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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This final memoir in the trilogy that started with Angela's Ashes and continued in 'Tis focuses almost exclusively on McCourt's 30-year teaching career in New York City's public high schools, which began at McKee Vocational and Technical in 1958. His first day in class, a fight broke out and a sandwich was hurled in anger. McCourt immediately picked it up and ate it. On the second day of class, McCourt's retort about the Irish and their sheep brought the wrath of the principal down on him. All McCourt wanted to do was teach, which wasn't easy in the jumbled bureaucracy of the New York City school system. Pretty soon he realized the system wasn't run by teachers but by sterile functionaries. "I was uncomfortable with the bureaucrats, the higher-ups, who had escaped classrooms only to turn and bother the occupants of those classrooms, teachers and students. I never wanted to fill out their forms, follow their guidelines, administer their examinations, tolerate their snooping, adjust myself to their programs and courses of study." As McCourt matured in his job, he found ingenious ways to motivate the kids: have them write "excuse notes" from Adam and Eve to God; use parts of a pen to define parts of a sentence; use cookbook recipes to get the students to think creatively. A particularly warming and enlightening lesson concerns a class of black girls at Seward Park High School who felt slighted when they were not invited to see a performance of Hamlet, and how they taught McCourt never to have diminished expectations about any of his students. McCourt throws down the gauntlet on education, asserting that teaching is more than achieving high test scores. It's about educating, about forming intellects, about getting people to think. McCourt's many fans will of course love this book, but it also should be mandatory reading for every teacher in America. And it wouldn't hurt some politicians to read it, too. (Nov. 15)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
In another easily embraceable memoir by the best-selling (and Pulitzer Prize-winning) author of Angela's Ashes (1996) and 'Tis (1999), McCourt now concentrates on his career as a teacher for many years in the New York City public school system, where he worked in four different high schools. His trademark charm, wit, and unself-conscious self-effacement ensure that the flashbacks of his dreadful days growing up in extreme deprivation in Ireland don't sink the narrative in self-pity. Remembrances of his struggling days in college in New York ("dozing years") provide informative foundation for the real point of the book: relating his development into the kind of teacher he became--namely, one who shares his life stories not only to establish bridges of experience with his students but also to get them to open up. His new book is hardly a teaching manual; however, what it is on one level is a tough but poignant and certainly eloquent defense of the sacrifices and honorableness of those in the teaching profession ("Teaching is the downtown maid of professions. Teachers are told to use the service door or go round the back") and a lesson itself in taking yourself seriously--but not too. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
ingenious,
By
This review is from: Teacher Man: A Memoir (Paperback)
the approach of this teacher is very inspiring .humor ,vocabulary, diversity, heart, love for his profession. the audiobook i was listening brought him even closer to my heart.as an emigrant to the new world he intensified my feelings of liking to leave in the international , universal atmosphere of nord american highschool, which i am not familiar with.my son will start highschool soon in canada, so we are on the learning curve. i will send to the teacher man my pink loving thoughts, wherever he might be...god be with you mr mccourt.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Frank McCourt - Teacher Man,
By Robin Hill (North West River, Labrador) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Teacher Man: A Memoir (Hardcover)
Thank God for Frank McCourt. Makes me want to write.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
More of the Same - And that's a Good Thing!,
By
This review is from: Teacher Man: A Memoir (Audio CD)
McCourt has a very consistent writing style with a very appealing, and revealing style.I listened to the Audio Book as McCourt read it himself. I highly recommend that. There are very strong meanings and reinforced patterns to be gained by listening to his lilting Irish Brogue. McCourt writes as he thinks, and in doing so his book is both biographical and very psychologically revealing. Sure it gives insight to the teacher. But it really shows us ourselves. Self-doubt, pride, arrogance, mistakes, warts and all it is there. McCourt has found the avenue to meet the self-doubting scared little child in all of us. His experiences recounted in the book with regard to group therapy come full circle as we sit with him in group and hear him share what we all are experiencing. McCourt fans will not be disappointed. This should be required reading, or listening for all teachers as well as students, or former students. Hits the mark!
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