I’ve just finished Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man (2005). I’ve been reading it for a while; it’s part of the extensive collection of books I’ve picked up that it will take me a long time to get through. I picked up Teacher Man at the AAUW book sale. I love browsing; the thing about a used book sale like the AAUW book sale is that you will find multiple copies of books that are ten years old. I also picked up “’Tis” so I know I wasn’t just seeing an accumulation of 10-year old class gifts – although maybe I was seeing that, too.
McCourt is best known for his first memoir, Angela’s Ashes. Possibly, I am the only reader who’s not read it. (As an aside, several years ago, the Irish American Echo ran a contest for the best parody of Angela’s Ashes. The winning entry began, “We were so poor we had to borrow from the McCourts ..” which I wish I’d written.) He also wrote and performed in "A Couple of Blackguards" with his younger brother Malachy, whose outgoing personality he says, in this book, that he envied.
Over the years I’ve had the sense that McCourt wasn’t elegant enough for some. But I love this book, and greatly admire his skill as a storyteller.
McCourt taught for 30 years in the public school system of New York City. He writes about the different high schools where he taught in the course of his career: McKee Vocational High School, Fashion Industries High School, Seward Park and Stuyvesant High School, interrupted by stints teaching at a community college and pursuing a doctorate at Dublin’s Trinity College.
He has a lot to say about teaching. He points out that some classes have their own chemistry, a tacit commitment not to be engaged and to turn nothing but their sullen resistance to face their teacher. Other classes like him and allow him to like them.
What he’s best at, and he does this at his very first teaching demonstration, is to engage the students by translating the literature he’s teaching into something more immediate that the students can comment on. In his teaching demonstration, he’s asked to teach two poems, one by Siegfried Sassoon and the other by Wilfrid Owen, English soldiers in the First World War. He invites the students to talk about veterans of the Second World War and Korea. The class becomes quite animated talking about friends and family members.
Later, at Stuyvesant, he engages the students by getting them to read recipes they’ve brought from home. The students are so excited by this class project that they decide, on their own, to accompany each other on instruments. This leads to a picnic in Stuyvesant Park, which in turn attracts the bemused attention of some New York City beat cops. Concerned that he’s let his class get too far from literature, he assigns them Mimi Sheraton restaurant reviews.
I think the best part of this book is the stories McCourt tells about his students. He tells the stories of his students – the Korean student who hates his father for the pressure he puts him under, only to begin to forgive him at Stanford, where a professor shares his experience coping with his own hard, demanding, damaged immigrant father.
McCourt has another student with a problem with his father. Bob wants to be a farmer. Bob’s father is a rabbi, and the rabbi is embarrassed by his son’s career aspirations. It’s not just the pigs that Bob wants to raise. No one aspires to be a farmer in Bob’s world. Years later, McCourt runs into Bob on the street who confesses that although he has become a farmer, he couldn’t bring himself to raise pigs. He just couldn’t do that to his father. They embrace.
A theme is this book is McCourt’s insecurity, both as a teacher and as a writer. He talks about his failure to complete his doctoral dissertation, how his insecurity is perceived as lack of ambition and how this hurts both his career and his personal life. Even when his class is “turned on,” to an extent that would make some teachers green with envy, he fearfully imagines how his unorthodox teaching methods would be disapprovingly perceived in a report written by a schools inspector.
One of the things he does to entertain and perhaps placate his classes is to tell stories about his Irish childhood in Limerick. This is perhaps how he honed his talent as a storyteller in the very years when he felt that he was allowing his dream of becoming a writer to elude him.
What he does in this book is tell stories so vividly and candidly that I was drawn in, completely captivated, and cared about his feelings as a teacher – admitting that there are days when he wishes he could escape, physically, by just taking the ferry to Manhattan, and getting a beer – and days when the success of a class or a student’s compliment has him walking on air all the way home.
To me, this book is partly about teaching's challenges and delights, but it's also a little bit of a journey of personal growth as McCourt works his way through some powerful feelings that sometimes hold him back from claiming credit for the things he has achieved and being able to confidently undertake things that are important to him like writing. That's the story that's really most exciting to me and that holds out promise for us all.
McCourt is best known for his first memoir, Angela’s Ashes. Possibly, I am the only reader who’s not read it. (As an aside, several years ago, the Irish American Echo ran a contest for the best parody of Angela’s Ashes. The winning entry began, “We were so poor we had to borrow from the McCourts ..” which I wish I’d written.) He also wrote and performed in "A Couple of Blackguards" with his younger brother Malachy, whose outgoing personality he says, in this book, that he envied.
Over the years I’ve had the sense that McCourt wasn’t elegant enough for some. But I love this book, and greatly admire his skill as a storyteller.
McCourt taught for 30 years in the public school system of New York City. He writes about the different high schools where he taught in the course of his career: McKee Vocational High School, Fashion Industries High School, Seward Park and Stuyvesant High School, interrupted by stints teaching at a community college and pursuing a doctorate at Dublin’s Trinity College.
He has a lot to say about teaching. He points out that some classes have their own chemistry, a tacit commitment not to be engaged and to turn nothing but their sullen resistance to face their teacher. Other classes like him and allow him to like them.
What he’s best at, and he does this at his very first teaching demonstration, is to engage the students by translating the literature he’s teaching into something more immediate that the students can comment on. In his teaching demonstration, he’s asked to teach two poems, one by Siegfried Sassoon and the other by Wilfrid Owen, English soldiers in the First World War. He invites the students to talk about veterans of the Second World War and Korea. The class becomes quite animated talking about friends and family members.
Later, at Stuyvesant, he engages the students by getting them to read recipes they’ve brought from home. The students are so excited by this class project that they decide, on their own, to accompany each other on instruments. This leads to a picnic in Stuyvesant Park, which in turn attracts the bemused attention of some New York City beat cops. Concerned that he’s let his class get too far from literature, he assigns them Mimi Sheraton restaurant reviews.
I think the best part of this book is the stories McCourt tells about his students. He tells the stories of his students – the Korean student who hates his father for the pressure he puts him under, only to begin to forgive him at Stanford, where a professor shares his experience coping with his own hard, demanding, damaged immigrant father.
McCourt has another student with a problem with his father. Bob wants to be a farmer. Bob’s father is a rabbi, and the rabbi is embarrassed by his son’s career aspirations. It’s not just the pigs that Bob wants to raise. No one aspires to be a farmer in Bob’s world. Years later, McCourt runs into Bob on the street who confesses that although he has become a farmer, he couldn’t bring himself to raise pigs. He just couldn’t do that to his father. They embrace.
A theme is this book is McCourt’s insecurity, both as a teacher and as a writer. He talks about his failure to complete his doctoral dissertation, how his insecurity is perceived as lack of ambition and how this hurts both his career and his personal life. Even when his class is “turned on,” to an extent that would make some teachers green with envy, he fearfully imagines how his unorthodox teaching methods would be disapprovingly perceived in a report written by a schools inspector.
One of the things he does to entertain and perhaps placate his classes is to tell stories about his Irish childhood in Limerick. This is perhaps how he honed his talent as a storyteller in the very years when he felt that he was allowing his dream of becoming a writer to elude him.
What he does in this book is tell stories so vividly and candidly that I was drawn in, completely captivated, and cared about his feelings as a teacher – admitting that there are days when he wishes he could escape, physically, by just taking the ferry to Manhattan, and getting a beer – and days when the success of a class or a student’s compliment has him walking on air all the way home.
To me, this book is partly about teaching's challenges and delights, but it's also a little bit of a journey of personal growth as McCourt works his way through some powerful feelings that sometimes hold him back from claiming credit for the things he has achieved and being able to confidently undertake things that are important to him like writing. That's the story that's really most exciting to me and that holds out promise for us all.
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