I'd Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had

by Tony Danza

  Right now I feel only the fury as Al G forces me to chase him down in Times Square. “You’ve got to stay with the group,” I tell him. “I don’t want to lose you in these crowds.”

  Damned if he doesn’t keep walking! I reach for his arm. When I touch it, Al turns as if I’ve scalded him. He yanks his elbow away and pivots to confront me. “Don’t put your hands on me!”

  Now what do I do? For months I’ve tried with this kid, putting up with his behavior, his missed assignments, his showing up late and not participating, and worst of all his loud and exaggerated yawns. I am sorely tempted to show him he’s not so tough.

  Fortunately, the impulse passes. I back down, and he turns and keeps walking. I stand and watch. He knows and I know this won’t be good if I lose sight of him and have to chase him again. He strays just far enough to feel he’s sufficiently won the round, then he slowly comes back on his own. But I’m on notice: it’s going to be a long day with young Al.

  Finally we make our way across Broadway to the Palace Theatre. The seats in the second balcony are not the best, but the Palace is one of those old showboat playhouses, all polished brass and gold leaf, red velvet curtain, plush carpet, and the sizzle of preshow energy that seems somehow unique to Broadway. The kids are already looking impressed when our usher leans over and reminds me that she worked at the St. James Theater when I played Max Bialystock in The Producers.

  Katerina asks, a little breathless, “Was that a theater like this one?”

  The usher nods and says, “Your teacher was the star of the show.”

  The kids seem awed. I could kiss this woman for giving me this extra and badly needed street cred, but all I can do is thank her.

  Al G, who’s sitting with me at my insistence, lets out one of his exaggerated yawns. Then, without looking at me, he says, “You did a play like this?”

  “No,” I say, without looking at him, “I planted that usher and told her to say that.”

  He turns and takes me in for a second, not sure if I’m on the level, then he laughs and turns away. I can’t read him, either.

  “Yes, Al,” I tell him after a beat. “I did a big Broadway musical.” I wait for a response, but before either of us can say anything else, the lights go down.

  My irritation with Al compounds my annoyance at being up in the nosebleed seats, but once the play begins I appreciate that we have a great overview of the action. The gang members in the show don’t look like the ones my kids are used to. The Jets and Sharks are old school, no dreadlocks, rags, saggy pants, ball caps, or tattoos. Nevertheless, the kids can identify with the love story, and the music and dancing quickly enthrall them. They’re so caught up in the play that when Tony is shot at the end, half of them scream and jump out of their seats.

  It’s as dark as it can be in Times Square when we emerge from the theater. My friend Sal’s restaurant is only nine blocks north, theoretically an easy walk, but the streets are packed and not altogether savory. Times Square is the land of the come-on, and the kids are soft targets. Sidewalk salesmen shove flyers for girlie shows into the boys’ hands, and too-eager merchants try to lure the girls into souvenir shops. Making sure that everyone’s safe and together in this evil carnival atmosphere is nerve-racking, even with the extra chaperones.

  One particularly friendly homeless person, who smells like he’s made of marijuana, pleads with the girls to donate money for his “college tuition.” A couple of the kids give him some change before I can pull them away. By the time we arrive at the restaurant, I could really use a drink.

  Patsy’s is a family-owned white-table cloth restaurant that’s been in operation for almost seventy years. My friend Sal’s father and mother still work there with him, and his cousin Frankie is the maître d’. A statue of Frank Sinatra is on the bar, he ate there so often. Sinatra had a special table upstairs where he sat when he didn’t want to be bothered by fans, and that’s where Sal sets us up, the kids together at tables along the wall and us adults at a large round table toward the front of the room. Since I go back a long way with Sal and his staff, and I want them to know how proud I am to be a teacher, I make a big deal of introducing them to Northeast’s present and past principals, Ms. Carroll and Mr. Barton. Also, since I’ve talked a lot about Sal to my class in the days leading up to this trip, I want him to meet the kids. After Nakiya shakes his hand I say, “Now you know Sal.”

  Nakiya decides to get cute about it. “I know Sal,” she says as if it’s a Marx Brothers routine. “Hey, you know Sal?” Sal and I laugh, but my principal thinks that Nakiya’s being disrespectful and also that I’m favoring her. Ms. Carroll warns me to treat all my students the same. I decide it’s time for that drink and sneak off to the bar for a quick one.

  When I get back, everybody’s happy. The kids have a short discussion about what happened in the play and why, but literary considerations are short-circuited when Nakiya breaks into “I Feel Pretty.” Two other girls join in. Then Howard, too, starts singing. Everybody applauds as he pretends to curtsy.

  Sal has put out a beautiful spread for us, and good food always soothes the spirit. Inevitably though, as dinner wears on, the kids get restless. Nakiya, Matt, and a few others initiate a hot sauce eating contest. I find it funny, but once again, my principal fails to see the humor. After dinner, when we take a group picture in front of the restaurant, Ms. Carroll looks anything but relaxed. As we board the bus, I wonder if the kids were right to object to her coming. But surely, I tell myself, everyone must be exhausted, so the worst has to be over and I can hope they’ll sleep all the way home.

  An hour into the trip home, someone lights a match. I can’t see it, but I smell it. One of the kids must have taken a matchbook from Patsy’s. I have my suspicions, and when Matt locks one of the girls in the bathroom, I go back to confront him. “Let her out now,” I warn him under my breath, “and give me the matchbook.”

  Matt looks a little sheepish and a little defiant, but he obeys me on both counts. Back up front, Ms. Carroll is seething. She wants to hang whoever lit that match, and I wouldn’t wish her on my worst enemy right now. I keep Matt’s tacit confession to myself.

  It’s around ten when we pull up in front of school. None of the teachers can leave until all the kids have been picked up. While we’re waiting, the principal pulls me aside. “I should have said something earlier, Mr. Danza.”

  Uh-oh. What did I do now?

  “If any of the kids says anything, you know, we could both be fired.”

  A mental slide show begins to play: the homeless pot guy getting too close to Chloe, Al G pulling his arm away, Matt lighting a match, Nakiya teasing Sal. “Complains about what?” What did I miss?

  Ms. Carroll lowers her voice. “Alcohol.”

  Is she kidding me? It was a long day, and I had only one drink. I am legal, and I wasn’t even in the same room with the kids. How’d she know, anyway? All this explodes in my head along with a burst of frustration like I haven’t felt since I was sixteen years old. Again, I’m one of the principal’s misbehaving students—that’s exactly how it feels.

  I mutter something about being sorry. At least I knew enough to sneak off to the bar. But then, once I get ahold of myself, I have to wonder, What was I thinking when I did that? The truth is, I wasn’t thinking. And because my principal let me get away with it, her head could be on a plate now, too. Teachers and administrators are always worried about being fired. One complaint from a child or parent can be the end of a career.

  I apologize again. Ms. Carroll just stares. After a second she says, “Good night, Mr. Danza.”

  After the last charge is picked up, I go home, but I have a hard time sleeping. I tried to speak to Al G after the play and again in Patsy’s, but he would have none of it. What if he saw me at the bar? What if he sees my slipup as an opportunity to give me a really hard time?

  When I arrive at school the next morning, Kelly Barton is waiting for me. He calls me into the office where David Cohn and I meet every day,
and very casually thanks me for the great trip. Kelly’s a big blond guy, always genial, the kind of guy who can fire you without hurting your feelings. I brace myself for what’s coming. “By the way,” he adds, “I hear Sal’s bartender makes a wicked virgin martini. Amazing what you can do without alcohol. Get me his recipe next time you’re up there, will you?”

  I’ve caught a break. Problem solved. Count on Kelly to remind me that some things are just that simple.

  But other problems loom, as I discover when my cell phone rings. It’s Leslie Grief. “It wasn’t cheap to charter that bus, you know,” he launches in. “We had to take out extra insurance, pay the crew overtime, cover all those theater tickets.” None of this is news to me. Cost was the main reason I had to work so hard to persuade the producers to green-light the trip. Les reminds me, “Something was supposed to happen, Tony. Something, as in drama.”

  I know then that Les has seen yesterday’s footage and is not happy. The camera missed my confrontations with Al and Matt, and the rest of the kids were too well behaved, having too good a time. “The network’s going to pull the plug on the show,” Les warns me. “And I can’t blame them.” He hangs up.

  Good riddance is my first thought. I hate constantly being miked and on camera, and I’m sick of these production battles. With every passing day I become more convinced that the kind of drama the network wants is exactly the kind that my students and I don’t need. I’m here to teach, and the kids are here to learn, and that’s all that really matters.

  On the other hand, I do like being paid, especially given that this is by far the most difficult job I’ve ever had. I’d never bail on my class, but without the production I’ll be working as a volunteer. How do you act, feel, and function like a professional if you’re not being compensated? I feel a pang of solidarity with the millions of real teachers who must ask themselves this question every day. And then it hits me. I wanted reality? Well, I’m about to get my wish, big-time. Say goodbye to your Hollywood safety net, Tony. This is truly the real deal.

  With all this on my mind, it’s not easy to wrap my thoughts around the day’s lesson plan, but I can’t put off sonnets any longer. Iambic pentameter, here we come.

  “It’s like a heartbeat,” I tell the class, and lead them in pounding our chests. Boom BOOM, boom BOOM. “Sonnets have fourteen lines.” I draw them on the board. “Three four-line quatrains followed by a couplet. The rhyme scheme is ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, and the couplet is GG. Each line has ten syllables, and the accent is on every second syllable.” I’m on a roll now. “The quatrains develop an idea, and the couplet sums it up or gives a take on what’s come before.”

  Then I pass out copies of Shakespeare’s Sonnet Eighteen. We read out loud as we pound our chests, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day …” The love stuff gets them, and the couplet kills, but they shriek when I tell them old Will wrote this to a young man.

  What!

  “Yes, and some of his other sonnets are to this sexy black woman.”

  “Once you go black …,” cracks Al G.

  This begins a spirited discussion of sexual preferences, both in Olde England and today. Gay rights comes up, and before I know it, the class veers from a Shakespearean sonnet to the headline issues of today. I’m thrilled as they connect the world’s most famous writer to their own world.

  To make sure they grasp the structure and have some fun, I have them compose a sonnet about our New York trip. They suggest lines, which I edit on the blackboard, then we read them out loud and revise together. The room rocks and rolls, everyone counting syllables as they make up phrases.

  When our New York sonnet finally comes together, I am more convinced than ever that what matters most are these kids. The fate of the show and my paycheck are incidental compared to what I’m doing right here, right now.

  Notice the iambic pentameter, and try pounding the beat out on your chest:

  Our class was hand-selected for a show

  They picked us for our personality.

  This is the best class you will ever know,

  We raised eight hundred dollars for Haiti.

  You have to sanitize when you enter,

  We used to be afraid of the swine flu.

  You get sick easily in the winter

  Cover your mouth before you say achoo.

  We went to New York and we met pal Sal,

  And also went to Washington, D.C.

  The only one who had no fun was Al,

  These field trips are so memorable, you see.

  We saw a bum who smelled a lot like pot,

  But in the end we sure did learn a lot.

  TEACHERS’ LOUNGE

  Gone Bowling

  The network delivers on Leslie’s threat at the end of January. We’ve shot enough footage for about six one-hour episodes, and based on that footage, A&E decides six is enough. This means that the crew will come back a few times later in the year for some final pickup footage and interviews with the kids, but basically, I’ll be on my own here now.

  As the filming quietly winds down, a rumor of a different scenario fans through school. Having heard that the production is ending, both students and teachers ask me repeatedly when I’m leaving. A few of the teachers might be hoping for a different answer, but I assure them I’m not going anywhere. When I said at the outset that they were stuck with me for a full year, I meant it. Brave words. And it’s true that I won’t miss the camera’s constant seeing eye in my classroom, or the daily wiring and unwiring of microphones. Still, I don’t do well with abandonment, especially when it carries the taint of failure. Will I lose my authority now that I’ve lost my cameras? What if I find I need all those props? I certainly don’t feel like celebrating.

  Yet celebrate we must. Without coming right out and telling anybody that the series has been capped, the production company decides to throw a wrap party in a cool art deco bowling alley near my apartment. In addition to our crew, my students and all the teachers who appear in the show are invited, and we take over an upstairs room that has a square bar and its own six-alley bowling area, pool tables, and TV screens. It’s a spectacular place for a party, but not for the speeches and a screening that are central to our event. Downstairs, the main bowling alley is full of people whooping it up, and the sound reverberates through the walls. Every time someone bowls a strike the cheers explode up the stairwell, drowning out our festivities. The venue seems a perfect metaphor for our whole production, I think.

  The A&E executive who has just decided to cut us off at the knees hardly notices the noise barrier. But the students, parents, and teachers have to strain to hear him over the din. They’ve been promised that we’ll view the first episode tonight, and they’re eager to get on with it. Ms. Carroll, the only one allowed to see the footage as it was cut, is so happy with the results that she’s brought along Assistant Principals Sharon McCloskey and Peggy DeNaples. They’re almost as excited as the kids to see themselves on TV.

  As the executive drones on, I look around and notice our show runner in the corner talking with another exec. The show runner is the director who sets a series’ tone and is responsible for the day-to-day shooting and flow of the production. I had a hand in hiring him back in August, and he seemed perfect, but then we began to pull in opposite directions. When there were problems in school, I could never be sure if they were real, or if he was just trying to crank up conflict. Once, when David Cohn was reviewing my day in the classroom, the director wanted us to leave the office and walk down the hall as we talked. His rationale was that the shot would be more interesting than our standard static shot in David’s office. This is not the way David would normally work; he doesn’t evaluate a new teacher while strolling down the hallway, but he complied. Then, as we were walking, the director, off camera and out of my sight, began to make stabbing motions to urge David to really lay into me. Drama! That did it as far as David was concerned. “I didn’t sign up to be an actor,” he told me. Not only did he refuse to play a
long but he later threatened to quit if the production didn’t lay off. I confronted Leslie on this and managed to keep David onboard, but from then on David understood what we were up against, and it kept us both on our toes. If the principal summoned me to her office, I had to ask myself, was there a real issue, or had the show runner put her up to it? Katerina’s mother bringing in her illicit birthday cake was exactly the kind of thing he’d set up—hoping to get me in trouble. Of course, in that instance I managed to get myself into trouble without any help from him. But the worst of it was that every time a student had a crisis, I was afraid the conflict had been nudged by the production team. I never could trust them not to try. Suddenly it dawns on me: maybe teaching will actually be easier without them!

  The executive passes the hand mike to Leslie Grief, who says all the right things. “This show is groundbreaking,” he tells us. “It shines a bright light on what is happening in our schools. You guys have done something very special.”

  A loud crash shakes the building. Another team of players downstairs has bowled a lucky strike. What are we doing here?

  “And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for,” Les says with his usual showman’s flair. He lifts his arm with a circular motion and directs everyone’s attention to the overhead monitors normally used to broadcast football games and bowling scores during league championships. The show’s opening rolls, dead silent. No sound.