I'd Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had (8 page)

The next day, Eric Choi and his partner, Ben-Kyle Whatever Your Name Is, which is what I call him because of his two first names, present “The Magic Button Myth.” Eric has fashioned a large round paper button attached to a paper spring that he sticks to the blackboard. On the button they’ve printed:
DO NOT PUSH
. In the myth the two boys act out, one god warns the other
not
to push the magic button, which of course guarantees that the second god
does
push the button, thereby blowing the world into existence. The class cheers, and shy, gawky Eric does not know what to do with the praise.

In Matt’s myth, his god is suffering from indigestion and farts
the world into being. Another smart student has conjured up a god named Danzeus. I’ve won their enthusiastic participation, and no matter how outrageous their myths may be, this feels like a victory.

I’m still riding high at the end of class, when Katerina asks me if her mother can bring in a cake tomorrow for her birthday. Katerina is one of my two Russian students. She’s soft-spoken and polite, always saying, “Good morning, Mr. Danza,” “Have a good day, Mr. Danza.” She’s also a serious student, so I have no qualms about celebrating her birthday. Before the school year started, I hung a calendar on the wall and wrote everyone’s birthday on it, and I always make some sort of fuss over each kid’s day. I’ve even made up my own birthday song to sing them.

“Fine,” I tell her, and promptly forget all about it.

The next day I make my usual birthday fuss over Katerina at the beginning of class. We all sing her “Happy Birthday,” and I do a little soft shoe in her honor. Katerina blushes prettily and thanks us. Then we get back to work.

No myth is complete without a hero, and Theseus, who slayed the Minotaur, is a pretty chill hero. After we read the story of Theseus, we discuss the various characteristics that make a hero. The students’ list:

They also decide that a hero is a warrior, someone like Theseus who wins a great battle.

All good, but I want to extend their conception of heroes to real life. “Does anyone in your family or community qualify?”

Several students mention friends or relatives who have enlisted or are planning to fight as soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. They see
them as heroes. Others say they consider their moms their personal heroes. Howard, who lives with his mother and sister, says his mother has kept them together and taken care of them with zero help from his father. He and the other kids agree, that is heroic.

By the end of the period, the kids are finding heroes among neighbors, grandparents, even some teachers—people they certainly never thought of as heroes before, and I like that. I ask, just as the bell rings and they’re getting up from their desks, “Could you be heroic? Think about it.”

Because I have the kids for two periods, I give them a brief break before we begin our second period. They stretch their legs in the hall, and after a few minutes I go out to reel them back in for our second forty-five minutes together. I’ve just gotten them into their seats when there’s a knock on the door and a woman with a thick Russian accent enters. She’s tall and attractive with long blond hair, and is dressed as if headed for a nightclub, though she’s carrying a huge chocolate cake and drinks. Katerina is a pretty, young girl, and seeing her mother, I am reminded that apple trees make apples. I’m also reminded that I agreed to this.

I can’t believe Katerina let me go through my whole birthday song and dance without reminding me this was coming. It’s going to completely derail my lesson plan for this period. But what am I supposed to do? The kids are psyched. Besides, as I watch this loving mother lighting candles for her daughter’s wish and beaming at the rare opportunity to see Katerina in her element, I think of my daughter Emily in her junior year of high school back in California without me anywhere near her. Swallowing hard, I keep my mouth shut and wait for my piece of cake.

It so happens that a friend of mine has just sent me a DVD of some of my old bouts as a professional boxer. So while everyone is eating, I slide it into my laptop and turn the projector up to the
screen. “Anybody want to see some of my old fights?” We’re having a fine old time when there’s another tap on the door.

Assistant Principal Sharon McCloskey steps into the room, sizes up the situation, and summons me into the hall. “Mr. Danza, what exactly is going on in your class?”

I try to explain, but she doesn’t need my explanation. Ms. McCloskey’s not ordinarily as gruff as Ms. DeNaples, but at this moment they could be twins. “Mr. Danza, if we allowed every mother in this school to bring a cake for her child’s birthday, we wouldn’t get much done, would we?” Again she doesn’t let me answer. “And what are you showing them along with their cake?”

I stammer something unintelligible and watch her turn away. “Don’t let it happen again,” she throws over her shoulder and walks down the corridor shaking her head.

Back in the classroom, the kids can’t wait to hear how much trouble I’m in. So much for heroism. Katerina and her mother stand and chime in unison, “Sorry, Mr. Danza.”

P
ARENTS ARE A FORCE
in education, whether they realize it or not, for better and for worse. I prefer meeting them over a birthday cake, even if I do have to pay for it, than over the phone, but when my kids are in trouble, I don’t have much choice. I delay calling Al G’s mother as long as I possibly can. But he’s a handful, constantly talking, joking, and—my pet peeve—he yawns loudly. I’ve moved him from seat to seat in hope of finding a sweet spot next to just the right person. But you move one kid, and it can start a chain reaction that messes up the whole class. I have one student, Paul, a calm, steady sweetheart who’s my go- to guy. I can almost always put a problem next to him or move him next to a problem, but not even Paul works with Al G. I’ve finally resorted to sticking Al right in front of Mr. Cohn. That at
least quiets him down, though it doesn’t get him to work. Meanwhile, the rest of the kids are miffed at me for giving him so many chances. I can’t tell them that I do this because Al G reminds me of myself, or that I’m afraid if I come down hard on him, I’ll lose him completely. But that’s why it takes me so long to make the call. Finally I have to tell his mother what’s going on. I ask her to come to school so we can talk about her son.

Al G’s mom is young, like many of the mothers in the neighborhood. We meet downstairs in the lobby so I can escort her to my classroom, and my first impression is that she looks a little too glamorous for the occasion. She has long, flashy fingernails and a hairdo right off the cover of
Essence
. Then I remember; we are filming a TV show. The kids and I don’t even notice the cameras anymore, but that note hasn’t reached Al’s mother and the rest of the community.

Upstairs the walls of my room are filling with student work, and ordinarily I’m proud to show them off. However, there’s nothing to show from Al G. “You know,” I tell his mother, “I think I get your son. He’s a kid who doesn’t realize he needs school yet and at the same time thinks he knows it all. Am I right?”

She eyes me warily. I hurry up. “Because I was the same kind of kid. I thought it was uncool to act like I cared about anything the teacher said.”

“Al G doesn’t want anybody to know how smart he is,” she says slowly.

“I know that. But you and I know that he
is
smart. He’s very smart. He just doesn’t do the work. When I ask him about it directly, he tells me he’ll do it, then he just doesn’t. We’re three weeks into school, and he still hasn’t handed in the assignment from the first day.”

“He has a lot going on,” she says.

Is she defending him? “I need your help,” I tell her. “School is important to his future. It’s the only chance he has. He’s smart. He can have a good future if he will just do the work. I won’t give up on him, but I need your help.”

She listens, nods, doesn’t say much more, and I can’t tell if I’ve made a dent or not.

Al G’s mother must have some power. The next day he slinks into class and drops on my desk quite a bit more than the half page I requested about his personal experience. It would be pushing my luck to ask him to read it aloud, so I read it to myself. It describes a basketball court in a park near where he lives.

The day he’s writing about began normally. Al was playing in a pickup game, with winners holding the court and losers forming new teams to try to upset the winners. There were the usual altercations, disputed calls, and hard fouls of playground basketball, but this day deteriorated into an urban nightmare. One of the boys, unhappy with the outcome of the game, left the park and came back brandishing a gun. He was threatening some of the players on the winning team when another youth pulled a pistol. Both boys started shooting, and Al G hit the ground, crawled to cover, then hightailed it out of the park.

I finish reading and remember that the memory I gave the class as an example for this assignment was about the time I helped my uncle Mike lay linoleum in my mother’s kitchen. Talk about a different world. My reality as a kid was a tough neighborhood, but nobody was getting shot at. I mark the paper, and when I return it I ask Al if he ever goes back to that park.

“ ’Course,” he answers. “It’s right by where I live.”

The gap between my life and Al’s widens even further. Maybe stories like this are what his mother meant when she said he has a lot going on. I remember now that when I called to request the conference, her first words were “Is he okay?”

“Well, you did a good job on this,” I say. “It’s well written. You’re good at this, and I want you to keep writing.”

Al G smiles to himself. It’s barely detectable, but I think the praise pleases him. I know it does.

A
FEW DAYS LATER
Al G is given an in-school suspension by another teacher and has to sit all day with other problem kids in one of the three portable classrooms maintained for this purpose at the back of the school. I go out and knock on the door where I’ve been told I can find him. “Okay if I come in and see Al G?” I ask the teacher on duty.

This man is older and wears a been-there-seen-it-all expression. “Sure,” he deadpans. “Come on in and join the party.”

In-school suspension is for relatively low-level infractions. More grievous offenses warrant home suspensions and last longer than a day, but it strikes me that being stuck out here is the harsher of the two punishments. It’s dead time. The portable is colorless, cold, and blank. There are rows of desks and about ten kids, boys and girls, drooping in various stages of boredom. Nothing is happening. Certainly, no learning is going on. When I make my way back to Al’s row and ask if I can sit next to him, he just shrugs.

A few of Al’s friends are here, too, and this makes it difficult to talk to him, since they’re always watching and he’s fronting. “Why you here?” he asks me.

“I always visit my friends in jail.” He hides his smile by dropping his head low between his shoulders, but I don’t mean it as a joke. I want him to make the connection. We sit in silence for a while. Then, as if there’s been no break in the conversation, I say, “Look around. Do you think this is where you belong? This where you want to be?”

Al doesn’t answer. I don’t really expect him to, but the point’s been made. Now my job is just to be here and not say anything else.
We sit in silence. Still nothing from him verbally, but I feel like he’s happy I showed up. It’s as if I’ve been suspended, too.

After a half hour or so, I get up to leave. He looks up and says, “Thanks for coming by.” He speaks clearly enough that I can actually understand what he’s saying. No smirk. This is a considerable concession, especially in front of the other kids.

As I return to my classroom, trying to figure my next move, I run into Al G’s math teacher, Ms. Green. She’s young, energetic, and generous, and I have a little crush on her. Oh, and she’s also concerned about Al. She reinforces what I already know, that he can do the work but doesn’t think it’s cool to excel. Her seventh-period math group is especially tough for him because he has friends in the class. She describes Al G as a show-off who can also be an endearing kid. I haven’t seen the endearing kid yet, but I know the show-off. We agree to work on him together.

Ms. Green’s strategy for getting Al working is to have him teach her class. I ask her if I might come and observe that. We devise a game plan.

The next day I enter Ms. Green’s class dressed like Al. I wear a backpack like his, a hoodie, and his brand of Nikes—shoe style being paramount to these kids. I take a student seat and put my feet up on a nearby desk, showing off those familiar sneakers. From the head of the class, Al spots them and smirks. Direct hit. I loudly unwrap a sandwich, which I proceed to eat as he watches from the teacher’s spot and tries to do his job. He writes a math problem on the board. I raise my hand, and when he calls on me I ask a question about bacon, which for some reason he’s always talking about. He ignores me the same way I do him when he asks dumb questions. Then I give him my Sunday punch: I yawn as loudly and demonstratively as I can. Just like him. He shakes his head.

The math class is having a good laugh at Al G’s expense, but then
he gets serious and really does try to teach. The kids continue to act out, and Al threatens to throw people out of the class and call the dean, all to no effect. I raise my hand and ask him to help me with the math problem sheet. Math is not my subject, and I’m not acting. He makes a real attempt to explain the problems to me, and like a real student, I struggle. He stays with it, attempting to get me to understand while trying to control the rest of the class, which is not easy. When I still don’t get it, he’s clearly frustrated. I know that feeling.

I ask him, “What do you think about teaching now? Not that easy, right?”

He won’t admit it, but his face softens. The bell rings, and his classmates razz him as they leave. They make Ms. Green promise, no more student teachers. Al G is complaining to Ms. Green, but when I get up to go, he stops me. “Thanks for coming.” That’s the second time he’s said that to me. Then he adds, “Keep working on that problem.” He can be endearing after all.