subject: Tony Danza Has a new Teaching Job, Cries "a Whole lot" in front of His Student [print this page] Actor Tony Danza is a past star of such sitcoms as 'Taxi' and 'Who's the Boss?', but it's been a long time since he had a main hit. (Although he does have his movie career as the star of movies such as 'Going Ape!' to fall back on.)
Nevertheless, Tony does have a brand new reality series coming up: 'Teach' -- which will certainly premiere in October on the A&E Network. It follows 1 year inside the life of Mr. Tony, while he struggles to teach a class of 10th-grade English students. Tony spent a year in Northeast High School in Philadelphia, and this was not merely a random choice for him.
Before he became an actor, Tony got a bachelor's degree in education. On 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' the actor discussed his brand new short-term profession. He discussed exactly what he discovered, what his students realized -- and he also mentioned how he got just a little weepy.
Yes, Tony had been apparently quite an emotional teacher who cried a great deal in front of his students. "One day, I cried over origami," he told Oprah. Okay, then. You cried over the age-old art of Japanese paper folding, Tony? Oprah tries to determine what it was regarding origami which made Tony tear up, but the story is pretty complicated. As far as we can tell, he's just a pretty emotional guy who took his work rather seriously.
Tony discusses not wanting to flunk his students, that is often what made him want to cry. "It simply gets to you ... You look over and see a kid bored stiff, a youngster with their head down, you go crazy, it smashes your heart. I cried a lot; they made me weep -- because I cherished them, I guess."
Aw -- that's incredibly sweet. We would like to bring up only a couple of minor points here. One, even though Mr. Danza describes teaching as his "dream job," he just did it for the year that he was paid to be on A&E -- which ... well, you are able to draw your own conclusions here.
And our second point: After originally being rejected by the New York school system, Tony ultimately convinced the people in Pa to let him teach. Nonetheless, he never actually managed to get certified as a real teacher. Therefore he had to have another "co-teacher" in his classroom, who would observe and monitor him. Additionally, due to his lack of certification, Tony only taught two classes each day. (Real high school teachers have to teach between four and seven classes each day.)
Therefore while I'm not denying Tony's passion and his love for his students, we must question if he was 100 percent performing the activities of a real teacher -- or if it was just sort of faked for reality TV purposes. As well as, would you want a non-certified acting professional educating your children for an entire year? Exactly what do you think? Did Tony do a good job? Or was it more of a reality-show gimmic
Tony Danza Has a new Teaching Job, Cries "a Whole lot" in front of His Student
