Teacher+Man

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//Teacher Man// by Frank McCourt

How does a teacher greet his students on the first day? Does a good teacher stand behind the desk or walk around during class? Can a teacher deviate from the curriculum if it’s for the best of his students? Do you share one’s personal life with students? Eating another’s students discarded sandwich in front of the class, good or bad? Why teach? These questions and others are addressed in Frank McCourt’s third book; __Teacher Man__. McCourt lovingly chronicles his thirty years as an English teacher in New York City Schools. McCourt begins his teaching career with deep ambivalence toward the schools administration, a lack of ambition to be better and the fear of whether what he is doing is the right thing of not. In his first classroom setting, at McKee, a vocational high school, McCourt is reprimanded for his conduct (he eats a sandwich a student threw on the floor, wrapped, and soon after jokes about bestiality which parents and principal alike don’t find humorous). Early on in his career as a teacher this criticism would result in his feelings of inadequacy as an educator. While teaching his classes students would attempt to distract Mr. McCourt with questions about his past in Ireland. Generally these attempts to distract him were successful and result in anticdotes dotted throughout the book. These glimpses into his past are what influenced his teaching. Such influences include classmate, Billy Campbell, who stood up for McCourt even when McCourt didn’t stand up for himself in the schools at Ireland and June a college classmate of McCourt who asked the penetrating question ‘What do you think of yourself?’ McCourt after teaching at this vocational high school soon get up the courage to teach against the curriculum. Noticing that the majority of excuse notes look to be written by the students, and that the students excuse notes are creative and show a great amount of thought. McCourt gives out the new assignment (an exercise in persuasive writing), to write and excuse note for Adam to God, and Eve to God, or for Eva Braun, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Judas, Attila the Hun, Lee Harvey Oswald, Al Capone, and all of the politician in America. This assignment wins the attention of his students and the praise of his administration. McCourt moves around within the teaching profession picking up bits of wisdom along the way as Professor at a New York City Community College, and a substitute. He even takes time to “better himself” as a doctorial candidate at Trinity College, Back in Ireland. This stint at Trinity College however, ends without a Ph. D. Finally he takes a job at Stuyvesant High School which is one of the best High Schools in New York City. While Teaching English all that he has learned about educating comes together. He trusts his teaching instinct and in an inspired class lesson. He asks for the student to bring in receipts form home. The students bring them in and they read them aloud in class. The students’ receipts and musical talent are combines in class to engage them in an exercise in the richness of words. What lessons has McCourt and the reader learned going through all of his life’s ups and downs? That a teacher’s role is to instill enough confidence in students so they can be as free as possible. McCourt writes: "On the Left side of the blackboard I print a capital F on the right side another capital F. I draw an arrow from left to right, from FEAR to FREEDOM. “I don’t think anyone achieves complete freedom, but what I am trying to do with you is drive fear into a corner.” (McCourt Ch 16, Pg 253) Mr. McCourt soon after making this statement to his class retires, shoving his own fear into a corner. With fear abated McCourt writes and publishes __Angela’s Ashes__, which he receives a Nobel Prize for. Teacher man shows the inner mind and heart of an educator imparting that anyone from any background, with any teaching style, can teach without being perfect. What an educator needs is a willingness to learn on the job.
 * Summary:**

"It was clear I was not cut out to be the purposeful kind of teacher who brushed aside all questions, request, complaints, to get on with the well-planned lesson. That would have reminded me of that school in Limerick where the lesson was king and we were nothing. I was already dreaming of a school where teachers were guides and mentors, not taskmasters. I didn't have any particular philosophy of education except that I was uncomfortable with the bureaucrats, the higher-ups, who had escaped classroom only to turn and bother the occupants of those classrooms, teachers and students. I never wanted to fill out their from, follow their guidelines, administer their examinations, tolerate their snooping, adjust myself to their program and course. "If a principal; had ever said, The class is yours, teacher. Do with it what you like, I would have said to my students, Push the chairs aside. Sit on the floor. Go to sleep." (ch 1, Pg 24)
 * Key Passages:**

“On the way home they fell asleep, all except Serena, how sat behind the bus driver. When she asked if he had any children he said he couldn’t talk and drive…, he had children and he didn’t want any of them to be a bus driver. He was working to send them to a good school and if they didn’t do what they were told he’s break their *#!. He said you had to work harder in this country when you were black but in the end that made you stronger. When you have to push harder and climb harder you develop muscles and then no one can stop you. “Serena said she’d like to be a hairdresser but the bus driver said, You can do better than that. You wanna stand ther the rest of your life fixn’ hair for cranky old women? Your’er smart. You can go to college. Yeah? Do you really thin I can go to college? Why not? You look intelligent enough and you talk good. So why not? Nobody never told me that before. Well, I’m telling you, and don’t sell yourself short. OK, said Serena. OK, said the bus driver. He smiled at her in his rearview mirror… He was a bus driver and black and the way she confided in him made me think about the waste of human being in the world.” (Ch 10 pg. 144-145)

"When you teach five high school classes a day, five days a week, you're not inclined to go home to clear your head and fashion deathless prose. After a day of five classes your head is filled with the clamor of the classroom." (pg. 3)

"So, teachers come, teachers go, all kinds, old, young, tough, kind. Kids watch, scrutinize, judge. They know body language, tone of voice, demeanor in general." (pg.12)

"Professors of education at New York University never lectured on how to handle flying-sandwich situations. They talked about theories and philosophies of education, about moral and ethical impoeratives, about the necessity of dealing wiht the whole child, the gestalt, if you don't mind, the child's felt needs, but never about critical moments in the classroom." (pg.16)

"Joey is the mouth. There's one in every class along with the complainer, the clown, the goody-goody, the beauty queen, the volunterr for everything, the jocj, the intellectual, the momma's boy, the mystic, the sissy, the lover, the critic, the jerk, the religious fanatic who sees sin everywhere, the brooding one who sits in the back staring at the desk, the happy one, the saint who finds good in all creatures." (pg. 20)

“They groan again when I announce I am going to recite my favorite poem. That pisses me off and I tell them, You are pissing me off. A shocked silence. Teacher using bad language. Never mind. Recite the poem. //‘Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep And doesn’t know where to find them. Leave them alone and they will come home Wagging their tails behind them.// Hey, What’s going on here? That’s not a poem. This is a high school and he’s giving us Mother Goose? Is he pulling our leg? Playing little games with us?... On the surface the poem, or nursery rhyme seems simple, a plain story of a little girl who has lost her sheep, but are you listening? This is significant. She has learned to leave them alone. Bo Peep is cool. She trusts her sheep… No, I’m not trying to make some kind of point except to say I like this poem because of its simple message. What’s that? That people should stop bothering people. Little Bo Peep backs off…” (ch 14 pg. 215-217)

"Befor e Stuyvesant, I was more taskmaster than teacher. I wasted class time in Routine and dicipline: telling them to take their seats, open their notebooks, fielding request for the pass,dealing with their complaints. Noew there was no more rowdy behavior." (Ch 13 pg.202)

"Even if they lie to themselves and the world they look for honesty in the teacher.

At Stuyvesant i decided to admit it when i didn't have answers. I just don't know, friends. No, I've never read the Venerable Bede. I'm hazy in Transcendentalism. Jone Donne and Gerard Manley Hopkins can be tough. I'm Weak in the Louisiana Purchase. Ive glances at Schopenhauer and fallen asleep over Kant. Don't even mention mathematics. I used to know the meaning of condign but now it escapes me. I'm strong on usufruct. I'm sorry, I couldn't finish //The Farie Queen//. I'll try again someday after i sort out the Metaohysicals." (ch 13, pg 203)

" Hector. Open the magizine. He shook his head I walked over towardho him holding a rolled up copy of //Practical English.// Hector, the magizine. Open it. He shook his head again. I slapped him across the face with thr magazine.There was a red mark on that white cheek. He jumped up. Drop dead, he said, tears in his voice. He walked toward the door and i called after him, Sit down Hector, but he was gone. I wanted to run after him and tell him I was sorry, but I let him go."(ch 9, pg 126)

"What's gibberish? Language that makes no sense. I had a sudden idea, a flash. I said, Psychology is the study of the way people behave. Grammar is the study of the way language behaves"(ch 5, pg 80)

"It appears I am the winner, and the next move is mine. OK, Benny, you can sit down. May. What? All the teachers say, You may sit down. Boom Boom is correcting my grammar. Am I in a madhouse?" (ch 11, p. 155) "The great American drama is the clash of adolescence with middle age. My hormones beg for a quiet clearing in the woods, theirs are brassy, throbbing, demanding." (ch. 17. p. 254) " The classroom is a place of high drama. You'll never know what you've done to, or for, the hundreds coming and going. You see them leaving the classroom: dreamy, flat, sneering, admiring, smiling, puzzled. After a few years you develop antennae. You can tell when you've reached them or alienated them. It's chemistry. It's psychology. It's animal instinct. You are with the kids and, as long as you want to be a teacher, there's no escape. Don't expect help from the people who've escaped the classroom, the higher-ups. They're busy going to lunch and thinking higher thoughts. It's you and the kids. So. there's the bell. See you later. Find what you love and do it." (ch. 17, p. 255)


 * Key Terminology:**
 * Classroom** - were an educator and his students have free rein to try out new ideas about the clasroom subject; to create one's own classroom atmosphere, to do whatever is needed for education without bureaucratic interference, a facade or the red pen.


 * Guidance consuler** McCourt uses this tem in multiple ways. On page


 * Fear vs. Freedom**- two imporatnt terms that McCourt describs and two cpaitals F's. Education is to gain freedom and push fear to the side. (pg. 253)


 * I'll try**- the way that McCourt ends the novel. This simple term sums up his book by sending the message to teachers that you can only do the best you can. Learn from your mistakes and try your hardest. (pg.258)


 * Listen. Are you listening?** – McCourt uses this as an attention getter amongst his students; a call out to his class that he may be saying something important.


 * Gibberish-** language that makes no sense. He uses it in the context of teaching the difference between improper English to proper grammar. He also used as a term that his shudent would always remember his class by.(pg.80)


 * Grammar**- McCourt defines it the study of the way language behaves.He felt that if it was taught like this student would understand it better.(pg 80)
 * Off -the-Boat**-Somewhat derogatory term used to describe immigrants newly arrived in the United States that don't seem to have much knowledge of American customs. Although Mccourt was born in Brooklyn, has lived in the U.S. for 8 years including a 2 year stint in tlhe army, he is contantly accused of being "off-the-boat" when his own unique ways are not ways are not understood by fellow educators and parents.