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

by Tony Danza

David sighs. “You can’t learn for them, Tony.” “But I get the feeling some just don’t want to work.” “There’s a difference between not wanting to work and not wanting to learn. The student has to, at the very least, be interested in learning. It might make you more interesting to them if they like you, but teaching is not a popularity contest. It’s about getting them involved in their own education.” I know this. I’ve written and posted it in my class, remember? TAKE PART IN YOUR OWN EDUCATION.

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.

Whenever I hear politicians try to justify cutting the arts in public education, I think of this extraordinary boy. Although he can do a backflip off the stage to the auditorium floor, he’s not a jock, or a math or science whiz, nor is he a candidate for class president or yearbook editor. But with his poetry, he’s a rock star. It’s what gets him to—and through—school.

“Because of all this bad press about bad schools, parents come in predisposed to complain about the teacher.” That empowers the kids to act out whenever a teacher is strict, Glen explains. The kid gets in trouble, but the parents blame the teacher. The school’s forced to reprimand teachers whose only crime may be high standards. “It’s an exhausting, destructive cycle.”

“In the parents’ defense,” Rob says, “most have to work, sometimes more than one job, and it’s tough to get off during the day. We do schedule conferences at night, and we see more parents then, but not that many more.”

One wrote that he identified with my struggles, having experienced similar moments in his teaching career. Unfortunately, he added that his wife, a psychiatrist by trade, thought I might be having a nervous breakdown in the first episode. That’s not how it seemed to me in the moment, but in hindsight the diagnosis could be a little close for comfort. Instead of taking it personally, I chose to view her observation as proof that this profession requires a highly specialized and valuable mix of personality, perspective, and skills for success, and that it’s emotionally grueling. If our viewers took one thing away from the show, I hope it was a profound appreciation for the challenge that teachers across this country face each and every day.

A good cause, topical, and you never know, I might get lucky. I came away from that meeting thinking, Well, there you have it. That’s America’s attitude toward education in a nutshell. We all know that America’s children—and future—are a “good cause” and “topical,” but as a country we’d rather take a shot at “getting lucky” than invest the effort, money, time, and attention it takes to guarantee their success. Our show suddenly seemed like a metaphor for the overwhelming problem of education in America. And a big contributor to that problem is the attitude that Bob DiBitetto echoed. Learning, most of this country seems to think, is like medicine that we know we need but refuse to take unless somebody makes it so entertaining that we forget to think it tastes bad.

Whether or not our show could have changed attitudes about teaching, it never really had a chance. And whether or not the educators who are trying to raise up America’s students can actually set and meet higher academic standards, our cultural values make their job next to impossible. It’s so much easier for pundits and politicians to point fingers and blame the people who are in the trenches every day than it is to get in there with them, or even to find out what actually goes on in those trenches. It’s so much easier for parents to blame teachers when their kids get in trouble than to do the heavy lifting required at home to keep those kids on track. And it’s so much easier for us as a nation to cross our fingers and hope that we’ll “get lucky” with the innovative “solutions” being tested on America’s schools today than it is for us to roll up our sleeves and invest our own time, talent, and money in the schools that are even now—with or without us—shaping our nation’s future.

the vast majority of educators I met at Northeast were not bad so much as they were discouraged and overwhelmed. The rising numbers of low-income and immigrant children, the underwhelming involvement of parents, and the impact of a culture that sneers at knowledge instead of treasuring it all make the classroom a very tough place to work. Beyond that, the sheer logistics of teaching, counseling, comforting, coaching, and inspiring 150 students each and every day are beyond the capability of most normal human beings. Yet public school teachers are expected to perform these tasks calmly and brilliantly while simultaneously documenting and evaluating every move they and their students make. Oh, and don’t forget staying up-to-the-minute and responsive to those constantly changing district mandates and national policy shifts. All for less money than the average plumber, real estate agent, or sales manager makes. Shouldn’t we value the job of expanding our children’s minds more than we value the job of Roto-Rooting our pipes? We say we do, but we never seem to put our money where our mouths are.

Teachers and students need help, not accusations and pay cuts. They need to be a national priority, not an experiment stuck into a late time slot and then canceled for underperforming. But just when our schools need more support than ever, they’re getting less than ever. Why can’t everybody see what’s wrong with this picture? Because, like the A&E audience, most people don’t want to see it.

I see the problem of education now like I never did before. Since I left Northeast, many of my students and fellow teachers have become my email BFFs, and they keep me up-to-date on the latest changes at school, of which there have been many. Budget cuts have loomed over the district as they have across America. Any teacher with less than three years’ seniority is in danger of being laid off, and many of those who went through orientation with me have already left the profession because of cutbacks, frustration, and/or their own economic necessity. Joe Connelly, I’m happy to report, is still hanging on, but at the other end of the spectrum, many of the most seasoned teachers are now gone. The list of Northeast veterans who retired the year aft...