Credit: Corbis
Brian Williams is not your typical deskbound news anchor. As managing editor of NBC Nightly News, Williams frequently departs the narcissistic cocoon of Midtown Manhattan to get to the heart of the story.
For his efforts, he has received four Edward R. Murrow Awards, five Emmy Awards, the duPont-Columbia University Award, and the industry's highest honor, the George Foster Peabody Award. Most were given for his work in New Orleans while covering Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. All were awarded to Williams in only his second year on the job.
What is your idea of a perfect teacher?
Intellectual, excitable, passionate, and flexible.
What was your most memorable school experience?
A high school teacher, Bob Kitson, helping turn my life around. He got me reading the classics.
What was the low point of your school career?
Right before meeting Bob Kitson.
Did you go to public or private school?
Public until Catholic high school.
Where did you fit in your schools' social hierarchies?
Until senior year, I was unrecognizable to most of the student body.
What was your favorite subject?
History.
What is impossible to learn in school?
How to make your way in life.
If you could change one thing about education in America, what would it be?
The teaching of American and world history of the last century and the basics -- we have become more concerned with the individual and less concerned with what they learn.
What should they teach that they don't teach now?
Comprehensive U.S. and world history.
What did you learn today?
I learned, on this sparkling, sunny, crisp day in New York, that the haunting memory of September 11 will never leave us.
What did you teach?
I taught our newsroom a lesson in never being above our audience. A former firefighter buddy told me the stories that are important to him, and I passed along that lesson.
What is in your dream lunch box?
A peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and ice-cold milk.
If you wrote a textbook, what would it be called?
What Is Past Is Prologue: The Lessons History Can Teach Us.
If the prom were tomorrow, whom would you take?
Since Jennifer Aniston appears to have reached a level of happiness in her life, I would take my wife and love of twenty-one years and not waste all those dating years in between.