Free I'd Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had by Tony Danza Page B

time I see this kid he tells me he’s facing a three-year jail sentence. He’s also beginning the Twilight Program, a night schoolfor kids who work or have problems and want a General Educational Development certificate. I tell him this is his last chance, but that if he gets his GED the judge will take that into consideration. “Show them you’re trying,” I beg.
    Phil nods and says he gets it. But I can tell he doesn’t really. He won’t last in the program. He feels buried, thinks he’s lost too much ground and will never catch up. “You can, Phil, if you want to,” I plead, but I can feel him already slipping away. I want to throw him a lifeline but have no idea how. How do you help them all?
    A NOTHER OF MY unofficial advisees is a senior named Courtney, who sings in the choir and acts in school plays. She used to spend her free time in the choirmaster’s office, but after finding me she starts hanging out in my classroom instead. She’s a popular girl, funny and bright and getting ready to go on to college, but one morning she comes to me in tears. “I’m not going to graduate.”
    “What are you talking about? You’re a great student. I thought you were doing well.”
    “I am, except I’m failing physics.”
    Uh-oh. I can’t write a definition of physics, let alone offer any real help in the subject. I stall. “Why are you failing?”
    “I got behind, and I can’t catch up.”
    “So you just haven’t done the work, right?”
    “Right,” she says, eyes averted.
    “Wait a minute. Who says you can’t catch up? Who do you have?”
    I recognize her physics instructor’s name from orientation. “Believe me,” I assure her, “there is no way a first-year teacher wants you to fail. Let’s go see him.”
    Asking for help can work wonders. Teachers appreciate that. Andlike Phil’s teachers, Courtney’s is willing to work with her. Unfortunately, as good a student as she is, Courtney, like Phil, has let herself slip dangerously behind. It will take real commitment and work to catch up.
    I give her my “mountain” speech, which I used to give my own kids when they felt overwhelmed by schoolwork. “It’s like when I used to wash dishes for a Jewish caterer. We would serve seven-course dinners for over three hundred people. After each course, hundreds of plates, glasses, pots, and silverware would be piled high on the dishwasher’s counter. That mountain could look so overwhelming that I didn’t know where to start, but I learned that if you just get to work on one piece at a time, little by little the mountain gets smaller, and eventually it’s gone.”
    The good news for Courtney is that there’s time. And support. My assistant on the TV production crew, Kelly Gould, was a physics major in college. I enlist her help, and she and Courtney make a good team. They decide that Courtney’s big project will be a Rube Goldberg contraption that turns on her hair straightener. After building it, Courtney enlists another girl from the unofficial advisory, a beautiful black girl named Farah, and together they make a video of her contraption in action. First Courtney describes all the moving parts and their purposes. Then she introduces Farah, who makes a twirling, spinning entrance and, Vanna-like, activates the machine. A ball rolls, dominoes fall, Matchbox cars slide down ramps, and finally a hammer falls and hits a switch that turns on the straightener. It takes more than a few attempts to get all this to work as designed, but eventually they’re successful. Courtney earns an A on the project.
    She catches up in her physics class, and the threat of not graduating is forgotten. However, the lesson is not lost. She overcame her own doubts and triumphed. Hard work paid off, and she saw that reallyanything is possible. I do my own little victory dance, a triple-time step with a break.
    E VENTUALLY KIDS FROM my English class start joining the half-sandwich club—often when they’re in some kind of