♪ BEN CUNNINGHAM: I may not have a letter on my chest, but lifting children every single day for about an hour will definitely get you jacked like Superman.

CRYSTAL WILLIAMS: And I thought to myself, "Well, you failed algebra in high school, but she likes chutzpah-- go with the chutzpah."

(laughter) DONNA GALLUZZO: And I often say, today, at age 53, that that was the single greatest learning experience of my life.

WES HAZARD: Our theme for this evening is "School Days."

ANNOUNCER: This program is made possible in part by contributions from viewers like you.

Thank you.

HAZARD: For most people, I have found that school days is just-- "Yeah, that's some thing I did, "you know, when I was younger.

I had to go, I went, here I am."

For some people, it was literally a daze.

It was just... "I either don't remember it, I don't want to remember it," you know, "It was a struggle."

And for some people, it is an instance of, "I met someone," or "I met a teacher, or an administrator, someone who really helped me, like, put my life on track," and that's the most special thing.

♪ CUNNINGHAM: I've been storytelling for quite some time, now-- pretty much since about 2006.

And I started off telling stories with small children, and, probably about 2010, started doing the story slams, and continued to kind of...

I would say, bounce back and forth.

HAZARD: What was that transition like?

Was that a major adjustment?

Like, what skills did you have to pick up in order to successfully move from, you know, the children's audiences to what you do now?

CUNNINGHAM: I think that the transition from telling stories to children to adults was a little challenging because, first part, especially with a lot of folktale tellers, I'm just sort of, like, "What am I going to tell about myself, "and not a story that either I've written "or a folk tale that's been told for 1,000 years, "or something like that?

What about me do I want the public to know?"

So there was that kind... there was that transition.

And I feel that the two, at this point, sort of overlap-- especially if I'm working with children, and then I go tell at a slam, sometimes I'm a little bit more animated, which helps out a lot more.

HAZARD: I can imagine, yeah.

Tonight's theme is "School Days."

And I was wondering what kind of inspiration you've gotten out of that-- like, what does that theme mean to you?

CUNNINGHAM: It just... it brings me back to when I first started telling stories with kids.

It's amazing how much time has passed, and to think about the kids when they were this big, and seeing them now in college, and, "Whose Kafka is this on the table?"

Because I'm still in touch with some of the kids.

I'm, like, "You're reading this?"

It's, like, "I remember when you were reading, "you know, 'Chicken Soup with Rice,' and now you're just like, you know, first year in college."

And... amazing to see how much they grow when they become adults.

♪ Everybody knows the sound of a crying child, even if you don't have a child of your own.

It's my first week working at this child care center, and this is absurd: Emily Chung has fallen off the climber, and her teachers don't care.

"Emily, are you okay?"

She whips her head around like a fashion model and strikes a pose.

"Save me, Prince Philip, save me!"

All the teachers start cracking up.

"You're the only male on staff.

"She wants you to be Prince Philip.

Play the game."

And I'm, like, "Game?"

And they're, like, "Yeah, game!

Be Prince Philip!"

I have no idea how to be a prince, but when I scoop her up, the first thing that comes to mind is Superman, rescuing Lois Lane.

(whistles) And every time I put her down?

"Save me, Prince Philip!

(imitating echo): Save me, save me, save me..." This time, it echoes, and all the girls in the playground swoon, like it's "The Crucible."

(laughs): The director says, "If one has a turn, they all have to have a turn."

(laughter) And from that day on, all the girls on the playground waited for me to save them.

I may not have a letter on my chest, but lifting children every single day for about an hour will definitely get you jacked like Superman.

I was taking dance classes, so any princess that didn't swoon when I stepped foot on the playground, I'd take their hand, we'd twirl, dip, lift, and it was up, up, up, and away we go, waltzing around that climber.

"Save me, Prince Philip."

All this?

And they reward me with a bucket of sand, filled with leaves, twigs, and rocks.

It was the best soup in the entire world.

Sometimes they'd come in, they'd have those little tiaras and the fairy wings that made them look like they're going to fly off to a rave, but the most important accessory was the lunchbox, covered in a collection of characters that looked nothing like Emily Chung, Keisha Williams, or Carlita.

They all wanted to be Snow White, Sleeping Beauty.

But no matter where they were from, all the girls wanted to be saved by a prince.

It brought me back to my childhood, when I wanted to be Superman, Aquaman, Captain America!

But no matter how much I pretended, the reality was, I could never be a superhero, because I didn't have the same skin color as one.

As we waltzed around the climber, I thought to myself, "Maybe it's time to let the girls lead, start to change some of these paradigms."

And they come running.

"Save me, Prince Philip!"

"You know what?

"Why don't you go?

"Go slay a dragon.

"Hunt for your food.

I'm going to stay here in the sandbox and make dinner."

Emily says, "Silly Ben.

Boys don't cook."

"Save me, Prince Philip!"

"Have some soup."

And on that note, it was time for lunch, and not a bucket of sand.

We were in Pam's class.

She always frowned like this wicked queen, this dark cloud that loomed over the classroom.

She wasn't paying attention to the kids, she was on the phone with her boyfriend.

"What do you mean, you're going to college in California?

"I've been waiting.

"All my girlfriends have started families.

"You can't do this to me.

I don't know how to be alone."

She turns her back to the kids, and she cries in front of them.

It's her high school sweetheart, and this does not sound like a happy ending.

It's almost nap time, but first, the kids get a story.

The next day, I go into work and there they are, A thousand sleeping princesses, waiting for a kiss that never comes.

And I give them a speech.

(clears throat) "Today, you're going to slay your dragons, face your fears.

"You're all going to become... warrior princesses!"

You'd think with a speech like this, it'd be followed by a battle cry and the waving of swords, but no, no, they're talking while I'm talking.

With my every word, my popularity rate is dropping.

Emily Chung is going, "La-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la-la."

Princesses are buzzing off to far regions of the playground.

Zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom.

Emily Chung is going, "No, no, no, no!"

And all that's left are me and Miss Chung, and she is not happy.

I tap her on the shoulder.

(tapping mic) "What's wrong?"

"My name is Emily Chung, and I say that you are being silly!

"Stop being silly and play the game."

Well, like a broken-hearted father, I say, "Don't you want to be a warrior princess?"

She laughs.

"Silly Ben.

"Warrior princess?

Princes and princesses have nothing to worry about."

(laughter) And I'm, like... She just runs off, and I'm, like, "Hats off to you, m'lady.

"You win.

I'll be Prince Philip till the end of time."

And the next day, I come into work, and they come running, and Carlita says, "I cut off the dragon's head!"

(makes dropping sound) The dragon's head lands in the sandbox.

And Keisha says, "I cut off the dragon's tail!"

(makes dropping sound) The dragon's tail lands in the sandbox.

And I'm like, "Hold on, Lizzie Borden.

"I said nothing about cutting off, beheading, or decapitating," but it's too late.

They've gone dark.

Completely Brothers Grimm.

And here comes Emily Chung.

I don't know what she's carrying, because it's invisible, but it looks heavy.

(makes stomping sounds) (screams) "I've got the dragon's butt!"

(makes dropping sound) The dragon's butt lands in the sandbox.

(blows quietly) And as usual, they're all standing there waiting for me.

But this time, not to save them.

They're all waiting for me to make them dinner.

And that's when I knew I had nothing to worry about.

(cheers and applause) HAZARD: Make some noise.

Keep it going for Ben Cunningham!

Ben Cunningham.

♪ GALLUZZO: I'm a New Yorker, grew up in New York.

And haven't lived there in a long time.

I have a really strong background in education, and I love making a home in Maine with my beautiful wife and our pretty cute golden doodle.

HAZARD: So I have to ask, what stories do you like to tell the most, and why is that?

GALLUZZO: I grew up telling stories, and really, my big connection to storytelling is with my mom.

I mean, she just had that great, gravelly, New York accent, and just, like, a perfect way of emphasizing the words, and we joked a lot that she was a tremendous embellisher, but we gave her a lot of lead, and she ran with it.

HAZARD: I wanted to ask, you know, sometimes, you share secrets in your stories, and do you feel that's important to do so?

And if so, why?

GALLUZZO: I do.

You know, we were raised to talk about everything, and to kind of get everything out on the table.

And so over the years, I've told a lot of deeply personal stories about people in my family and myself.

And it feels really good to me, and it feels kind of freeing, and, and I love that, because I think if revealing that secret is a way to get somebody to connect with you, or connect with a story-- then that's really exciting.

And I feel like it's been a great story-tell.

♪ So I drive down from Ossining, New York, to the Bronx for my first really big job interview.

I'm thinking everybody kind of knows Ossining now because of Don Draper and that great show "Mad Men."

You probably never heard of it before that.

I had a great job interview.

And I left that school, and I actually remember saying to myself, "This is a place where I could really make a difference."

So this teaching job, my first real teaching job, was in the Bronx, in a place called Fort Apache.

And it's definitely, arguably, one of the scariest places in the Bronx, New York, from the '80s.

They made a great movie about it, with a guy named Paul Newman starred in it-- you might have seen it, some heads nodding.

"Fort Apache: The Bronx," really was a great movie.

And I often say today, at age 53, that that was the single greatest learning experience of my life.

In that year, I saw so much, and I was so young, but I saw poverty, I saw food insecurity, I saw a lot of domestic violence, I saw substance use issues, I saw so much.

And the events that surrounded me during that year, and all the things that happened, still come back to me today.

I feel like I'm still learning lessons from that moment in my life.

So a lot happened that year, but I think one of the things that stood out the most to me was something that happened at the end of the school year.

So I was a first-year teacher, and I was very unprepared for that year.

And so as I come to the end of the school year, I'm in the last quarter, there's a couple days left in the semester, and I realize that there's absolutely no way that I'm going to make the grading for the end of the semester.

I mean, I am so far behind this quarter for grading.

It started way back at the beginning of the quarter.

I'm pretty sure that I just let it snowball.

I never got caught up with it, but, hey, I was teaching an eight-hour day, I was commuting 90 minutes one way to get to work, I was trying to get some sleep at night.

I had 39 kids in my classroom by myself, no teacher's assistant, and I was coaching a sport in another school district, very much against the advice and consent of my principal, but I did it anyway.

So I'm coming into this last part of the school year, and I'm really thinking about 39 kids.

I mean, I'm teaching math, science, spelling.

I'm teaching everything, and I'm giving assignments every night, and I'm telling you, I have not graded anything, and I'm pretty freaking out, at this point.

And I get that feeling in the pit of my stomach...

I get that feeling in the pit of my stomach, I think a lot of us have had it, where you're, like, "Oh, God, I've got to tell somebody something," and I really don't want to face this, and I really don't want to admit it, and I really don't want to tell it, but I had to, and I felt that feeling.

So I go find my principal.

Now, this is the Immaculate Conception School, and my principal's name is Sister Maria Assumpta.

And I go find her, and I confess what's going on.

And then I get this, and she was really good at this, she looked at me down the rim of her glasses.

She really had this look down.

All I got was, "All right, Miss Galluzzo.

"Tomorrow afternoon, I want you to meet me "in Sister's classroom on the first floor.

"Bring all of your papers, graded and ungraded.

That is all."

And she kind of floated away, the way nuns do.

(laughter) And the next day, I'm in class.

I'm really, now I'm... "Am I going to lose my job?

"What's going to happen with the kids?

"I mean, I can't-- there's no way I could do this.

"What's going to happen to me, "but what's going to happen to those kids?

Are they even going to make it to fourth grade?"

So the day ends, can't come fast enough.

I have got bags and bags and bags of papers.

I, like, grab everything.

I hustle down to the first-floor classroom, and I sit there waiting, and these nuns start to file in.

So I see all the nuns that teach at the school, and then I see more nuns, who I don't recognize, and I'm, like, "Are they, like, the retirement nuns?

Where do they come from?"

(laughter) And then I see more nuns, and I'm, like, "Did this woman go to the other convents in the area and get nuns to come in?"

There were a lot of nuns in that room, like, two dozen nuns or something, I don't know.

More nuns than I had met that whole school year.

So Sister comes up to me, and she says, "All right, Miss Galluzzo.

You're in charge."

And I'm, like, "Hmm."

I have no idea what to do.

And I'm still freaking out.

So thankfully, there's a bunch of seasoned teachers in the room, and we're all trying to figure out what to do.

And we've got-- we've come up with a plan, this is a great plan.

We've got working nuns in full habits, they'll do anything.

So we've got a group of nuns over here, and they are grading papers like machines.

And we've got a group of nuns over there, and they're taking the graded papers, and they're separating them out by student names.

And we've got-- it was a factory line.

Another group of nuns over there, and they're like, "Oh, my God, I'm going to separate this kid's papers out by subject," and then somebody else is, like, "Oh, yeah, I got to average everything together and come up with the fourth-quarter grades."

And someone's, like, "No, I've got to add that "to the first, second, and third quarter and come up with the end of the year grade."

And then someone else in another team is actually filling out my report cards, and my entire job, this whole time, is to just sort of orchestrate, which was amazing to me.

And I'm sitting there, and I'm really doing the least amount of work-- I'm supposed to be in trouble, I think-- and I'm watching all these nuns working.

I mean, they were, like, happy.

I'm sure someone was singing.

Probably, someone was playing the guitar, I don't know.

(laughter) It was, like, a perfect scene.

And all I'm doing is kind of walking around, sort of interpreting, like, handwriting and talking about the clarity of the assignments, and it's all happening.

And when we had started this, it was maybe mid-to-late afternoon, and sometime in the... Or, sorry, it was early-to mid-afternoon.

Sometime in the late, late afternoon, I look up, I stop for a second, all this humming is going on.

I look up at these beautiful, like, eight-foot-tall windows, and the sun's starting to stream in, and I look around the room, and I think, "We're going to make it."

Like, "This is going to happen.

"This is all happening, and we are absolutely going-- unbelievably, we're absolutely going to make it."

And I'm sitting there, former Catholic, teaching at the Immaculate Conception School, the sun's pouring in those windows, and you know, you can see, like, the little dust specks sort of dancing in the sun rays.

And I'm looking up there, and I'm surveying everything that's going on, and my big thought was, "Wow, this is what a bona fide miracle looks like."

(laughter) Thank you.

(cheers and applause) ♪ HAZARD: I was hoping that you could start by telling us a little bit about yourself and how you got into storytelling.

WILLIAMS: So it's interesting when you ask me about myself, because what I think about is that I'm a poet, really, and that's my primary identity, and I don't think of myself as a storyteller at all, so this will be my first night telling a story in public, if you consider a story not a poem.

(laughs): Yeah.

HAZARD: They definitely share a certain element.

As a poet, I imagine you're very concerned with, you know, rhythm and how, how the words sound, you know.

And so, as a storyteller, do you do anything vocally or with your presentation that you feel sort of carries that message, that sound, that thread to the audience?

WILLIAMS: So my father was a jazz pianist.

He was a self-taught jazz pianist in a quartet in Detroit, Michigan.

And so music was in our house all the time.

If you had walked into my house, my childhood home, you would've walked in, and then directly to the left, you would've seen my father's piano.

And so when I began to write my own poems, they came to me as lines of music, as just riffs.

And when I first started writing, I'd have to go to the computer and close my eyes and chant the poem out.

And so I've brought that same inclination to this story as I did to early poems of mine, which is to think about what is the music, what are the repeats, how I get myself back to whatever the point is?

How do I explain to the audience the feeling of a thing?

When you have six minutes, so it's not all that easy to do, but I tried my best.

♪ In 1992, I was a college dropout.

I'd moved to New York City to become an actress and a writer.

I was working at Fuddrucker's Restaurant on the Upper East Side, and life was exhilarating.

The world seemed to me to be full of poems and revelations about the human condition.

I'd miraculously gotten myself involved in a wonderful community of poets and writers and artists on the Lower East Side.

And things were just incredible.

The bar was high, and I was reaching for it.

But life was also exhausting.

I was working 15-hour days, double shifts at Fuddrucker's, at Fuddrucker's... (laughter) And it was hard.

I couldn't always afford rent.

I remember the sound of the eviction notices being pushed under my door, that soft (whoosh), and the punch that that sound made.

And it wasn't sustainable.

I had possibility and impossibility, exhilaration and exhaustion, and I knew enough at 22, 23, to know that I had to change something.

So I applied for a different job-- manager of the health sciences bookstore at New York University.

And I did that because prior to moving to New York, I'd been in bookselling.

And I got an interview.

On interview day, a woman came up to me named Mary.

She introduced herself as the human resources manager for the book centers, and she was all frenzy-- frenzied hair, frenzied hands, a ball of energy-- just incredible enthusiasm in every way.

After we exchanged pleasantries, she leans, sort of, into the table and looked at me thoughtfully and said, "You realize you're not qualified for the job "to which you've applied?

Yeah?"

And I said, "But I can do the job to which I applied."

And she said, "Yes, that may be the case, but you're not qualified for it."

And I said, at 23, "So then why did you invite me to this interview?

And she said, "Because you've said that in your resume "that you're a spoken-word poet, and frankly, "my stepson's a spoken-word poet, "and you seemed like you had a lot of chutzpah, "and I just wanted to meet you.

In fact, I want you to meet someone else."

And she hopped up and scurried into the maze of offices, returning with a very tall blonde woman whose ponytail whipped back and forth, and who seemed to me to be all legs.

And that woman stuck her hand out and said, "Hello, my name is Max, "I am the director of the New York University Book Centers, and I'd like you to follow me."

Which I did.

I don't know what we talked about, I don't know how long we talked.

No idea.

I was perseverating on my exchange with Mary.

When I left N.Y.U.

that day, I thought one thing, which was that entire episode was a hot mess.

A New York hot mess.

And I dipped right back into my exhilarating and exhausting life, didn't think another thing of it.

Until three days later, I got a phone call from Mary, who said, "Well, if there were a different job, "say, manager of the accounting operations department, might you be interested in that?"

And I thought to myself, "Well, you failed algebra in high school, but she likes chutzpah, go with the chutzpah."

(laughter) So, yes, I said, "Yes, I would, I would love that job."

Six months later, Max is at my office door, which was something that she did often.

We loved to chitter chat.

We liked each other.

We talked about her career path, winding her way through a very male-dominated culture in bookselling.

We talked about being from the Midwest.

In fact, the industrial Midwest, where both of us had come from.

We talked about poetry.

She's interested in what I was doing.

And at the six-month mark, she started asking me about going to school.

"Have you thought about enrolling in school?

Have you thought about enrolling in school?"

Max at my door.

And every time she asked, I said no.

And every week, Max was at that door, that long body holding open that door, saying, "Have you thought about enrolling in school?"

And me saying, "No, nyet, nein, uh-uh."

Three years later, I graduated from N.Y.U.

with my undergraduate degree.

(applause) And went on into my life.

Went to grad school, went on, did all kinds of things.

Stayed in touch with Mary and Max.

And one time, I was back in the city and had lunch with Mary, who again, leaned over the table thoughtfully and said to me, "You know the story of how and why it is that you came to work at N.Y.U.?"

And I said, "Well, I have some inkling, "but I'm interested to know your version of the story.

Please tell me."

And she said, "Well, in you, Max saw some potential, "some spark that she wanted to oxygenate, "and so she said that we were going to make a job for you.

"Not that it needed to be made, "but that we were going to make it, "and that it should be a management job.

"Because at N.Y.U.

at that time, one had to be a manager "in order to get tuition remission.

And she believed you should have your college degree."

Me, a girl from Detroit, who she had known for 20 minutes.

Here I am years later, in front of you-- poet, several books.

A professor of English, my own students, now, with books of their own, teaching students of their own.

And I'm also associate provost for diversity and inclusion at Boston University, where, in part, my job is to hold open the door, to help college administrators and senior leadership find potential, honor the potential, and ensure that the circumstances within the university are such that when we find that potential, it can thrive among us.

I'm still in touch with Mary.

I'm still in touch with Max.

But they are with me every day, because their lessons drive me.

And the lessons, as I understand them, are, honoring the potential in others matters.

Taking a risk for that potential matters.

Believing in someone, when they may not yet believe in themselves, matters.

Matters a lot.

And I think, these days, maybe matters even more.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) ANNOUNCER: This program is made possible in part by contributions from viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪