Teacher Man

Book Notes

By: Joan Ruddiman
   In 1995, "Angela’s Ashes" made author Frank McCourt an overnight sensation. He was 67 years old, retired from 30 years as a New York City high school teacher. His first book was a memoir about growing up in abject poverty in Ireland with loving but terribly dysfunctional parents.
   Not only did McCourt not make up the horrors, he did not capitalize on the horrifying. Rather, the book captivated readers worldwide with his sharing of the human experience and his humor as conveyed through the voice of young Frankie. We fell in love with the child and with the writing of Frank McCourt.
   When he recovered from the explosion of attention and adjusted to the idea of being financially solid — actually wealthy — for the first time in his life, McCourt tried it again. He proved he was more than a one-shot-wonder with "’Tis," the story of his coming to America and becoming a teacher.
   His reputation may have propelled his second book to bestseller status, but his acumen as a writer kept it there.
   The "tough little mick" — his words — finally seems content in life. He’s happily married, his only child has blessed him with grandchildren. He remains close to the brothers he nurtured through early life. And as a writer, McCourt has nothing to prove.
   It is important to get the context of McCourt’s life as he wrote his third book so to appreciate that it is as much his message of love and gratitude to his students as it is his story of being a teacher. The title is telling. The kids called him Teacher Man. McCourt, for more than half his long career, mocked himself with the tag. He thought as a teacher he was a fake. He believed as a man he was a failure. In true McCourt style, he blasts himself with both barrels and we love him all the more.
   McCourt fans have already pushed "Teacher Man" to the top of the best lists, but it is teachers who need to put this book on the top of their must-read lists.
   McCourt says he wrote "Teacher Man" because he was nagged after the publication of "’Tis" that "I’d given teaching short shrift."
   "In America, doctors, lawyers, generals, actors, television people, and politicians are admired and rewarded. Not teachers. Teaching is the downstairs maid of professions."
   McCourt speaks to teachers and those who live with and love teachers. With piles of data that stack as high as the papers waiting to be graded, McCourt makes the case that teaching is a tough job. Forget what he terms ATTO (All That Time Off) that those not in the business so deeply envy. After five classes a day, with 170 kids stuck in your head, there is no energy left to write, or think. Just find a comfy chair, get the cup of tea or the glass of wine and recover enough to begin the night’s work of grading papers.
   He writes: "Somebody should have told me, Hey Mac, your life, Mac, thirty years of it, Mac, is gonna be school, school, school, kids, kids, kids, papers, papers, papers, read and correct, read and correct, read and correct, mountains of papers piling up at school, at home, days, nights reading stories, poems, diaries, suicide notes, diatribes, excuses, plays, essays, even novels, the work of thousands — thousands — of New York teenagers over the years… "
   No time to read the classics you love or the Dashell Hammetts for fun. No time to think, or room in your head with "a thousand teenagers clambering all over your brain."
   Ah, yet…
   "In any classroom, something is always happening. They keep you on your toes. They keep you fresh. You’ll never grow old… "
   But…
   "… the danger is you might have the mind of an adolescent forever."
   Teachers will recognize these and other truths. For instance, McCourt understands that not every teacher can teach everything. As a longtime substitute in the New York system, McCourt explained more than once to a principal why he was not teaching, but rather wrote passes for students to go to the library or anywhere else to get their work done. "I’m certified in English, not physics… " or math, or life skills.
   And even though he was an amazing teacher of "creative writing," McCourt could not diagram a sentence. It took a long, long time before an administrator recognized his brilliance in teaching the power of language and essentially gave McCourt permission to bag the grammar lessons.
   Late in his career, a young teacher asked him how to succeed as a teacher. His response was to teach your passion. In his first years in the classroom, McCourt had his vo-tech kids doing some amazing pieces of writing when his lessons followed what he found intriguing and fascinating. For example, he delighted in the carefully crafted excuse notes for an absence from school or for not turning in homework, complete with masterfully forged parent signatures. So he designed a lesson on persuasive writing around the task of writing an excuse note to God from Adam or Eve.
   An administrator who stopped in unannounced found the lesson "unconventional," but, by golly, those kids were writing on a college level! McCourt lived to teach another day.
   He told stories that had tough New York teens considering social justice issues, the role of family, and their own personal responsibility. Through it all, he connected his stories and their stories to the great literature of the world.
   Yet, he felt he was a fraud for letting the kids pull him into a story rather than pursuing the vocabulary workbook lesson of the day, or responding to the questions in the literature anthology. For years McCourt worried about being tossed out of the classroom, or worried about finding another job after being tossed.
   Teachers of a certain age will settle in and sigh when McCourt finally finds a professional home at Stuyvesant High, one of the most prestigious public high schools in the city. How ironic, he reflects, that he becomes a "master teacher" in a school that he never could have attended with his poor grades and his even worse student behavior.
   With the support of administrators who finally get what he’s about, McCourt relaxes and begins to teach English Lit and writing — his passions — in his way. At Stuyvesant High School more than half way through his career, McCourt realizes that "The mask is mostly off and I can breathe."
   It is in these last chapters that McCourt’s philosophy emerges. Teaching is less about delivering information and more about learning.
   "When I talk to those kids I’m talking to myself. What we have in common is urgency… I’m middle-aged and making discoveries."
   As he learns from the kids about life in America, from all kinds of American families, they learn from him.
   "Listen. Are you listening? You’re not listening. I am talking to those of you in this class who might be interested in writing."
   "Every moment of your life, you’re writing. Even in your dreams, you’re writing… A simple stroll in the hallway calls for paragraphs. Sentences in your head, decisions galore."
   The students at Stuyvesant, no matter what ethnicity or socioeconomic level, are going to college. The mission of the school is to get these kids into the best colleges. McCourt stays true to his own mission — to make them think, to make them writers.
   His reply to a dedicated student who needs to know what to do to get the good grade reveals McCourt’s passion.
   "I’ll tell you how I arrive at a grade. First, how was your attendance? Even if you sat quietly in the back and thought about the discussions and the reading, you surely learned something. Second, did you participate? Did you get up there and read (your work) on Fridays? Anything. Stores, essays, poetry, plays. Third, did you comment on the work of your classmates? Fourth, and this is up to you, can you reflect on this experience and ask yourself what you learned? Fifth, did you just sit there and dream? If you did, give yourself credit."
   McCourt’s answer to the big question of "What is education, anyway?" he provides in the form of an equation. With arrows moving from left to right on the board, he writes, "From FEAR to FREEDOM."
   He says to his students, to himself, to us, "I don’t think anyone achieves complete freedom, but what I am trying to do with you is drive fear into a corner."
   You go, Teacher Man.
   Dr. Joan Ruddiman, Ed.D., is a teacher and friend of the Allentown Public Library.