In his third memoir, Teacher Man, Irish-American writer Frank McCourt—author of Pulitzer-Prize winning Angela’s Ashes1 and a sequel, ’Tis—chronicles his 30 years’ experience teaching English to New York City high school students.
Talk about an exhausting career.
The story has its ups and downs. Definite highlights include: a creative writing lesson in which he asks students to write their own excuse notes; character sketches of individuals he encounters in parent-teacher conferences; and a class spent singing recipes out of cookbooks (with musical accompaniment!). One major theme throughout is McCourt’s inner conflict owing largely to his lack of self-confidence. Another is the idiosyncrasies of the American educational system, in which a teacher’s education (consisting of pedagogical theory from college professors who can’t teach) leaves him ill-prepared to deal with a raucus bunch of working-class teenagers day in and day out; a system in which “[t]he farther you travel from the classroom the greater your financial and professional rewards.” An excerpt from a lesson on war poems he is required to conduct as part of his teaching exam:
It isn’t enough to teach the poem. You are to “elicit and evoke,” involve your students in the material. Excite them. That is the word from the Board of Education. You are to ask pivotal questions to encourage participation. A good teacher should launch enough pivotal questions to keep the class hopping for forty-five minutes.
A few kids talk about war and their family members who survived World War II and Korea. They say it wasn’t fair the way some came home with no faces and no legs. Losing an arm wasn’t that bad because you always had another. Losing two arms was a real pain because someone had to feed you. Losing a face was something else. You only had one and when that was gone, that was it, baby….
While certain chapters drag on a bit, the best parts are brilliantly written and leave you wishing you could have been in his class.
P.S. You can read the Prologue and hear more about the book here.
