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

man. I’ve got
skills
.” Competition is a drug, and when I blow the whistle for them to open the bags, read their first location clue, and get going, they’re like ponies out of the gate at Belmont. The rule against running is a lost cause.
    Here are their first five challenges:
        • “Pet Lenny’s Dead Mouse,” a.k.a. hamsters
        • “Name That Character,” based on a list of personality descriptions and quotes
        • “Buck Some Barley” by lugging the sandbags from one side of the courtyard to the other and back again
        • “More Than a Feeling,” give the mood and tone of these passages
        • “What Nice Figurative Language You Have,” match passages from the book to the appropriate literary device
    And while my students are tearing around the school, I stay on the baseball field and set up the final challenge—a game of horseshoes to play, just like the characters do in the book. Having worked up one of my best teacher sweats setting up the hunt, using a rolling desk chair as a dolly to move all the stuff around the school, I’m stillwet when the first team of scavengers comes screaming out the gym door.
    “We won! We won!” You’d think there was a million-dollar purse attached to this victory. And much to my surprise, one of the members of this winning team is none other than I-can’t-remember and I-don’t-like-to-read Howard.
    I could be a schmo about it and give him a hard time, but I raise a high five, and Howard meets it with a big grin. “Game’s not over yet,” I tell his team. “There’s still one more challenge, and the others aren’t far behind.”
    We start playing horseshoes and don’t stop until the bell rings, by which time everybody, I most of all, feels like a winner. Tired, but a winner.
    The next morning is test time, and another thing giving quizzes has taught me is that administering tests is its own art. As I patrol the class, I recall that when I was in school the nuns seemed to grow extra eyes in the backs of their heads for test days. Cheating was an exercise in futility. We could write the answers on our palms, slip cheat sheets up our sleeves, read our neighbors’ answers horizontally or upside down, but we always got caught. Those nuns had what teachers at my orientation called “with-it-ness.” However, being with it takes a few extra skills in the twenty-first century, when virtually every student carries a portable electronic device capable of instant messaging, texting, and data storage. Every classroom today is unofficially wired. Students will look you straight in the eye and pretend to be listening to you while texting blindly with the devices in their pockets. On regular days I have to punctuate every lesson with reminders, requests, and demands that kids take out their earbuds and put away cell phones. On test day, I have to be hypervigilant.
    Still, I believe that my students really have absorbed their Steinbeck, and after class I’m elated to discover that almost everyone—includingHoward—has passed the test with flying colors. In between the fake dead mice and barley bags, it appears they’ve actually figured out the irony of George killing his best friend, Lennie, and why Steinbeck used that biblical tone. The biggest thrill for me is Al G, who pulls a ninety-one. When I give him back his results next morning, he smirks at me, and it’s definitely one of his best smirks.
    F OR THE PAST two years the school has been planning to switch from free dress to uniforms this November. It’s Ms. Carroll’s decision, but the kids and some of the parents have fought her, and as the day of the switch approaches, they’re still up in arms. The kids see it as an infringement of their rights, and the parents are riled up over the expense of the uniforms. Now add to this a strong and unfair suspicion that the new policy has something to do with our show. I hear the grumbling: “Only reason we have to wear uniforms is