answer, “My teacher knows I’m here with you.”
Then I have to write a note to the teacher explaining that they’ve been with me and I am sorry for them getting back to class late. This strikes me as funny because when I was in high school I used to practice writing notes and signing my name in preparation for the day when I became a teacher and had to write a hall pass for real. But it’s not really funny. Most of these kids have problems, and some are serious. When a good kid comes to school late and looking like hell, I’ll try to go easy, couch my concern in a compliment, such as “You’re never late, what happened?” But what do you say when the answer is “They turned off the electricity on us last night, and it was too cold to sleep. It was a crazy night.” You offer sympathy and write him the note. You do what you can, which too often is not enough, but you have to be willing to try.
Phil is sixteen, one of a group of four boys that I call the Wanderers because they’re constantly walking the hallways. They dress in black and have complexions so white and pasty I wonder if they’ve ever even seen the sun. Always together, they come to school every morning, swipe their student IDs to prove they’re on campus, then just roam for the rest of the day. Northeast is so huge and there are so many nooks and crannies to hide in that if a student knows the school well enough and keeps moving, he can avoid going to class all day. These four are masters of avoidance.
When I first notice the Wanderers, I can’t resist trying to talk them into going to class and taking school seriously. Other teachers tell me I’m wasting my breath. The Wanderers have a well-established track record for getting in trouble. But I always think that very few kids are really bad and many are just mixed up. When I catch Phil alone one day, I ask what his dad thinks about him skipping classes, and he tells me he has no father. His mother is alone, and his older brothers have all been in trouble. “So what else is new?” he asks. But instead of sounding sullen, Phil seems to be challenging me to answer. I want to try to help. That’s what teachers do, right? That’s what I’m here for.
The other three Wanderers refuse to see any value in changing or in anything I say. They razz Phil about me, but then he starts coming to my room at lunchtime on his own. I give him half a sandwich, and after we get to know each other a bit, I ask for his roster. I visit each of his teachers. Big surprise: he’s failing all his courses because he never goes to class. One teacher tells me that Philip’s cut class every day since school started. Another says he has over sixty unexcused absences and his teachers have all but given up on him.
Remembering that each of these teachers has another 149 students to worry about, I ask them to please give me the assignments he needs to make up, and I’ll make sure he completes them. I know it’s extra work for them, but despite their skepticism, they give Phil and me the benefit of the doubt.
I want to show Phil that his teachers do care what happens to him. I want him to see the importance of changing his behavior. I talk myself hoarse trying to get him to see the error of his ways. But just when I think I’m making some headway, he’s charged with credit card fraud. It seems he and his friends used a stolen Visa card.
Phil’s arrest really shakes me. I try to tell myself that I just arrived in his life too late, that there’s nothing more I could have done, but the last time I see this kid he tells me he’s facing a three-year jail sentence. He’s also beginning the Twilight Program, a night school for kids who work or have problems and want a General Educational Development certificate. I tell him this is his last chance, but that if he gets his GED the judge will take that into consideration. “Show them you’re trying,” I beg.
Phil nods and says he gets it. But I can tell he doesn’t really. He won’t last in the program. He feels buried, thinks he’s lost too much ground and will never catch up. “You can, Phil, if you want to,” I plead, but I can feel him already slipping away. I want to throw him a lifeline but have no idea how. How do you help them all?
ANOTHER OF MY unofficial advisees is a senior named Courtney, who sings in the choir and acts in school plays. She used to spend her free time in the choirmaster’s office, but after finding me she starts hanging out
in my classroom instead. She’s a popular girl, funny and bright and getting ready to go on to college, but one morning she comes to me in tears. “I’m not going to graduate.”
“What are you talking about? You’re a great student. I thought you were doing well.”
“I am, except I’m failing physics.”
Uh-oh. I can’t write a definition of physics, let alone offer any real help in the subject. I stall. “Why are you failing?”
“I got behind, and I can’t catch up.”
“So you just haven’t done the work, right?”
“Right,” she says, eyes averted.
“Wait a minute. Who says you can’t catch up? Who do you have?”
I recognize her physics instructor’s name from orientation. “Believe me,” I assure her, “there is no way a first-year teacher wants you to fail. Let’s go see him.”
Asking for help can work wonders. Teachers appreciate that. And like Phil’s teachers, Courtney’s is willing to work with her. Unfortunately, as good a student as she is, Courtney, like Phil, has let herself slip dangerously behind. It will take real commitment and work to catch up.
I give her my “mountain” speech, which I used to give my own kids when they felt overwhelmed by schoolwork. “It’s like when I used to wash dishes for a Jewish caterer. We would serve seven-course dinners for over three hundred people. After each course, hundreds of plates, glasses, pots, and silverware would be piled high on the dishwasher’s counter. That mountain could look so overwhelming that I didn’t know where to start, but I learned that if you just get to work on one piece at a time, little by little the mountain gets smaller, and eventually it’s gone.”