Danza - Id like to apologize to every teacher i ever had: my year as a rookie teacher at northeast high

Copyright 2012 by Marc Anthony Productions, Inc.

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN ARCHETYPE with colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Danza, Tony.
Id like to apologize to every teacher I ever had/by Tony Danza.1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Danza, Tony. 2. High school teachersUnited States.
3. ActorsUnited States. 4. TeachingAnecdotes. I. Title.
LA2317.D26A3 2012
371.10092dc23

[B] 2012011320

eISBN: 978-0-307-88788-7

Jacket design by Nupoor Gordon
Jacket photograph ThinkFactory Media/Barbara Johnston

v3.1

To my parents,
Matty and Anne Iadanza

This is the story of my year as a tenth-grade English teacher at Northeast High, an inner-city public high school in Philadelphia. The events and conversations are as true and accurate as I can write them, using my daily diary entries, lesson plans, emails, videotape, YouTube postings, and memory as my guides. A few of the incidents in this book were recorded in the 2010 A&E television series Teach, which was shot in my classroom during the year I taught at Northeast, but please remember that televisioneven reality TVhas a way of altering actual events. I hope in this book Ive drawn a truer picture of Northeast, my students, and my experience.

That said, some of my students and fellow teachers have requested that I use pseudonyms to protect their privacy. In a couple of cases Ive changed identifying details for the same reason. All the poems, stories, letters, lyrics, and emails, however, are genuine and are published here in their original forms by permission of their authors.

One

R OOM 230. First day of school. I unlock the door and try to wrap my head around whats about to happen here in my classroom where Im Mr. Danza. That Mister alone takes some getting used toa whole different kind of Boss. At Philadelphias Northeast High, only my fellow teachers get to call me Tony. School rules. This gig isnt acting, its for real. Real kids, real lives, real educations at stake. And any minute now my students are going to walk through that door.

Engage the students. The mantra that was drilled into my head during teacher orientation starts playing like a bass drum in my chest. One of my instructors rolled her eyes when she said it, and then she added, No one ever seems to question why the burden is all on the teacher to do the engaging, when we ask so little of the students, or for that matter, their parents.

Her vehemence startled me. I never thought of it that way, I told her.

No, she said, not unkindly. But I promise, you will.

Its stifling. I turn on the ACa luxury Im grateful forand double-check my room. It looks as good as I could possibly make it in my week of prep. The institutional beige cinder-block walls and the desktops are scrubbed so clean even my mother would approve. I dusted the bookshelves, squeegeed the windows, and installed dispensers of hand sanitizer by each dooran attempt to defend my students against the swine flu epidemic thats threatening the nation. This last touch, I hope, will show the kids that I sincerely care about their well-being and not that Im a germ freak. Ive also decorated the walls with fadeless blue paper and encouraging banners, which say things like THE ONLY PLACE SUCCESS COMES BEFORE WORK IS IN THE DICTIONARY and my favorite, NO MOANING, NO GROANING if only I could follow that advice myself! Above the blackboard, Ive glued big letters to spell out: TAKE PART IN YOUR OWN EDUCATION . And on the wall are listed my class rules:

1. BE here, on time and prepared

2. BE kind

3. BELIEVE

I try to shrug off the advice of a veteran teacher I met last week at Beckers, the local school supply warehouse where I bought all this signage. He was a sweet-faced guy, moonlighting as a checkout clerk to make ends meetso much for those outrageous public school salariesand he immediately marked me as a novice. His tip-off was the huge pile of educational decorations I was charging to my own credit card. Philadelphia teachers receive only a hundred dollars each for classroom supplies for the whole year; obviously I was way over budget in more ways than one. So this veteran offered a tactic to save my skin. Never smile before Christmas, he warned. Smiling puts you at their mercy, theyll eat you alive.

Fortunately, before I can dwell on this memory, the bell rings. Actually, it screams like an air-raid siren. But then, the strangest thing happens. Outside, the hallways are bedlam, but in my classroom dead quiet reigns, even after the first student walks in. Shes small and neat, wearing jeans, a white T-shirt, and a plastic headband. She bounces a little on the balls of her feet and grins at me, but doesnt make a sound.

I HAVE A BIG MOUTH , which is how this whole thing got started.

In 2007 I was two years into my dream jobhosting a live, one-hour TV talk show in New York City. It aired from ten to eleven every weekday morning on the ABC network, right after Live! with Regis and Kelly and before The View. I felt like the king of New York. The show not only gave me a window into the true complexity of the greatest city on earth but also offered a platform for me to do some serious good. One of my favorite segments was our School Room Makeovers. The producers would enlist charitable corporations to donate much-needed school equipment, and then wed take a camera crew into an impoverished school and remake the science lab, gym, art room, or reading room. When we learned that the music department in one school had just six instruments for four hundred kids, we approached Casio and C. G. Conn and acquired keyboards and brass instruments. We rebuilt and reequipped the music room, and that school now has a fine jazz orchestra. Given half a chance, Id have leveraged my show to rebuild all the public schools in New York. Unfortunately, my show was canceled.