Teacher Man: A Memoir (The Frank McCourt Memoirs) - Softcover

Frank McCourt

3.75

38,398 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743294173 ISBN 13: 9780743294171

Publisher: Scribner Book Company, 2006

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Over a decade ago Frank McCourt became an unlikely star when at the age of 66 he burst onto the literary scene with Angelas Ashes the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of his childhood in Limerick Ireland. Then came Tis his glorious account of his early years in New York. McCourts classic audiobook about how his thirty-year teaching career shaped his second act as a writer Teacher Man is also an urgent tribute to teachers everywhere. In bold and spirited prose featuring his irreverent wit and heartbreaking honesty McCourt records the trials triumphs and surprises he faces in public high schools around New York City. Teacher Man shows McCourt developing his unparalleled ability to tell a great story as he works to gain the attention and respect of unruly hormonally-charged or indifferent adolescents. McCourts rocky marriage his failed attempt to get a Ph.D. at Trinity College Dublin and his repeated firings due to his propensity to talk back to his superiors ironically lead him to New Yorks most prestigious school Stuyvesant High School where he finally finds a place and a voice.Binding: Audio CDAbridgedAuthor: Frank McCourt

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Review:

For 30 years Frank McCourt taught high school English in New York City and for much of that time he considered himself a fraud. During these years he danced a delicate jig between engaging the students, satisfying often bewildered administrators and parents, and actually enjoying his job. He tried to present a consistent image of composure and self-confidence, yet he regularly felt insecure, inadequate, and unfocused. After much trial and error, he eventually discovered what was in front of him (or rather, behind him) all along--his own experience. "My life saved my life," he writes. "My students didn't know there was a man up there escaping a cocoon of Irish history and Catholicism, leaving bits of that cocoon everywhere." At the beginning of his career it had never occurred to him that his own dismal upbringing in the slums of Limerick could be turned into a valuable lesson plan. Indeed, his formal training emphasized the opposite. Principals and department heads lectured him to never share anything personal. He was instructed to arouse fear and awe, to be stern, to be impossible to please--but he couldn't do it. McCourt was too likable, too interested in the students' lives, and too willing to reveal himself for their benefit as well as his own. He was a kindred spirit with more questions than answers: "Look at me: wandering late bloomer, floundering old fart, discovering in my forties what my students knew in their teens."

As he did so adroitly in his previous memoirs, Angela's Ashes and 'Tis, McCourt manages to uncover humor in nearly everything. He writes about hilarious misfires, as when he suggested (during his teacher's exam) that the students write a suicide note, as well as unorthodox assignments that turned into epiphanies for both teacher and students. A dazzling writer with a unique and compelling voice, McCourt describes the dignity and difficulties of a largely thankless profession with incisive, self-deprecating wit and uncommon perception. It may have taken him three decades to figure out how to be an effective teacher, but he ultimately saved his most valuable lesson for himself: how to be his own man. --Shawn Carkonen

About the Author:

Frank McCourt (1930–2009) was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Irish immigrant parents, grew up in Limerick, Ireland, and returned to America in 1949. For thirty years he taught in New York City high schools. His first book, Angela's Ashes, won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the L.A. Times Book Award. In 2006, he won the prestigious Ellis Island Family Heritage Award for Exemplary Service in the Field of the Arts and the United Federation of Teachers John Dewey Award for Excellence in Education.

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