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Teacher Man: A Memoir | 
 enlarge | Author: Frank Mccourt
Publisher: Scribner
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Rating:  232 reviews
Sales Rank: 10222
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Pages: 258
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.5
ISBN: 0743243781
Dewey Decimal Number: 371.10092
EAN: 9780743243780
ASIN: 0743243781
Publication Date: September 19, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy!
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Amazon.com
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
Product Description
Here at last in paperback is Frank McCourt's critically acclaimed and bestselling book 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 of teaching in public high schools. Teacher Man shows McCourt developing his unparalleled ability to tell a great story as, five days a week, five periods per day, he works to gain the attention and respect of unruly, hormonally charged or indifferent adolescents.For McCourt, storytelling itself is the source of salvation, and in Teacher Man the journey to redemption--and literary fame--is an exhilarating adventure.
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"Nearly a decade ago Frank McCourt became an unlikely star when, at the age of sixty-six, he burst onto the literary scene with Angela's 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. Now, here at last, is McCourt's long-awaited book 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. His methods anything but conventional, McCourt creates a lasting impact on his students through imaginative assignments (he instructs one class to write ""An Excuse Note from Adam or Eve to God""), singalongs (featuring recipe ingredients as lyrics), and field trips (imagine taking twenty-nine rowdy girls to a movie in Times Square!). McCourt struggles to find his way in the classroom and spends his evenings drinking with writers and dreaming of one day putting his own story to paper. Teacher Man shows McCourt developing his unparalleled ability to tell a great story as, five days a week, five periods per day, he works to gain the attention and respect of unruly, hormonally charged or indifferent adolescents. McCourt's 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 York's most prestigious school, Stuyvesant High School, where he finally finds a place and a voice. ""Doggedness,"" he says, is ""not as glamorous as ambition or talent or intellect or charm, but still the one thing that got me through the days and nights."" For McCourt, storytelling itself is the source of salvation, and in Teacher Man the journey to redemption -- and literary fame -- is an exhilarating adventure. "
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| Customer Reviews: Read 227 more reviews...
 Almost As Good As "Angela's Ashes" November 15, 2005
John Kwok (New York, NY USA)
172 out of 205 found this review helpful
McCourties of the world rejoice! You have nothing to lose but your tears of woe anticipating when he'd return with his next book; the foremost memoirist of our time is back. Frank McCourt's "Teacher Man" is a spellbinding lyrical ode to the craft of teaching. It is a rollicking, delightful trek across nearly thirty years in New York City public school classrooms that will surely please his devout legion of fans, and perhaps win some new admirers too. Truly, without question, it is a splendid concluding volume in his trilogy of memoirs that began in spectacular fashion with "Angela's Ashes". Indeed, we find much of the same plain, yet rather poetic, prose and rich dark humor that defines his first book, along with his undiminished, seemingly timeless, skill as a mesmerizing raconteur. Is McCourt truly now one of the great writers of our time if he isn't already, with the publication of "Teacher Man"? I will say only that he was a marvellous teacher (I still feel lucky to have been a prize-winning student of his.), and that this new memoir truly captures the spirit of what it was like to be a student in his classroom.
"Teacher Man" opens with a hilarious Prologue that would seem quite self-serving if written by someone other than Frank McCourt, in which he reviews his star-struck existence in the nine years since the original publication of "Angela's Ashes". In Part I (It's a Long Road to Pedagogy) he dwells on the eight years he spent at McKee Vocational High School in Staten Island. It starts, promisingly enough, with him on the verge of ending his teaching career, just as it begins in the lawless Wild West frontier of a McKee classroom (I was nearly in stitches laughing out loud, after learning why he was nearly fired on two consecutive days, no less.). Frank manages to break every rule learned in his Education courses at New York University, but he succeeds in motivating his students, raising the craft of excuse note writing to a high literary art. He finds time too to fall in love with his first wife, Alberta Small, and then earn a M. A. degree in English from Brooklyn College.
Part II (Donkey on a Thistle) has the funniest tale; an unbelievable odyssey to a Times Square movie theater with Frank as chaperone to an unruly tribe of thirty Seward Park High School girls. But before we get there, we're treated to a spellbinding account of his all too brief time as an adjunct lecturer of English at Brooklyn's New York Community College, and of another short stint at Fashion Industries High School, where he receives a surprising, and poignant, reminder from his past. Soon Frank will forsake high school teaching, sail off to Dublin, and enroll in a doctoral program at Trinity College, in pursuit of a thesis on Irish-American literature. But, that too fails, and with Alberta pregnant, he accepts an offer to become a substitute teacher at prestigious Stuyvesant High School (The nation's oldest high school devoted to the sciences and mathematics; its alumni now include four Nobel Prize laureates in chemistry, medicine and economics; for more information please look at my ABOUT ME section, or at history at www.stuy.edu or famous alumni at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_High_School or Notables at www.ourstrongband.org.).
Surprisingly, Part III (Coming Alive in Room 205) is the shortest section of "Teacher Man". After having spent fifteen years teaching at Stuyvesant High School, you'd think that this would be this memoir's longest section, replete with many tales rich in mirth (Room 205, located a few doors from the principal's office, was Frank's room throughout his years teaching full-time at Stuyvesant High School.). Indeed I'm surprised that it is so brief. Yet there is still ample fodder for Frank's lyrical prose to dwell on, most notably a hilarious episode on cookbooks and how he taught his creative writing class to write recipes for them. He describes with equal doses of hilarity and eloquence, his unique style of teaching at Stuyvesant, which he compares and contrasts with math teachers Philip Fisher and Edward Marcantonio - the dark and good sides of Stuyvesant mathematics education in the 1970s and 1980s (I was a student of both and will let the reader decide who was my teacher while I was a student in Frank's creative writing class.) - but he still implies that his students were having the most fun.
Will "Teacher Man" earn the same critical acclaim bestowed upon "Angela's Ashes"? Who knows? Is it deserving of it? I think the answer is a resounding yes. Regardless, Frank's many devout fans - his flock of McCourties - will cherish this book as yet another inspirational tale from the foremost memoirist of our time.
"I was more than a teacher. And less." November 20, 2005
E. Bukowsky (NY United States)
96 out of 110 found this review helpful
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."
Find what you love and do it... January 6, 2006
Bert Ruiz (Pleasantville, NY USA)
40 out of 45 found this review helpful
Frank McCourt has authored an uplifting book. "Teacher Man," is an intimate account of a 30-year career in the New York City educational system. McCourt is not afraid to display his emotional shortcomings...some of his finest writing is about difficult times in his life.
However, this book has none of the walloping anguish of Angela's Ashes or 'Tis...the tone is upbeat and nurturing. Ultimately, McCourt credits his success to his, "doggedness." The doggedness allows him to escape a, "cocoon of Irish history and Catholicism."
McCourt was more than a teacher. "In the high school classroom you are a drill sergeant, a rabbi, a shoulder to cry on, a disciplinarian, a singer, a low-level scholar, a clerk, a referee, a clown, a counselor, a dress-code enforcer, a conductor, an apologist, a philosopher, a collaborator, a tap dancer, a politician, a therapist, a fool, a traffic cop, a priest, a mother-father-brother-sister-uncle-aunt, a bookkeeper, a critic, a psychologist, the last straw," he explains.
On the downside...there are only two pictures of the Pulitzer Prize winning author...a young McCourt on the front cover...and the elderly McCourt on the rear inside flap. Nevertheless, this well-written book is filled with valuable lessons and plenty of laughs. Recommended.
Bert Ruiz
From a former student of Frank McCourt December 8, 2005
Anonymous (CT, USA)
28 out of 34 found this review helpful
Almost 30 years ago I was a student in Frank McCourt's creative writing class at Stuyvesant High School. He was one of the most memorable teachers I have ever had. The class had a wide range of talent and he treated both the good writers and the weak ones with the utmost respect. After he won the Pulitzer for Angela's Ashes, I thought about how it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy or a better teacher.
 An Honest Review from a Non-McCourtian December 30, 2005
NYC Teacher
27 out of 48 found this review helpful
I just finished reading this book and have to agree with those who are dissenting from the seemingly unquestioning praise McCourt is receiving from his "McCourtians." Let's face it, McCourt has become a cult of personality in the literary world, and if another name had been attached to this book, it would not be receiving praise. As a female teacher in an NYC high school, there were many comments in this book that made me cringe, such as "I admired Helen so much for her maturity and courage and her lovely breasts I could hardly go on with the lesson (p. 53)." This is how he thought of his female students? I would have fired him too, and I would have been creeped out if he had been my teacher.
Also, we get McCourt's childhood already. Like others who have posted here, I wanted the book to remain more in the classroom, and I did not appreciate McCourt's ramblings about his personal life. I have read many teacher memoirs that are much better than this, yet they get ignored because those teachers have not already won Pulitzer Prizes for other books. I fully expect the McCourtians on this site to log in and vote "No," this review was not helpful. That's obviously what's happening with all of the other negative reviews.
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