"I feel like I'm forever stuck in high school. I grew up in Portugal and moved here when I was 12. I went to Isaac, then the high school, where I played sports, and now I teach here.

In high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I was good at math. Moving from another country at 12 was tough, but I had some incredible teachers at Isaac and NRHS who really supported me. That stuck with me. I thought that it would be kind of cool to be a teacher and have that kind of impact. Plus, I figured it would help keep me young, being around students all the time.

When it came to deciding what to teach, math made sense.

I was good at it. I talked to my math teacher about the idea, and he told me,

'There's going to be a huge demand for math teachers!' That sealed it for me. In fact, if you look at my high school yearbook, one of my ambitions was to come back to NRHS as a math teacher. It was a way to give back to the community that gave so much to me.

I went to Manhattan College and stayed local. As a senior, I had a lot of younger friends, so I kept coming back to visit NRHS. My teachers knew I was becoming a teacher, so it wasn't a big shock except for one. When my French teacher saw me, she said, 'Thank god I'm retiring! Half-joking. Half-serious.

When I started teaching, I had lunch with Mr. Mackay, and I kept calling him mister.. Finally, he said, 'Bruno, you've gotta stop with Mr. Just call me Mike!' That was a weird shift, but even now, a lot of us still call each other by last names out of habit. I became a teacher to give back, inspired by my amazing teachers. One of my greatest moments was when a former student reached out, saying she became a teacher because of me, something I never expected so early in my career.

A lot of teachers shaped me. My math teacher, Mr. Molloy had a laid back style that influenced me. When I joke and talk with students? That comes from Mr. Zeller. My strict side? That's from my English teacher, Mr. Mackay. The way connect with students is from my health teacher, Mrs. Anderson. I took a little bit from each of them, learning what made a great teacher."

- Mr. Duarte, NRHS Math Teacher