Dan Ferat and Andrea Bichan

00:00 I have no idea what you're going to ask me.

00:10 My name is Andrea bacon. I'm 22 years old. Today's date is July 15th, 2011. We are in New York City and I am mister for rat's favorite English scooter.

00:27 My name is Dan Farhat. I am 39 years old today's date is July 15th, 2011. Where in Foley Square New York City and I am Andrea's former English teacher now friend.

00:44 39 you seem so young when I was like in high school like you were like one of the guys one of the guys.

00:53 So so weird to hear people call you dad even forgot is a little weird for me. You always have the title The like mr. So you were never one of the students?

01:05 Oh, no, I actually had like a really awful experience with that in college cuz I used to start getting used to calling my professors by their first name. So I called him by his first name who is like not into it at all. And I just was Professor. I don't even give a last name. Anyway talk to me about what you do. I teach high school English High School in New Jersey. I teach mainly Senior High School seniors, but starting in the fall. I'm having two classes of sophomores exactly which of course people can't see on the recording but your reaction is exactly what most people react to I've been teaching seniors for seven years. I spent two years teaching Junior. So sophomores are new and younger than what I'm used to I am nervous. I am nervous.

02:02 Because a lot of my classes based on my rapport with students and I feel like I can relate to high school seniors better cuz they're more mature. They're sort of ready to move out and and become adults and and things like that and sophomores they only one year of high school. They're still figuring things out and they need a little more hand-holding and ironed and as you know, I'm not the big hand holding type.

02:28 Tell it like it is type, but maybe they'll appreciate that.

02:33 CJ all the the same books stuff my years a depressing book selection for what I remember. It's a lot of dystopian fiction. Yeah. So yeah that it hasn't changed.

02:49 Describe Indian Hills High School

02:51 Wow.

02:54 I think it's a typical Suburban High School.

03:00 Particularly for Northern New Jersey. I think the majority of the students are from pretty affluent families middle class upper middle-class families. The turf mix of students has actually increased over the years that even I've been there they're a lot more minority students now, which is kind of nice when I first started there was pretty white.

03:28 But I think it makes a little bit more. I think it's a good school. I think it's a better school than people even give it credit for but

03:41 But it didn't like any other school. It could use work. It could be in Irwin improve in ways. I think generally speaking it, you know, a lot of people there who work there feel that?

03:56 It's fine and that's good enough. And so there aren't a lot of people who are trying to push for better things new things improving on things that are already pretty good but could be even better. So, what are you trying to

04:11 Institute what am I trying to Institute within my classroom? I've even within the past year have changed my methods of teaching according to things that I've researched especially with the teaching of writing. I've reduced the formality of of my approach to writing to let students wander a little more and and find their own voices a little bit more than what I used to do all the way. I feel like I used to let your guys, you know, Boca like well, yeah, but

04:45 Well, thank you, but

04:49 But even then it was that there were a lot more restrictions on you guys than I even give now and I eat I feel like it's it's to prepare because again, I've been teaching seniors it's to prepare them for college where you have to come up with your own ideas and you have to find what you're interested in and you have to be able to come up with your own thesis in your own explanations and research your own work and set up serve again. Like I said before holding their hands through it.

05:27 You're my third graduating class 3 years at Indian house.

05:34 Boy student talk for a year while I was in graduate school. I spent one semester at Ridgewood High School in New Jersey and one semester at the center School. What's the Middle School here in New York City? You teaching Middle School student teacher observation. Now, I know and I did have to teach a couple of classes, but for the most part of conservation.

06:01 And before that actually before I went to graduate school and tried teaching through the New York City fellowship program and I spent six weeks teaching at a middle school in the South Bronx.

06:15 Pride after 6 weeks. I had to leave that job that was in the fall of 2001.

06:22 There were many reasons the fourth day of school was September 11th 2001. So that made things kind of difficult and what kind of traumatic there are a lot of things that happened that day. Not that I was down here anywhere near the World Trade Center, but just being in the city where everything shut down and there was no way out and there is no way to get home was very scary. I'm kind of traumatic and I know it's even worse because I was in a room full of kids who are about between 12 and 14 years old and

07:02 There were about 35 of them in my classroom and my classroom overlooked the front of the building. So parents were just lining up outside my window waiting to take their kids out of school because of what it happened. So that was that was a big thing. And the other thing was that I found I didn't know how to teach

07:23 And how did you learn?

07:25 I went to graduate school like I went to school for it.

07:31 I'd I thought I was doing a disservice to those kids cuz I really I knew how to relate to them. I knew how to get them to do whatever I wanted them to do in a classroom, but I didn't know what they needed to do. And I had no support in the school that I was in which I've heard things have improved greatly since then. I mean, we're talkin 10 years ago now almost 10 years ago, so I had to get out and let them find someone who had some teaching experience take over that classroom, which they did and go get some experience myself and some knowledge medication.

08:14 I went to I got my Master's in teaching English at Teachers College of Columbia University.

08:26 What is a an independent sound mixer here in New York?

08:36 Headfirst into teaching English. Why did you do that?

08:47 I left film for a lot of reasons. Also. I was 30 was looming over my head now that I'm pushing 40 I'm talking about when I turned 30.

09:02 And

09:04 Working in film is a very unstable life for the most part unless you have certain Choice jobs working for a television show of some sort or something along those lines where you just go on a regular schedule and you know when you're working where you're working in that sort of thing, but that's not the situation. I was in I was working completely freelance. I was unemployed more than I was employed. So it was very difficult and I wanted some more stability in my life. I wanted health insurance that was you know, a key factor as I was getting older and yes, I know we alternate I have it. I just want to hold on to it now.

09:48 And and also the year 2000 my last full year in film was a Bittersweet year at that I worked on some of the best projects that I had worked on. I worked on you mentioned Wet Hot American Summer which was one of the best times I had working on a film it was one of the most commercially successful films that I worked on her not even talked about making a prequel. They won't be calling me for it, but it's out there and I worked on another film foreign film that came in from the Philippines in the fall of that year and I was nominated for an Academy Award in the Philippines for sound on that which I didn't find out until I think when you were a senior to be talking to us about that. Yeah, someone else had Googled me and found that out and asked what that award was and I know it.

10:48 Stickley forgot you had to request that we take it down.

10:53 I'll just to make it private, right cuz it's saying all kinds of things. That's when taken out of context parents might get worried. Not that anything was going on in my classroom for parents to be worried about bud.

11:07 You know when you're talkin about certain text certain things come up, but at the end of 2018 working film, I want up on a third film where it was terrible. And I realize that I was being treated like the same way, you know, you might treat a plumber when you've got a problem in your house, you know, you need that person to come and fix it, but you don't really want that person tracing through your house.

11:33 And sorry and I came to realize that that's that's what my wife was going to be like for the rest of the time that I was in film and the final product of whatever I was working on was really just to entertain people for an hour or two and I want to do something more meaningful. I wanted to

11:50 Do something that you know was good and might might change the world. I don't know a little bit something that was worth while and so you know, and like I said stable I wanted a wife and a kid or two when the house and I felt like I couldn't bring that into work in the film industry where I was either around all the time or I was never around some people do it. Some people manage it a guy who used to work for me a griffin Richardson is now the sound mixer for 30 Rock. He's been nominated several times Ramey's he one wants and he goes to work everyday and he comes home every day to his wife and kid and that's great. I don't know that I would have been able to make it like that.

12:40 Do you remember me when I was a senior? I do remember you as a senior.

12:49 It's funny. You said it outside when you were signing up the form for this some people are asking you to like what our relationship was. He said you were my favorite student and you were one of my favorite students you really were and I'm not getting up there cuz it's on a recording but you were a free-thinking spirit kind of person like you didn't care about the restrictions on anything you were looking for what you wanted to get out of any subject it seemed but certainly out of my English class and you weren't afraid to talk about it either and voice your opinion, which I wish all my students would do.

13:32 I always thought you were really bright and maybe weren't quite doing things up to your level of ability, but that didn't matter cuz if you weren't I mean you were interested in school, but not interested in school like you're on your way out of high school and you are done with high school and it was just you were going to do whatever interested you and got you through it and out your class interested in me.

13:58 I got a lot better with grades in college. When I remember this coming back and telling you I was thinking about majoring in journalism and you telling me not to do it which you were right because I hated it. I hate I just I always remember that. What did you think I should have done? I don't know.

14:19 Why do I think you should have done?

14:23 What would I even good at?

14:26 Anything that you were interested in?

14:29 You're one of those people. Let me know whatever you set your mind to you'll do well in.

14:36 Which sounds like a parenting thing to say, I know you probably heard that from your parents. I heard it from mine at some point.

14:47 I don't know. I saw you doing something liberal artsy. I could have seen you majoring in philosophy in college. But what were you going to do with that? I had no idea. He double majored. I know you might end up getting a degree in philosophy exactly anchor and you like to argue your opinion and that's that's the philosophy major right there.

15:18 Sam Ross to Sam Ross and I are the two flat. He got a degree in philosophy. Also. Are you aware of how popular you are as a teacher at Hills?

15:32 Sometimes

15:34 It's a weird position to be in the way of that I teach because I only teach seniors. So the only student I know leave after a year. I think I got tonight. There are few that I get to know who are a little younger and last year. I got to know a lot more because I I now in the advisor for the newspaper also the code visor for newspaper. And so I get to know someone to class went that way, but for the most part, I've been teaching only seniors for five years so I get to know students and they disappear so I get popular with senior classes and then I go and yeah, I'm kind of aware of it. I know I know people in our talked about me if quoted me certainly you mention the Facebook group and and certainly all the you know, how to create a second Facebook.

16:34 Just for former students, which now has more friends and it then my regular Facebook account.

16:40 So that is making someone aware of account was fake fake alternate.

16:55 Tightest at all, right exactly. They do every year students come back and then tell me about college and then what they're doing and sometimes a little too much information, but you know, they do come back and I like how it's come back for years and you came back for a few years. I came back for a few days and go back last year. I kept meaning to Eric wanted to go with me because my brother wanted to go with me. He was like all you're going to go see mr. I will have to go and then our breaks never lined up. He goes to RIT and he's got to go. Well, he's a former student of mine to do you really want this on record?

17:55 Eric was a good student who is very different from you which I am sure he's glad to be no, no that and should he ever listen to this way. I hope he understands but I knew that to hear he's a very different student and he's very creative in in his own way clearly more interested in technical things then you know everything so I certainly don't fault them for that. I don't expect everybody to want to major in English or play my class. So glad you had a right because when he entered your class it was dismal it is well anyway,

18:39 I was mediocre as a student.

18:44 I I mean I was quite strong grade wise as a student except for French for some reason I could never grasp a foreign language in class. You could take me to France and I'll speak French after couple hours. But yeah, I know it pick it up pick it up, which is weird. I am fine conversationally, but all those declensions and filling in the blanks in translate this passage from one language to the other and things like that. I was never good at so is a c student in French, but I was like a b + a - student overall and and the big secret is that I didn't take AP English in high school, but I taught AP English for the past two years. You can't let that one get out. I'm not teaching AP next year, but where I should say this phone, but but that that's my big Revenge because

19:44 Scenery, I wanted to take AP English and the head of the English Department would not let me take it because I didn't have a recommendation for my junior year English teacher who was over the other ones cuz I was there for my junior of high school and I was really mad. And so my my revenge is to be an English teacher teaches AP English like that Mr. Bacon.

20:11 Yeah, living the dream.

20:22 I like it is a class very much. I'm teaching it again in the fall. It'll be my sixth year teaching after you English are your before you have a year before you in my second nephew class? It's a class taught in conjunction with Fairleigh Dickinson University MBA students in it are expected to write more read harder works and they maintain a c average or higher. They receive credit from Fairleigh Dickinson University for having taken an intro to literature class, but it's also kind of like seeing and that's kind of the in-between. You're not really average, but you're not really above-average so you do after you right?

21:12 It's it's right. It's the sort of limbo between the regular track in the owner's track which happens every year and it's to be expected because some people see it as an opportunity to just get three college credits and get ahead of the game that way not realizing that the expectations rise, when you take the class others take it because they want more of a challenge. They they want to read harder books. They want more experience and writing on a college Levelland and pushing themselves. I'm going to take it cuz I teach it which I've become aware of since you been there.

21:56 And I love teaching it because there are so many interesting students that wind up in there because of that that mix and those motivations so I get some challenges which of the students were not really strong enough to be in the class, but they really try and so I enjoy finding ways to help them and and you know, push them to be better than they are and and raise those grades so that they can get the credit and they can you know, what finish the class and and feel accomplishment in it despite its difficulty but on the other hand, it pulls all the good students out of the regular track. So senior year those regular track classes are really tough because you don't have that many students and I taught regular track Senior English also, which I teach this fall again and you don't have that many strong students in this class to help hold people up and get people motivated to discuss what

22:56 Disgusting in class and then to write better and and so on and so forth. So the level of ability tends to dip a little down sooner you're in those classes. So kind of mixed bag now, do you think you've accomplished all you set out to do when you left film?

23:16 Know what do you want to do?

23:20 Well, it goes change all the time. I definitely have the stability of the stable life. Now. I know I have the the regular paycheck. I have the health insurance. I have the family in the car and the dog and the house and and all those thing. I'm living the American dream.

23:44 You know, some people see me as Public Enemy Number One these days but that's a whole other story and I don't quite understand the connection, but that's okay. We have one daughter. I do have only one daughter and I will have only one daughter and no Sons we're done one kid was enough. How is she to Crate believable? Her name is Ella and she is 7 years old and going into second grade in the fall. Don't you feel like I do you think you could be a better teacher that her teacher?

24:26 I know so little about elementary education. I I know I would never compare mice. I heard she is fabulous teachers. She goes to a Montessori school and and they're great. So great school and

24:41 And she has thrived there ski has really blossomed.

24:46 Do you think teaching has prepared to like help to you in like the fatherhood realm at all need me? But first of all, it's made me see it because I work with the end of high school. It's made me see sort of the end goal for my daughter and I will I look at my students and I think of like, oh, well, I hope she grows up to be like her or hope she grows up to be not like her, you know, like, you know, like we had made an end.

25:22 How how those students because in English class people invariably write about their own lives and and share aspects of their own lives through their writing through their reading through their discussion and things like that. So it gives me insight into how they got to be you who they are and I get to meet parents of those really great kids and those were not so really great kids. And so I get that kind of experience of light learning from meeting all these different people but I think helps me to guide her things like that on the other hand because I work with teenagers. It makes it difficult to shift to the young kid when I get home and I keep expecting her to to you know, react as a teenager might as opposed to a 7 year old.

26:14 Talk to my parents.

26:20 Definitely, not your mom a couple times. I don't remember if I've met your father or not real big dude, and probably remember he's got I was just curious if you were like the first adult or really even person who I like understood me and cared about like like understood where I was coming from we both hate The Kite Runner, you know, any books cotton.

26:46 Have you seen the movie I refuse to but like besides besides my father my father and I were on the same page. But like my dad is a massive. He really just is he's just a mess y

27:02 Works in 8 years because he used to the reason why we live in Oakland is cuz he used to make a lot of money and then he lost his job and he refused he was offered jobs, but he felt that they were all beneath him and then so since then he hasn't worked and like he lives with my aunt that he switches off between my two aunts who lives up in Connecticut and Massachusetts respectively and he only calls Ericka like once every two months and he calls me like once a month and like he's just like he's just a mess and so like that as in this was all still going on when I was in high school take me when I was in high school and I felt like like this when you were like a person who understood me who wasn't him that I wasn't going to be a total mess when I go I could be like you and that I remember always always helped me and I kind of think that for the other kids who had parents that weren't so weren't so hot that you know, UK

28:02 I've stepped in as like a guiding guiding factor in the number to Father Figure. I hope I'm still too young to be considered that but probably not anymore.

28:19 The noticing that that parents of my students have been getting younger you names like they're more like my age is just very scary kids.

28:32 That'll be frightening.

28:37 Miley Cyrus

28:40 But

28:42 No, I actually am somewhat aware of that. I've had several students.

28:48 Simi seek me out outside of class. You were one of them would come and talk to me and and sort of bounce ideas off of me and and share things that are going on in their lives with me or ask me for advice some things like that. I wanted to know what you thought. I didn't really have anybody else like my mom's lived in Oakland her entire life.

29:10 And then there was my dad and I didn't have any other like authority figures that I respected and I had all these decisions to make about my future and I was like

29:23 I don't think you're alone.

29:26 In in that experience and I don't mean to include myself in that. I mean where where you're not sure who to go to and and

29:34 That you're looking for a thority figure, but just an older voice voice of experience.

29:44 I don't know what I've made it I don't know it'll ever make it in the interim invocation marks.

29:54 No, but that's not a bad thing. I'm never satisfied with my job. I think that's what keeps me on my toes and makes me change things as I go along.

30:08 And and try new things and alter things and and things like that, but I'm I'm kind of honored that you say that I was pissed figure in your life. I kind of knew that I never been other. Like I said there been other students are always a couple each year that that seek me out for that. I think everybody needs that and and I I think I'm aware that there are several students who don't have that. And so I read I try to reach out to them and

30:37 Because you know, I'm not producing a widget.

30:43 This isn't a business. It's not a factory and I'm not working on, you know an assembly line.

30:49 They're human beings in my room.

30:52 And and five times a day. I have between 15 and 30 human beings that are in my care for 45 minutes and I'm very much aware of the humanity that's in the room. I teach a humanities class to sort of, you know, English is Humanities, but

31:15 But I feel like then I need to treat people like that that that it's not a product that I'm not like, you know, insert literature knowledge here and writing techniques there and push you along to go to math class and ask her whatever I think and maybe that's what makes me a popular teacher to is that I treat my students as individuals and as human beings with respect and honesty

31:45 You know, I think I think a lot of teachers that that hide a lot of stuff from their students and I feel like that's a disservice. I think, you know, you have to let students grow on their own but they have to be aware of what's going on and what things are really for.

32:07 Yeah, you know I am approaching a thousand humans who have passed through my hands while I teach over a hundred a year how I'm going into my eighth year of teaching.

32:24 You know that I had a hundred twenty a year actually probably averaged about 110 a year. And I know that's that's approaching a thousand then within another year be over a thousand students. That's a lot of people.

32:41 Who have been through my English class? I had to take a note. There are those who have failed and you fail my English class. You don't graduate from high school as a senior.

32:54 Extremely hard and and it it's not so much a decision. You know, it's somebody braided that low, but there's no way for the past the class. It's not like I can suddenly add 30 points to their their overall grade in my class and let them Pass High School. That's a disservice to education on the other hand to keep someone from graduating from high school and whatever comes next to them. You know, they're not going to go to college on the other hand if they're failing English. They're probably not going to college. Anyway, we're going to community college or something like that, but it's very hard to very hard. Why do kids fail English do you think cuz I mean

33:40 Who is Otto Knows million dollar question? I don't know. I don't know why her kids fail anything. If you get put to environment that you're not comfortable in our you're not mentally ready for it. And it's a technical thing that's different but English as long as you know, we can see that you put effort into it and it's on the topic. You'll usually get a passing grade takes a lot of effort sucks right now.

34:08 So few kids fail my class. First of all, I don't know. I don't I don't know what that the rate is, but I'd certainly and talk to my colleagues in a very few kids fail senior year, but I don't let me know if there's so many different factors. Some of it has to do with the home life and what's going on there and that school just isn't important because they're way too many other things going on at home. It could be just the the attitude of of high school that has been presented to the student that you just have to get through high school. So therefore none of the stuff is important. So why bother making any effort and if you do that for four years, you slipped backwards and you wind up doing nothing.

35:03 It it could just be

35:09 Lack of skill and and you know that you student has been told that they're not a good writer and that they they don't understand what they're reading through various Clues and and Henson and ways that other teachers of approach them and by the time I get to senior year they believe it.

35:31 And so why would you even try to write if you've been told for 11 years that you are not a good writer in the same way that you're not good at math. And so why Triad math and said that I guess the same kind of thing there cuz you know, I did the right thing with the prisoners. I work that I put on shows of prisoner artwork for a couple years and Cornell and like you would get so many letters that were so grammatically incorrect or barely legible are people rioting for their roommates being like, hey, my friend Drew this he can't right but it's really good and it's interesting to think of that same and you wonder like how could they have gone through an education system so poor that they can't write and you know, if you can't write where else can you possibly go but prison

36:31 And it's just interesting to think of that even on a such a small scale. That's still happening at a place where I grew up where kids can still emerge.

36:41 Without the ability to understand basic doesn't necessarily Move Along socioeconomic lines come from tough impoverished school system and get a decent education and work your way up and out. It's harder to but it can be done and considering the community that that you came from in the that I teach in where most kids have just about anything that they want and need they can fail just as easily and succeed probably even more easily because the support systems there for them.

37:26 It's it's a puzzle. It's a puzzle that is played education since the education it started. I don't know. I don't think I have the answer. Why did you come to you? No, like we said a Suburban upper-middle-class kind of place to teach. Was that a choice of yours. Why?

37:52 First of all, that's where I wanted to live. I didn't want to live in the city. I didn't want to raise my kid in the city and then so, you know, it makes the commuting a lot easier. I don't have to drive all the way into the city in order to teach him and they have early in the morning and things like that. So it was a lifestyle choice for myself, but also

38:14 I remember growing up in Bergen County New Jersey and having good teachers and having horrible teachers and I was very bright as a kid. I think I'm pretty bright now too, but I think there's a really bright kid.

38:37 And I have a lot of teachers that squashed that that would stick me in a corner and tell me to shut up basically.

38:43 And I wanted to be the opposite of that because I feel like even Suburban kids deserve a good education and have a good teacher who can help them out and and help them rise as high as I possibly can. Swear. I wanted to be it's not really just revenge against mr. Bacon. There's that an end, you know, I grew up in Suburban New Jersey. I can relate to the students out. There are better than I can relate to Inner City kids because I don't have the the life experience. I got the educational experience in the teaching experience, but

39:24 I always tell people my management style for my classroom is I create a cult of personality.

39:32 I get the students to like me and therefore they don't want to do the work for me and it's that simple and the ones who don't like me just do the minimum amount of work in order to get by but at least they do it because they want to pass the class.

39:49 But for the most part, you know, 90 whatever percent of the kids at least appreciate me as a teacher because I see I've got their best interest in mind and that's how they do the work and the way I do that is by relating to them by connecting with them and it's really hard to do when you don't have the background.

40:07 Homework question would would student you would like seventeen-year-old you like you?

40:14 Oh, yeah, I would love to have me absolutely.

40:21 And I had teachers like me.

40:24 At Seventeen and and I have modeled myself after them in some ways. I have stolen from some of the best and I've ignored some of the worst.

40:37 Is that it?

40:41 Thank you for coming to thank you. This is awesome.

40:47 It wasn't is nerve-wracking.