I'd Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had Read Free

give them the education they deserve. My protests are drowned out until a beefy kid named Howard shouts, “Are you a millionaire?” Suddenly, everybody listens.
    I’m old-fashioned about my finances is what I am, from a time when it was nobody else’s business. But I’m so desperate to be honest with the kids that I admit, “Yes, I am a millionaire.” Then I add, “But remember, a million isn’t what it used to be,” only afterward realizing this isn’t something that inner-city kids are likely to find particularly enlightening.
    So maybe I deserve it when a girl in the back pipes up. “Are you nervous?”
    I breathe a sigh of relief and admit: “I’m terrified!”
    Then comes her punch line: “Because your shirt is totally soaked.”
    I look down and realize I’ve sweated through the front, back, and both sides of my pressed light blue dress shirt. And we’re not even fifteen minutes into the period.
    “Maybe you should think about wearing another undershirt,” the girl, whose name card reads CHARMAINE , adds for good measure. The class cracks up.
    What am I supposed to do? I lift my arms and gaze at my stained armpits and shrug in surrender. Can it get any worse? Probably. Despite the rolling cameras, despite my lack of experience, I really am determined to give these kids the care they deserve. But by now I’ve forgotten every single thing I’d planned for today.
    In my nervousness, I default to monologue. “You know, I’m really just like you. I come from a neighborhood just like this. My schooling began in a Catholic school in Brooklyn. Blessed Sacrament—a very strict school where the nuns and priests disciplined us physically. Every classroom had a walk-in closet. If you broke a rule, a nun would take you into the closet and hit you. Usually a good slap, or two or three. Once, in the closet with one notorious nun, I received a double ear cuff. I still remember it.”
    The kids give me just enough of a laugh to keep me going. “My parents never went to college. I’m not sure if they even finished high school. My father was a sanitation man, a garbageman for the city, and my mother a bookkeeper. So I’ve been very fortunate in my life and career, but I know what it feels like to be full of doubt about your purpose in life. You are what you do, and if you do nothing, you can feel like nothing.”
    I try to make eye contact, make them feel that I mean it. Some of the kids are glaring at me, some squirming, some still tittering about the nun in the closet.
    “I was small for my age,” I plunge on. “Four foot eleven in the tenth grade, and that added to my misery and insecurity. To beaccepted and not get beat up, I tried to be funny. As for schoolwork, I know I didn’t do my best.”
    I stop walking back and forth and implore them, “Do your best! That’s all I try to do now, in everything I attempt. Why didn’t I then? Why did I think doing just enough to get by was enough? You know, you can have it both ways if you try—have fun
and
do well in school.”
    They look at me like I’ve lost my mind. They’re not getting it, and I so want them to get this, if nothing else. “I
wish
I’d been more interested in my studies. Why didn’t I get As? I received my degree, but just barely, and now I so regret that I didn’t take full advantage of my school years.”
    They’re texting, yawning, staring at my shirt, which must be dripping on the floor by now. I switch back to why I’m here. “I planned to teach, but when I finished school, I thought I was too young and—at least I was honest with myself—too foolish to teach anyone anything. So my goal of being a teacher was put aside as I searched for what else to do with my life. This could have ended badly, as I was not really prepared for life after college. How do you earn a living with a degree in history if you’re not going to teach? Well, I got lucky. I took a succession of odd jobs—in the kitchen for a caterer, at a moving