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

by Tony Danza

  “Yeah, they figured I’d need a double period. We’ll see.”

  “So how’d the crew in the office react the first time you signed in?”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about. “Teachers have to sign in?”

  “They do here.” His suddenly sober expression tells me this is one rule I don’t want to break. And since it’s the second day of classes, I’ve clearly already broken it. “Maybe,” Joe says without much conviction, “you can use the first-day chaos to buy yourself a pass.”

  I hotfoot it to the office and ask the two women at the counter about signing in. They point in unison, like models on The Price Is Right, to a formidable-looking woman who sits with her back to me at a desk behind them. This is Ms. DeNaples, assistant principal and school disciplinarian—for both students and teachers.

  Ms. DeNaples rises slowly from her desk. She wears a green business suit and sensible shoes and takes her time walking to the counter. Her brown curls quiver as she faces me. “Good morning, Mr. Danza.”

  My comfort level plummeting by the second, I reply, “Good morning, Ms. DeNaples.”

  “We missed you yesterday.” She points to the clock on the wall. “And why are you late for school today, Mr. Danza?”

  I try to explain that I was unaware of the sign-in policy and that’s why I didn’t sign in yesterday, but both days I’ve arrived on campus at 7:05, and I’m so anxious to make this work that I couldn’t possibly be late. In a quietly loud, cutting voice she interrupts, “You are to sign in every day, no later than seven-thirty-eight. And remember, the sign-in sheet is a legal document. There is no room for error.”

  As she’s talking, I notice a smudge of scarlet lipstick on her front teeth. I consider telling her but think better of it. Then I realize I’m unconsciously licking my own front teeth.

  I stop licking when she says, “How do you want to be treated this year, Mr. Danza? Do you want to be treated like every other teacher, or do you have something else in mind? Northeast High School is not Hollywood, you know!”

  I bow my head. “I know that, Ms. DeNaples. I want to be treated like everyone—”

  She cuts me off. “Then why weren’t you aware of the sign-in policy? You went through orientation. Why out of all the first-year teachers were you the only one who didn’t know to sign in yesterday?”

  I have no explanation. And everyone in the office seems to be relishing my discomfort. They’ve seen Ms. D. in action before. Chances are, at least a few of them have experienced her wrath themselves.

  “Why is that?” she repeats. Then she leans so close I can smell the coffee on her breath as she growls, “I can be either your best friend in the school or a complete bitch. It’s up to you.”

  I assure her with a smile that, given the choice, I choose the former. She doesn’t think that’s funny. She folds her arms and glares at me. Her glare so rattles me that when she finally does pass the sign-in roster across the counter, I try to read and sign without my glasses. I can’t find my own name.

  She snaps, “Stop being so vain and put on your glasses.” The office audience guffaws.

  I want to explain that it was terror, not vanity, that discombobulated me, but instead I fish my glasses out of my shirt pocket and put them on. “Oh, there I am,” I say, trying for another laugh. Not even a smile. O for two.

  As I sign, I apologize profusely, assuring her it won’t happen again. “Ignorance is no excuse,” I add for good measure.

  “That’s correct!” she barks. Teach me to suck up.

  So much for the Welcome Wagon. I slink toward the nearest door. But before I can reach it, Northeast’s principal, Ms. Linda Carroll, appears and beckons me into her office for a word.

  I take a seat in front of the principal with the sun against me. I try not to squint. Ms. Carroll has large dark eyes, a sweet face, and a soft voice (when she wants it to be), but I know better than to let that fool me. She has a reputation for being as tough and no-nonsense as she is caring.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance until now to sit down with you, Mr. Danza,” she says, “because there’s something I’m just not sure I understand.” I nod and wait. She’s smiling coolly, and I can’t help feeling like a schoolboy called into the principal’s office. Finally, she lets me have it. “Why are you here?”

  I’m nonplussed. Though this is our first time one-on-one, it isn’t our first meeting. And busy as she had to have been, what with prepping a staff of several hundred for the start of school, she did sign off on all our arrangements for the show. Is this some sort of test?

  “I have to be honest,” she continues before I can answer. “I was a little apprehensive about this whole thing. So I thought I should ask you personally, what are your intentions for this project?”

  I run through all the reasons I’ve given myself—the old dream, the desire to do something I could be proud of, the chance to show America what a big urban high school is really like. I say, “At this moment, education is the hot-button subject that it deserves to be. It’s the right time, and this show gives us what I hope will be the right vehicle to shine a light on urban education. We want to go beyond the easy description of failing schools and bad teachers and show the true humanity of our children and of the people who work with them. There is hope. There are still good kids who genuinely want to learn, and some of them go to school in Philadelphia.” Wow, I think, not bad for the spur of the moment. But it’s not just a pretty speech I made up. I really believe it. “I think our show can inspire more people from other professions to go into teaching for their second act, and maybe even motivate kids still in school today to want to be teachers.”

  Ms. Carroll waves her pencil to cut me off. “You know,” she says after a painfully long pause, “I think that’s why I felt comfortable enough to take this chance. Because if I didn’t get anything else, I felt your sincerity. And I’m being perfectly honest with you. It is my absolute charge to ensure that my students are educated. With that said, I want to welcome you and support you to get the job done, but know that I will not let anybody or anything compromise my children getting what they need to get out of this school year. Not you, and not this production.”

  “I understand!” Boy do I. “It takes a certain amount of hubris to walk in here and think I can teach, Ms. Carroll. I get that.”

  She isn’t finished. “You have to know, Mr. Danza, that if this doesn’t work, you’re out of here.”

  I feel the corners of my eyes filling with tears again. For some reason, I feel like crying all the time! But I am most definitely on notice. Ms. Carroll is the boss.

  DURING THE PASSING BREAK before my class begins, Monte corners me in the hallway. He barely comes up to my shoulders but somehow manages to look down on me. “I am worried I made the wrong choice,” he tells me, “taking your class rather than Advanced Placement English. I intend to be the first person in my family to go to college. I intend to get a scholarship to Harvard or Princeton.” He really does talk like that. It’s all business.

  “Really?” I mentally add college to family and tennis on the list of things Monte cares about. “That’s very impressive.”

  He ignores me. “I should be in a more challenging class. I am not sure you are qualified to teach.”

  Well! The kid certainly gets right to the point, and he doesn’t seem to mind stabbing me with it. Fortunately, we’re right outside my classroom. “Step inside, Monte,” I say.

  I close the door after him and try to look him square in the eye. He stares right back. I make him a promise. “Monte, I will make sure I don’t jeopardize your education. I’m sure I’ll make a few mistakes, but if you give me a chance, I’ll prove to you that this class will be good, and good for you. Will you just give me a little time?”

  He folds his arms across his small chest. He twists his mouth into a knot. I can see that this kid thinks about everything, and I’ve yet to see him smile. However reluctant, he nods.

  Then the bell rings, and we�
�re into Round Two.

  It amazes me that everybody sanitizes like they’ve been doing it forever, without even being told to. It’s the second day! These kids really do pay attention. As they take their seats, I point to the do-now assignment on the board and tell them to get to work. No sweaty monologues from me today. The prompt: “The most important ______ in my life is …”

  The others are hard at work when Al G deigns to appear. He’s about six feet tall, and a pencil mustache has sprouted on his upper lip. He may be only fifteen, but he’s handsome and cocky. Arriving late and moving like a long strand of molasses is his idea of cool.

  “Take off your backpack and stay a while,” I say as he slides into his seat.

  “More comfortable wit’ it on,” he mumbles. Like many kids at Northeast, he talks as if it’s a crime to be understood. As if school is an imposition and if you take school seriously, then you’re trying to be smart, and being smart is also a crime. That’s Al’s culture. He makes it clear that he has no use for the other kids in this class. They’re not his crowd; the crew he hangs with let you know they’re not exactly on the honor roll. Al G is a painful reminder of my own teenage self. The difference is that now the unmotivated student is no longer the exception. Looking back, I think how much less fun school would have been if everybody was like me.

  I tell Al to do the assignment that’s on the board. He studies the air above my head. His stare is different from Monte’s but equally disdainful. I try to ignore them both as I collect the do-nows. Al G still hasn’t located his pencil. He expects me to let him slide. So as I’m about to have the students share their homework—the half page written from experience—I ask him to lead off. He doesn’t have his homework, either. I really ought to know better, but I cut him some slack. “You’ll hand in both assignments tomorrow,” I say.

  Al shoots me a look that promises to make me pay for my kindness. This flusters me, so I do what I do when I’m flustered: I talk.

  My name is Tony Danza and I have ADHD. I was never diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and I certainly don’t mean to make light of the condition, but as I try to capture my students’ attention, I discover that I have a real problem with my own. I have a hard time staying on topic. I can’t help but go off on tangents when something comes to mind that I think the kids should know about. I also can’t resist telling stories that have nothing to do with the business at hand—although in my mind there’s always a purpose.

  “You know,” I find myself saying, “a lot of us in my generation wonder why we didn’t make As like the kids we picked on and wanted to beat up. Our lives might have been a whole lot different if we had. You realize, most people don’t aim too high and miss—they aim too low and hit.”

  They doodle. Girls pick at their split ends. Guys shrink into their hoodies. They gaze through me.

  I talk faster. “I gotta tell you, though, whenever I got in trouble, my parents always supported the teacher. If you got into trouble with the teacher, you got into trouble at home. I was a good student early on, got pretty good grades in elementary school, but then I became the class clown. Not terribly disruptive, but mischievous. I did silly things, like I used to shoot spitballs. You chewed a piece of paper into almost a paste, and then used your ruler to launch it and it would stick to the ceiling. The nun wouldn’t notice until it dried some and fell to the floor with a splat in the middle of her lesson. Sometimes they’d land on her. None of you knuckleheads get any ideas.”

  Eric Choi, the most physically flexible kid I have ever seen, crumples to one side so his head nearly touches the floor. He alarms me, but then I see he just looks bored out of his skull, which only spurs me to try harder to get to the point of the story. I wish I knew what it was. “Once in sixth grade we had an elderly nun who we decided was blind. To prove it, we made a dummy student. We dressed it in a school uniform and sat it at a desk. We thought it was hilarious when the sister scolded the dummy for not taking notes. Now I realize we were just being cruel.”

  I look at Al G as I say this, but Al’s in his own world. I need to get back to the lesson, but then I remember that their homework was about personal experience, so I console myself that I’m just demonstrating the assignment. If I tell them about an experience that they can relate to and that teaches them a lesson, I’m doing my job!

  “Unfortunately, sixth grade was the end of my stint at Blessed Sacrament. I had a series of incidents that culminated in a little knife fight on the school playground. I’d been beaten up by a bigger boy, and my friend came to my defense, pulling out a small pocketknife. I called out for him to put away the knife, which he was doing when the other boy jumped him with a flying kick.”

  The big bruiser Matt and his buddy Howard a.k.a. Frankie (another kid with two names) are suddenly listening with their mouths open. Pretty Chloe has a hand over her eyes, anticipating the cut. I smile and shrug so it doesn’t sound quite so bad. “The knife found its way into the backside of the kicker. Got him in the butt. My friend and I ran and hid until it was time to go home for dinner. In those days, kids left the house in the morning, and after school we all hung with our friends in the street until dinnertime. Hiding didn’t help. I had to go home eventually and confessed in tears. The pastor told my mom to take me out of his school and he also expelled my younger brother, who was only in the second grade and hadn’t done anything yet of note. Thanks to me, the priest felt compelled to purge my whole family. I felt like a real schmo. You guys know what a schmo is? It’s a Yiddish word that literally means jerk, but it’s a pretty good all-purpose put-down.”

  I had them; now I’m all over the place again. I’ve heard ADHD is a sign of intelligence, but that doesn’t help when I’m supposed to be teaching a lesson. During orientation we were warned that students will try anything to get the teacher off topic and waste time. My kids will have the opposite problem: they’ll beg me to stay on topic.

  TEACHERS’ LOUNGE

  The Real Deal

  “There’s somebody I want you to meet,” David says. As we walk downstairs, he continues, “Another first-year teacher, Philadelphia native. He built a successful local contracting business by his early thirties. Then, having saved up some money, he sold his company and became a teacher.”

  I understand now why David wants me to talk to this guy. He’s my reality without the show. Maybe I can learn something.

  As we enter a basement classroom, a young teacher in shirtsleeves looks up from erasing the blackboard. He gives me a broad grin. “Hey, Tony!”

  “You guys already know each other?” David looks confused.

  “Old buddies,” I lie as Joe Connelly and I fist-bump. “Thanks for trying to save me from Ms. DeNaples, even if it didn’t work.”

  Joe laughs. I’m glad to know he has this period free. Since I have only one academic class and most other teachers have as many as five, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find anyone to schmooze with—even if they were game. Joe says, “Welcome to the dungeon.”

  I glance at the windowless walls and feel a pang of guilt over my room’s view of grass and trees—another benefit of the show. But as Joe tells David how well his first classes have gone, I wonder if his more sterile surroundings might be an advantage. At least they reduce the distractions.

  David suggests we compare notes and excuses himself. I pull up one of the student chairs. “So,” I ask, “what made you want to be a teacher?”

  Joe perches on the corner of his desk and rubs the chalk from his palms. “Mainly because it always bugged me that I didn’t finish college. I was mildly successful as a contractor, but as time progressed, I started to think about what I wanted to be when I grew up.”

  “Hey, me, too!” I grin.

  “My wife, Sam, is a middle school English teacher,” he continues. “I always thought I’d enjoy teaching math, if I ever had the time to finish school. But once I bought a house, I shelved the teaching idea and focused on what I thought of as ‘real’ work. I wanted a s
torefront, some good installers doing the work for me as I focused on sales. But then my protégé left and started his own business. This opened my eyes to how hard it is to keep good help. And, what’s more important, my son was born.”

  “Didn’t that just make you more anxious about earning a living?”

  “Yes and no. Becoming a father changed my ideas about what’s important in a man’s life. All of a sudden, I realized that I wanted my son to view me in a better light. How would I be able to ask him to finish school when the time came if I didn’t finish myself? How could I expect him to hold principles above financial gain if I chose the money route? So when Joey was one year old, I went back to school to become a father. I went back to school to become a contributing member of society. I went back to school to help influence slackers like myself to buy into their own education.”

  “I know just what you mean!” I exclaim. I want to hug this guy. “I was a slacker, too. If there’s one thing I want to do this year, it’s try to reach the kids who remind me of me and wake them up so they don’t make the same mistakes I did.”

  Joe runs a hand over his crew cut. “Sometimes when I tell my story, I feel like I’m being too dramatic.”

  “Hell, no! You’re not being dramatic, my friend, you’re being real.” And then I think again. “I take that back. It is dramatic, but it’s the kind of dramatic commitment we need to turn our schools around.”

  “So.” He glances at the cameras that, of course, are filming our every move. “You’re really here for the whole year … teaching?”

  “I really am,” I say, but then I remember Ms. Carroll’s warning and the two days so far. “Unless they throw me out.”

  Joe looks across the room as if seeing his first teaching attempts, too. “The kids don’t make it easy. Sam warned me.”

  “I think I’ve got to channel more of my father. He was a knock-around guy with a saying for every occasion. ‘Finish strong.’ ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right.’ ‘Keep your mouth shut and mind your own business.’ ”