He looked at the bare walls. Another reorganization, another shuffle of offices was under way. Too many people here, he thought, care more about where their desks are located than anything else. Next to his own desk was a stack of boxes and pile of books. On top of the books was a framed postcard from LaTeenah Williams, a student he had fifteen years ago when he taught American history in a East New York high school. After graduating from Harvard, Addis, the son of two Columbia University professors, had postponed his plan to attend Yale Law School and answered the call of the New York City public school system, which, facing a teacher shortfall, had instituted an emergency recruitment program. Addis was placed in a school where he was one of four white teachers. He spent two years riding the subway each morning and plotting how to engage his uncaring students in the history of the United States. The slavery trade—what happened to slaves who rebelled? The building of the transcontinental railroad—how many Chinese laborers were worked to death? The California gold rush—who in the class realized that it led to the most severe slaughter of Native Americans in the country’s entire history? The Jim Crow era—who knew that Joshua Gibson, a star in the negro baseball league, hit more home runs in a season than Babe Ruth? Half the class had not been able to identify Babe Ruth.

Few students took his bait. Most were more concerned with avoiding the violence in the school’s hallways or guessing who was the father of the baby being carried by this or that student. But LaTeenah Williams, a short, slight girl with a long neck and large eyes, had been one of the few students who had listened and absorbed. Years later, Addis still remembered the report she had written on how President Johnson manuevered civil rights legislation through Congress, cutting deals to win a greater good. Addis had encouraged her to go to college and helped with her applications. She sent him the postcard when she started City University. “Teachers make us all,” she had written. “Thank you.” Last he had heard from Williams—and that was several years back—she had become a psychiatric social worker based at a hospital in the South Bronx. He stared at her deliberate handwriting and wondered how many people she had helped directly: a suicide prevented, an abused woman rescued from a personal hell, an addict placed into a treatment program. Could Addis claim a piece of these triumphs? Even a small one?

Shit, here I am advising the most powerful man in the world, and I’m thinking, maybe I should have stayed a teacher … .