I'd Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had: My Year as a Rookie Teacher at Northeast High

by Tony Danza

  The good news for Courtney is that there’s time. And support. My assistant on the TV production crew, Kelly Gould, was a physics major in college. I enlist her help, and she and Courtney make a good team. They decide that Courtney’s big project will be a Rube Goldberg contraption that turns on her hair straightener. After building it, Courtney enlists another girl from the unofficial advisory, a beautiful black girl named Farah, and together they make a video of her contraption in action. First Courtney describes all the moving parts and their purposes. Then she introduces Farah, who makes a twirling, spinning entrance and, Vanna-like, activates the machine. A ball rolls, dominoes fall, Matchbox cars slide down ramps, and finally a hammer falls and hits a switch that turns on the straightener. It takes more than a few attempts to get all this to work as designed, but eventually they’re successful. Courtney earns an A on the project.

  She catches up in her physics class, and the threat of not graduating is forgotten. However, the lesson is not lost. She overcame her own doubts and triumphed. Hard work paid off, and she saw that really anything is possible. I do my own little victory dance, a triple-time step with a break.

  EVENTUALLY KIDS FROM my English class start joining the half-sandwich club—often when they’re in some kind of trouble. Matt becomes a special project, as he’s always getting in fights. I can relate to that, but in certain ways Matt tops even my own youthful self. He has an anger problem and a self-image problem. Objectively, he’s a good-looking young man with a sandy brown crew cut and soulful eyes, and girls think he’s cute. He reminds me of Steve McQueen. A strong athlete, he’s the starting middle linebacker for the football team—where it’s all right to hit people—but in class he’ll nudge other students and then argue when they nudge back. He’s constantly in motion, and I have to ride him to go back to his seat and pay attention. Nothing I try succeeds in settling him down, though.

  By the end of October, Matt is tied for the dubious record of getting into the most fights at school. His last one was bad. A friend of his was jumped and then Matt got into it with some African-American students. And now four of these same guys have jumped Matt, working him over pretty badly. Black-eyed and bruised, his face is a mess. I phone Matt’s father, who says he’s worried, too. “Matt’s antsy,” he tells me. “He has so much energy. But he also says there are problems at school with some of the kids.”

  I get what his father’s saying. “There’s a racial element involved” is how one girl in my class puts it. Ever since he was jumped, Matt’s had a different attitude, as if he’s ready to blow up any second.

  “Yeah, I was antsy as a kid, too,” I tell his father. “But we have to straighten out his attitude, and you have to help.”

  He says he will, but a few days later Matt tells me he’s on the verge of being expelled. This is still on my mind when I stop, on my way home from school, in front of Joe Hand’s Boxing Gym at the corner of Third and Green. Joe Hand is a local boxing promoter who has a chain of these gyms around the city. Walking past this neat little storefront every day, I’ve noticed that it’s nearly brand new, which is unusual for a city boxing gym. It has rings both front and back, and quality heavy and speed punching bags. There’s a computer room, where Joe Hand lets kids in the neighborhood use the computers for schoolwork. He also drops the monthly dues and lets them train for free. There are knowledgeable trainers and some good fighters who work out here, including the undefeated welterweight Mike Jones. There are also businessmen and some women getting into shape. My bad knees have talked me out of joining, but I’ve been sorely tempted, and today I remember the real reason why. Boxing has a special place in my heart because it was my ticket out of trouble and into a new life when I was young.

  Before learning to box, I was always in fights, in and out of school. I liked the action. I was small and thought I needed to prove I was tough. After I learned to box, I no longer felt that need to prove I was tough, because I knew I was. Also, just in terms of expended energy, boxing takes some of the fight out of a kid. Even a kid like Matt.

  I enter the gym and meet the manager, Petey Pop, and one of the pro trainers, Dan Davis. As I stroll around the rings, I feel like I’m home. Petey asks why I don’t come by and work out, as long as I’m living right around the corner.

  “I’m getting old,” I tell him, but Davis convinces me we can work around my bad knees, and with that I’m in. I agree to come by a couple of times a week to hit the mitts and the bags. I also order a cobra punching bag to be delivered to school.

  The cobra is mounted on a spring that’s anchored in a sand-filled pedestal. It’s a speed reflex bag for combination training. The next morning I get permission to install it in one of the visitors’ locker rooms across from the football coach’s office. The space is small and shabby, with a row of lockers and benches on either side. My plan is to set the bag up in the open area in the middle, and during fifth period I’ll teach Matt to use it.

  When I tell him about this plan, Matt’s excited. He’s up for punching anything, and the prospect of punching something called the cobra positively sings to him. Then other kids spot us carrying the bag and two pairs of boxing gloves down the hallway, and pretty soon I’m the Pied Piper. Both boys and girls want in, nerds as well as football players. Before long I’ve got about a dozen kids perched on the benches taking in the lesson.

  I’ve been practicing with a bag like this for years, so I decide to show off a little. The cobra is used to develop hand speed, hand-eye coordination, and balance, and I quickly set it dancing. The rhythm is hypnotic. Then I throw a seven-punch combination, left jab, right cross, left hook, right uppercut, left hook, right cross. The kids hang on every move. “And always finish with the left hook,” I say. “Like this.” Bang, the bag whiplashes.

  “Wow!” The kids applaud. “Mr. Danza can still fight.” Music to my ears!

  Everybody then takes a turn with the gloves and the bag. A couple of the girls do better than the guys. For some reason, the girls aren’t as self-conscious. They’re just having fun. The boys tend to get more competitive, which can be a problem. But Matt excels. He’s big and strong for a fifteen-year-old, and he throws himself fully into the workout. As I’d hoped, the exercise does seem to calm him down, a midday release for all his pent-up energy.

  Over the next few weeks we go down almost every day during fifth period and trade rounds. I make Matt work harder than I do. Then we start meeting at Joe Hand’s Gym, and Matt gets to train with some real pros, like Boogaloo Watts, a famous Philly fighter from my era. Matt actually has some potential and talent. My strategy seems to be working. He appears more confident, less like he needs to prove how tough he is every day. And boxing and working out with him wins me his respect and some trust, which makes life easier for both of us in class. But it’s not a cure-all. The more time I spend with him, the clearer it becomes that Matt has a fire smoldering deep inside. Although it’s not exploding quite as often, it’s not fully under his control, either. Because we are closer now, I expect him to be less disruptive, but some days he’s just too wound up; he’ll roam around the room, touching objects, elbowing his friends, still way too antsy.

  We’re looking for a happy ending here, but this is reality. Because of his obvious anger, I ask Matt if he would be willing to talk to a counselor, and he surprises me. “Yeah,” he says, not even shrugging it off.

  I call his father and ask him what he thinks. He agrees that he and Matt’s mother will come in for a meeting with the head of the department, the counselor, and me. At the meeting it’s decided that Matt will start seeing the counselor on a regular basis. All’s well until the meeting adjourns.

  The bell has just rung, and the corridor’s packed with students changing classes. As Matt’s parents leave the office and try to thread their way to the exit, they get stuck behind a group of black girls doing what this particular group usually does: talking trash and horsing around. The language is crude, a strong brew of F-bombs and racial epithets.

&nbs
p; Matt’s father gives the girls a chance, but when they don’t clean up their act, he confronts them. He points out that he’s walking here with his wife, and that they are in school. He asks them to watch their language. The girls take offense. They jeer, afraid of nobody. They insult Matt’s parents to their faces, and in no time flat the confrontation escalates into a screaming match.

  Afterward, Matt’s father calls me to defend his son. “Now I can see that everything Matt said about Northeast and the students there is true. I see what he’s complaining about. I think he’s right.”

  This is just what a kid like Matt does not need to hear. “Whatever you do,” I tell his dad, “don’t tell him he’s right about this.” I try to explain the nature of the girls he had the run-in with. “This is cultural. This is how they communicate. It’s what they see at home and in the media. They’re just kids.”

  This is enough to calm him down for the moment. He agrees to let Matt finish the year. “But next year he’s going to a Catholic school.”

  I’m reluctant to admit it, but the discipline of parochial school may be what Matt does need.

  TEACHERS’ LOUNGE

  Bobby G

  One weekend I take the train up to New York to visit my friend Bobby Governale. We’ve known each other since college, when we both planned to be teachers. He went on to fulfill that dream and taught music for thirty-three years. If anybody can set me straight about what I’m doing this year, it’s my friend Bobby.

  We meet at his neighborhood bar in Long Island. Bobby wears a pressed yellow button-down shirt, gray flannels, and polished loafers. When we hug I smell Aramis. Retirement seems to be agreeing with him, but I still think it’s a shame. He retired at fifty-five, at the height of his teaching prowess, because the school system began to shrink his retirement benefits. The longer he stayed, the less he would get. Another paradox of education in America. They want the experienced teachers to retire and make room for new teachers they can pay less. Talk about your penny-wise.

  We settle down, and I tell Bobby about my classroom sweats, my sleepless nights, and failing Matt. I feel like I’m in confession.

  Bobby listens, nodding. “What are you afraid of, Tony?”

  It seems so obvious to me. “There are days when I don’t have the foggiest idea how to connect with them. How do I get them excited about learning? About what I’m trying to teach them?”

  He taps the tips of his fingers together. “What else?”

  He knows me too well. I say, “Okay. I keep thinking they’ll see through me. I know they will. You can’t lie to them. They’ll see me as the fraud that I am.”

  He laughs. “Knowing you all these years, I knew you’d be a good teacher.”

  “Hey, Bobby, did you even hear what I just said?”

  “Sure, I heard. You remember way back in the beginning, when you were making Taxi, you came out to visit my class at Oregon Avenue School?”

  “Do I ever. You rocked.” Bobby at the time was teaching sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. He was also some dancer, and that day he was combining his talents to teach his kids to disco-dance. Disco was the rage back then, so we were all doing the hustle, and Mr. G. was demonstrating some of the more athletic moves that had made him famous in the clubs. He had the kids twirling and leaping into each other’s arms, and as they did he would yell, “Smile!” The kids were having a ball, but that wasn’t all. Bobby somehow turned the whole thing into a lesson about music theory and dancing as human interplay or something. He made disco dancing the key to the day’s curriculum. That class confirmed for me that Bobby Governale was my hero.

  “I had no idea what I was doing,” he says. “I was flying by the seat of my pants. I often felt as if I was faking it. And those kids could really get to me. You caught us on a good day, but there were two boys that year that I wanted to strangle. In fact, they made me so angry I nearly quit. I thought, I just can’t deal with them, and they make it impossible to teach the others, so why not just throw in the towel?”

  He did? My hero? “How did you get past it?”

  “Stuck with it. The first year or two, not really knowing the curriculum, is tough for every new teacher. You just keep trying. If you’re motivated, you do. The kids eventually see your passion, and that’s what makes them buy in.”

  Eventually. But that suggests time, and time is one thing teachers today don’t have. I flash back to my first week at school, before classes began, when Ms. Carroll called all the teachers down to the auditorium and lectured us about Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP. “There’s always the threat of a complete takeover by the district if a school doesn’t perform,” she warned us. “In a takeover, many teachers and staff are likely to be fired.” What she meant was that, as a result of No Child Left Behind, schools that fail to raise their test scores adequately each year can be targeted to become Renaissance Schools, a euphemism for reformed schools. This is every school administrator’s worst nightmare because it means that the district will inject the troubled school with “new leadership” in the form of hired educational management consultants, teams of district advisers, or charter school management services. “Out with the old insiders, and in with the new outsiders” is how one disgruntled teacher described it to me. I realized that day that teaching is anything but a secure job. And with the constant pressure to make AYP, time is on no teacher’s side.

  “How long do you think it takes,” I ask Bobby, “to really get good at teaching?”

  He stops for a moment, like he wants his words to be just right, and then he says, “It’s when they get it. It takes some time for sure, but you can tell the ones who’ll be great teachers. They’re the ones with the passion. The ones who try things and watch other teachers, and network with teachers even outside their subject areas.” He’s going now. “You’ve got to be motivated to be a motivator. You’ve got to be able to excite the kids with a story or an action and then get them to bite on what you want them to learn.” He does that thing with his face that he always does when he’s remembering. “My classroom was a safe zone. Nothing but a place to learn and have fun with music, but if I saw a kid with an issue, I told him or her: see me, let’s talk. The kids are going to love that about you because they’ll know they can talk to you.”

  “How do you know if you’re motivated enough?”

  Bobby assures me I’m motivated and a motivator. It will be the same in my classroom as in his. He’s so positive. It’s one of the reasons I love and respect my friend. Still, my eyes start to fill up so that I have to look away. I hope he’s right, but me, I still have serious doubts.

  Five

  Making the Grade

  HOW BEST TO REACH your students? That is the question.

  I figure I’m off to a smart start when I assign Of Mice and Men. It’s a thin little book, which will make the class think it’s easy. When I hand out their copies, they immediately flip to the end. “It’s only got 112 pages. Chill!”

  I just smile. This is Steinbeck, and as they quickly discover, it’s not the easiest read. There are heavy metaphors on every page. The biblical tone of the prose also puts them off, but I frame the book as a story about two friends, which appeals to them. Once we’re a few chapters in, we screen the classic 1939 movie version of the novel, with Lon Chaney and Burgess Meredith. We talk about what might be wrong with Lennie and why George is so attached to the big, dumb lug. We look at how Steinbeck set up their friendship, their characters, the setting and mood. The kids start to get into it.

  After every few chapters there’s a quiz. One part of the quiz, courtesy of Ms. Dixon, asks them to compose “gists” of what they’ve read. A gist is a twenty-word explanation or summation. As you read more chapters, your gist tells more of the story, but it has to stay at twenty words. The last gist tells the whole story. I love to watch the kids trying to tell the story and counting words on their fingers. Gists also make it easy to tell who is reading and who is not.

  I feel like we’re sailing along
when, midway through the unit, Howard comes to me after class to complain. Howard is the biggest kid in the class and plays on the football, soccer, and baseball teams. He also has no father in his life. He likes to goof around, but at my desk he seems earnest when he tells me, “I don’t get this story. Doesn’t matter how hard I try, nothing sticks.”

  I really care about this kid, so I spring into teacher mode. “Here, Howard, let me show you.” I open the book and demonstrate how to underline important passages and make notes in the margin as he reads. I assure him it’s okay to go back and reread sections that he forgets or that don’t make sense the first time. “I do it all the time myself.”

  He says, “I read the same page over and over. I just can’t remember it. I’m not good at it.”

  I have an idea. “It’s just practice, like anything else. How much do you practice soccer?”

  He answers, “A lot.”

  “How much you practice reading?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I’m telling you, this is the only difference.”

  “But I just don’t enjoy it—at all.”

  “Practice reading, and you’ll get better at it. Eventually you’ll enjoy doing it, just like you enjoy soccer. You didn’t enjoy soccer when you first started, right?”

  He won’t go there. Soccer, he insists, was fun for him from the very first kick, even when he was bad at it. We throw that back and forth a little. Then I say, “Yeah, but you like it more now that you’re really good at it, right?” He shrugs. “It’s like the ukulele,” I say.

  “Hunh?” Howard’s eyebrows shoot up to his buzz cut. “Ukah-what?”