WHAT'S GOING ON NOW:

Outstanding Fifth Grade Public School Teacher-Michael Fox

He Learned from the Besty
P.S. 158’s Michael Fox remembers his teacher, Frank McCourt

During his morning commute from Brooklyn to P.S. 158 on the Upper East Side, Michael Fox observes the people around him, listening to snippets of conversations, searching for a good story to tell his fifth grade class. He also reads them commuting stories from the Metropolitan Diary section of the New York Times, and asks them to come to school with their own bus stories to share.

“He encourages them to look around the city and to write every day,” said Lotta Merino, whose son, Eric, is in Fox’s class. “Mr. Fox has made the students grow and do things on their own. Eric has become a very independent child.”

Fox spends many of his Saturdays taking his students on field trips to complement what they’re learning in class. When students were studying the Harlem Renaissance, they went on a tour of the Apollo Theater and visited the Countee Cullen branch of the New York Public Library in Harlem where they watched a video on the neighborhood’s history. This was followed by a very popular trip to Miss Maude’s Spoonbread for some Southern cooking.

The fifth grade teacher is so popular with his students that his class threw a surprise party for him when he got married in April. The students asked a teacher to distract Fox while they prepared the classroom and hid under the tables awaiting his arrival. “He had no idea what was going on,” said Eric Merino. “When he came in he had his eyes wide open.”

Fox grew up in Greenwich Village and had several strong academic influences. His father was an educator and school administrator. While attending Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, Fox met another academic mentor, Frank McCourt, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

“Mr. McCourt had very much the same approach I do. He tried to talk about his own life and to use himself as an example,” Fox said. “He was completely open and honest, and that’s how I try to be—very direct and honest.”

When Fox interviewed for his current job at P.S. 158, the principal warned him that there would be a lot of professional development. This was no problem to Fox, who said he thought there was nothing worse than a mediocre teacher, someone who is just there to kill time. “I think it’s amazing to be given 30 children a day to teach,” he said.

After majoring in Asian studies at Vassar College, Fox worked in advertising in Japan. He has now been teaching for 12 years and is delighted with the career change he made. “I took a 60 percent pay cut when I changed careers,” he said, “but my worst day teaching is better than my best day in previous jobs.”

— Lucy Kennedy