Teacher Man: A Memoir
by Frank McCourt
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Book Summary Information
Author: Frank McCourtEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-11-15
ISBN: 0743243773
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Scribner
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Book Reviews of Teacher Man: A Memoir
Book Review: "I was more than a teacher. And less."
Summary: 4 Stars
In "Teacher Man," Frank McCourt sheepishly looks back on his thirty years of teaching, and admits that he wasn't always comfortable educating adolescents. He candidly states in his prologue, "How I became a teacher at all and remained one is a miracle." This memoir is a bittersweet look back at McCourt's not entirely successful career in the New York City Public High Schools, and at the often hilarious goings-on in his classrooms.
As he made clear in his Pulitzer-Prize winning "Angela's Ashes," McCourt had a miserable and impoverished childhood in Ireland. His alcoholic father walked out when Frank was ten. Three of his siblings died. Frank's schoolmasters were always quick to beat their recalcitrant charges with sticks, straps, and canes. He left school at fourteen and fled to America, where he worked as a manual laborer. McCourt was a man with horrible memories, low self-esteem, and no goals.
After he served a stint in the U. S. army, McCourt dozed through four years of New York University on the GI Bill. At the age of twenty-seven, he became a teacher after barely passing his licensing examination. When he began his first teaching job at McKee Vocational and Technical High School in Staten Island, it didn't take long for him to realize that he was in way over his head. Merely getting the kids to pay attention to him would count as a major triumph.
"Teacher Man" is a story of survival. McCourt basically threw out the standard English curriculum and played it by ear. He told stories of his wretched years in Ireland instead of diagramming sentences and discussing great works of literature. He had the students talk about their experiences and make up original stories. He instructed his pupils to bring in cookbooks and read recipes out loud, which they did, accompanied by music. Some parents complained about McCourt and he was shown the door a few times. However, he bounced back long enough to collect his pension and go on to do what he truly loved--writing.
"Teacher Man" is an offbeat, steam-of-consciousness book about a man shuffling through life, drifting into marriage and parenthood, and eventually finding himself. Frank McCourt is honest and self-deprecating, freely admitting that he was chronically disorganized and lacked self-discipline. He tells poignant and funny tales about the women he loved, his supervisors and colleagues, and most of all, his students. In his last teaching job, at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, McCourt faced bright and upwardly mobile college-bound teenagers. There, he says, "I was finding my voice and my own style of teaching." He still shunned traditional teaching methods, but the students in Stuyvesant had so much energy that they inspired him to reach higher than he ever had before; he enjoyed his greatest success in his creative writing classes. McCourt himself might admit that he should have heeded the advice he once gave to a prospective teacher: "Find what you love and do it."
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