Frank Corcoran is a principal and a former math teacher at KIPP Academy — one of the highest performing middle schools in the Bronx. Despite growing up in a family of lawyers — his father, grandfather, and brother were all legal professionals — and graduating from one of the most prestigious colleges in the US, The University of Notre Dame, Frank decided to become a teacher in one of the poorest parts of the country — the South Bronx. There is only one question that comes to mind: why?
Israel
Corcoran comes from a family with very strong work ethics. “My parents were children of depression and no job was too small for them,” he explains. Growing up in Newport, Rhode Island, he started working in 5th grade and has been working ever since.
Although Frank had many interests growing up, neither math, nor teaching, were one of them. When he was in his third year of college, he decided to take a semester overseas. As a history major, Israel seemed like a perfect place to explore the field. Except — this was late 1980s — and the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis was at its highest. As he recalls:
“Honestly, I was a typical American; I wasn’t paying attention to anything going on outside of America’s borders. So when I got there all of a sudden I had my eyes opened to the fact that there were real issues of life and death and struggle that people were dealing with, and that those things were real.”
While still in Israel, Corcoran decided to write a letter to his aunt — a nun who run a hospital in Zimbabwe — asking to spend the summer with her. She agreed. “So I went from Israel to Zimbabwe, which was a whole another experience,” he remembers. “The people there had nothing, yet they were some of the happiest ones I’ve ever met.”
The Purpose of War
After returning from his trips, Frank’s perception of the world has changed quite significantly. Experiencing war firsthand had awakened a certain curiosity in him about other people’s lives. But it also made him question the necessity of war altogether.
“When I returned to college it really bothered me that my school was investing so much money into the ROTC program,” he recalls. What Corcoran couldn’t comprehend was the fact that most of those students would have to be exposed to the same destructive scenes of war as he was while in Israel. So he decided to do something about it.
One night he climbed on the roof of the ROTC building at Notre Dame with a bucket of paint. He painted, in large letters, the word “war” backwards, indicating war was backwards. Feeling accomplished, he climbed down and proceeded back to his dorm only to realize he had dropped his dorm keys on the roof.
“So I decided to turn myself in the next day,” he recalls. “I ended up being suspended only a couple of months before I was supposed to graduate.”
Jerry
Luckily, Corcoran was allowed to return to college the following year. However, he was no longer welcomed to live on the campus. Consequently, he applied to live in a Dismas house — a place occupied solely by college students and former offenders aimed to bring about mutual reconciliation.
“I was accepted as both a student and an ex-offender,” Frank jokes. But the truth is, Frank was really the student. The roommate he got assigned to turned out to be a man who, on the day they both moved into the house, got released from a prison after serving an 18-year sentence.
Now, let’s put things into perspective here. I don’t know about you, but the idea of sharing a room with a person who just got released from prison, after 18 years of captivity, seems kind of scary to me. But what happened next is pretty remarkable. As Frank explains:
“My roommate, Jerry, was a 42-year-old black man and I was a 22-year-old white man with a privileged upbringing. I had nothing in common with this guy, yet, he was the best roommate I have ever had.”
The two would often talk about their days. Jerry would wait for Frank to get home every day and shared his frustrations of not being able to get a job and wishing he had an opportunity to go to college. Admittedly, those were the things Frank took for granted and getting to know Jerry made him realize that some people were not as fortunate as he was.
It’s Not About Knowing The Answer
At his final year of college, Corcoran was seriously considering becoming a lawyer, like the rest of his family. He then heard about Teach For America, an organization which encourages high-achieving recent graduates and professionals to teach, for at least two years, in low-income neighborhoods in the US. Intrigued, he decided to give it a try. As Frank says:
“Education offers great opportunity to change people’s lives. It allows teachers to show kids that they can do whatever they want, including going to college. (…) When I think about Jerry, who is a great person, if you can help him at the opposite end — before he even goes down that path — you can really get to the root of the problem (through education).”
What’s fascinating about Frank’s career is not only the fact that he “fell into it” as a result of his travels and meeting his roommate Jerry. It is really the fact that, despite having no professional background in math, throughout his thirty-year teaching career he’s managed to have most of his students skip 9th grade of math. Math — one of the most feared subjects of all. I couldn't help but to ask how.
“So many kids have this false fear of math”, says Corcoran. “And it’s true that some people are better at math than others. But it’s also true that some people are better at reading than others.” He continues: “People are simply afraid of failing and being judged. What I would do is take away that fear by making mistakes in front of the class and talking about those mistakes. I’d say to my students, ‘I’m an adult and I just made a mistake. It’s fine,’ and they would know that they could make mistakes too.”
Additionally, Frank credits his success to two other factors. Firstly, the fact that he was a fairly average math student himself. Because of that, he would always question every step along the way. This, in turn, allowed him to understand where his students would struggle. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it was because he allowed his students to think. As he reveals:
“I think a great teacher is one who allows students to do all of the thinking. New teachers always want to give answers to their students — they are impatient, and their goal is for kids to know the answer. But it’s not about knowing the answer. It’s about the process of discovery and figuring things out.” He adds: “The answer doesn’t mean anything; you need to allow kids to puzzle through it.”
Embrace All Emotions
Frank believes that anything is possible if only you’re willing to work hard towards your goal. He recognizes that the main challenge in achieving a goal is having the ability to control your fear of failure. As he observes:
“People are in a habit of rejecting themselves before someone else rejects them. They talk themselves out of doing what they want, because they are afraid of failure. My advice would be ‘don’t be afraid to try.’”
Corcoran also points out that happiness in a job does not mean comfort and ease. He says:
“I think that people are always looking for a job where they feel they love every second of it every day. They think that if they don’t love every minute of it, it cannot be their calling.”
He acknowledges that, at times, he suffers when his students are going through difficult times in their lives. The key, he says, is to embrace all emotions, including suffering and sadness, as an inevitable part of life.
Corcoran admits that if it was not for his trips overseas and meeting his roommate, Jerry, he would have never gone into teaching. It was never his intention. And the truth is, he could be doing anything he set his mind to. Yet, instead, he decided to dedicate his life to helping underprivileged children create better futures for themselves. And for that, he truly is an outlier.
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