Sophia Skorupski

Professor Aria

Behavior Observation

28 April 2024

Tony Danza & First Year Teaching Questions

Please watch the following video about the first 9 months of teaching and read chapters 1
to 3 in Tony Danza.
Here is the link to the first 9 months teaching documentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_785XzjW3D8

After reading Tony Danza’s book and watching Teach the First 9 months, please reflect
and answer the following questions:

● What were the first years teachers or Tony Danza’s biggest struggles? How
did they overcome these struggles (cite examples from the book or from the
first year's documentary). Tony Danza definitely had a lot of struggles he had to
overcome throughout his first year teaching, but I think the biggest one that kept
coming up time and time again was his tendency to over-talk. The way he
described it in the book is, “My name is Tony Danza and I have ADHD….I have
a hard time staying on topic. I can’t help but go off on tangents when something
comes to mind that I think the kids should know about” (Danza 27). This is a
general struggle for him, but the specific examples are all over the place. For
instance, on his very first day in the classroom, he ended up forgetting all about
the actual lesson he had planned for the students because he spent so much time
nervously rambling. His mentor, David Cohn, was constantly giving him
feedback to allow the students to make their own connections and be involved in
the classroom instead of Tony Danza over-explaining everything. In addition to
not giving the students enough credit or trusting them to make the connections on
their own, it’s also just straight-up boring for all the students to have to listen to
him talk about random things the entire time. I think he finally listened to all the
constructive criticism he was getting and he was able to use all his nervous talking
energy and convert it into designing lessons that the students would enjoy and
could relate to. For instance, the poetry contest that he held at school gave all his
students the opportunity to talk about their own experiences and such instead of
the spotlight being on him the entire time.
● What were Tony Danza’s strengths (cite specific examples)? What strategies
did he use to his advantage? Above all, his biggest strength is absolutely how
much he cared about his students. They always say that it’s the one thing you
can’t teach somebody because they just have to be born with it. Between opening
his classroom up to nomadic students during lunch and sharing his sandwich with
them to helping the one 19 year old student practice her reading so she could
finally graduate to setting up the one angry football player in therapy, Tony Danza
shows that he just genuinely cared about his students and would consistently go
out of his way to help them. I think that he was rather non-judgmental with his
students to the point where other students, even ones he did not have in his class,
would seek him out to get help and advice from him. I think that he made himself
very approachable and available to everyone, which probably would not be super
realistic in a regular situation but it certainly worked for him and he was able to
change many lives.

● What type of teaching style did Tony Danza and the teachers in the
documentary incorporate? I feel like Tony Danza kind of jumped around in his
teaching style because at first he acted like a lecturer and he only taught by
talking to his students for hours on end, but once he finally took the advice of
David Cohn, his style became more aligned with guided discovery and
demonstrator. I feel like it changed because toward the end of the year, he would
usually just give an example of what he wanted them to do (memorize and recite
his own poem of choice) and then instruct his students to do the same with
whatever poem they chose. He showed his students what he wanted them to do
(which by the way I always respect because I hate when teachers assign
something that’s out of most students’ comfort zones but refuse to do it
themselves) but allowed them the freedom to do it on whatever resonates with
them. As for the other teachers in the video, I feel like a lot of them have a
facilitator teaching style because they aren’t too overly-involved in what their
students are doing and they push them to work hard but will always be there for
backup if needed.

● What resources did he or they utilize? Tony Danza had basically all the
resources in the world and I feel like he utilized them appropriately. Having a
camera crew in the classroom must have been really crazy, but I like how he
didn’t use it against his students. When he caught the one boy cheating on the test
in the hallway because it was captured on film, I thought it was good that he did
not get the boy in actual trouble because if he did not have the cameras, Danza
would have never known. In this case, I like that he isn’t taking advantage of his
 resources. However, there were plenty of other ways where he used them to help
his students. Obviously, he is a wealthy man, and I thought it was cool how he
wasn’t afraid to use some of his own money to help his students. The example
that comes to mind is him buying the angry football player the punching bag and
having it delivered to the school so he could use it to get some energy out.
Additionally, Tony Danza constantly seeks advice from his mentor, principal, and
even the other first year teachers to learn how to best serve his students.

● How did Tony Danza change over the course of his teaching year? Use
specific examples to support how he has changed. Like I mentioned earlier, I
think he changed from running a teacher-centered classroom to a more student-
centered classroom. At the beginning of the year, he was constantly spending the
entire class period talking about random personal stories that may or may not
have connected to what the students were learning, but by the end of the year he
was giving the students nearly full autonomy to choose what they wanted to do
and how in a way that would be able to relate to them personally. He also went
from being very nervous to being very confident, especially when it came to
speaking in front of his students and to his authority figures within the school.

● Do you think what they went through is something all first year teachers go
through? Why or why not? I think that what the other first year teachers went
through is very common. Most of them experienced burnout which I think is a
very normal thing because these teachers are constantly lesson planning as well as
grading papers and tests, in addition to anything they have in their own lives. I
think it is very common for first year teachers to be overwhelmed by all their
responsibilities and have trouble balancing their work duties and their personal
lives. Being a first year teacher can be exhausting because students are pretty
much always going to be the same. Between talking over the teacher in the
classroom to not turning in their assignments, managing a classroom, especially in
an elementary school, can be extremely stressful and difficult. I think that most
teachers find themselves brainstorming on the best ways to help their students, so
I think that the ones shown in the documentary are no different. The one female
teacher from the documentary was very concerned with making sure her students
were more responsible with their own education and turning in their assignments
on time, and that one example seems to be spread out across the board because
they all just want their students to be actively participating in the class and
working on progressing through assignments that build on one another.
● Describe one situation that he handled. How would you have handled the
situation differently? Immediately, the first situation that came to mind was on
the NYC trip when AI G kept walking away from the group and Tony Danza
grabbed his arm to pull him in. While I was reading it, I kind of knew where it
was going and I was like “No, no, no!” because I knew it was not an appropriate
thing for a teacher to do. I know that it was not the first time Danza had said
something to him in regards to staying with the group, but I feel like he should
have alerted the other chaperones and told them to keep an eye on him to make
sure he didn’t wander off. I feel like it was a combination of Danza feeling too
comfortable with AI G, almost like they were friends or something, and Danza
just letting his temper boil over. If it were me in that situation, I absolutely would
never put my hands on a student, and honestly if I had to babysit him then I
would. I feel like with a teacher breathing down his neck, he probably would have
just stopped trying to wander off because he would not be having any fun
anyway.

● Describe one thing you learned from the book or the documentary that will
help you in your future classrooms. One thing that I took away from the book is
that I never want to be a pushover in the classroom. It makes me nervous because
if an almost 60 year old man can be taken advantage of in his first year classroom,
I feel like I have no hope when I’ll be a 20-something year old woman. That
being said, I know I do have hope because I can make it my business to not let
students take advantage of me. Tony Danza definitely cared way too much about
being liked by all his students. In the book, he explained that he issued one
detention his entire first year, and even when he did, everybody was shocked. I
think as teachers, everybody has the vision of being a trustworthy teacher that
students can go to with their problems and of course everybody wants to be liked,
but when I read Tony Danza’s experience from an outsider perspective, I realized
that it was kind of sad how much he cared about being popular and how it
affected his classroom management. I think it would be really easy for me to be
the same way in my own classroom, but this kind of opened my eyes in realizing
that it’s more than okay to “discipline” your students and correct their behavior
without fearing it’s going to make them dislike you.