From a flying bologna sandwich to confetti: pure poetry.
reading non-fiction, a fiction reader, an avid reader, re-reading the classics, a questioner
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FEB
20
2009
Teacher Man —
In the course of Teacher Man: A Memoir, Frank McCourt, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angela's Ashes, examines his adult soul as a teacher and explores an unorthodox and creative 30-year-career in New York City public high schools.On his first day in class a bologna sandwich flies through the air before McCourt has said a single word. He makes his first teaching breakthrough by eating the sandwich in front of a non-plussed class. On his last day, the now-venerated instructor is showered with confetti.
"I've had to ask myself what the hell I'm doing in the classroom. I've worked out an equation for myself. On the left side ot 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."
This is a confession of human insecurity and day-to-day communications one-on-75 with students from both the ghetto and the townhouse. That so much involves both poetic writing and tutorial poetry-in-motion is not surprising when you understand that McCourt wears two national hats. Born in New York to Irish immigrants, he was moved to Ireland and a life of dire poverty as a child. There, the complexity of his life was cast and, eventually, narrated in Angela's Ashes.
Later, McCourt, now a thorough Irishman, returned to the city of his birth for a college education. Even after graduation and his employment as a teacher, McCourt's life seemed an aimless existence. Every moment of soul searching seemed counterbalanced by cheekiness. Every small success seemed only to feed self-doubt. Still, the interaction of teacher and extremely diverse students proves memorable, and humor is as major a component of this book as tragedies large and small.
McCourt spins tales of his youth to capture the imagination of vocational school students totally uninterested in the subject of English. Later, in a college-prep high school, administrators give McCourt freedom to be spontaneous. That done, McCourt sends youngsters forward with a joy for the spoken word, literature, music, and dance. McCourt gives these youngsters the confidence to create, to examine, and, perhaps most importantly, to ask questions about life around them.
"The image of the teacher in this country is appalling compared to what it is in Europe or any place else...." McCourt commented in a 2006 interview on CBS. "Here, you look at teachers as if, well, they did it because they couldn't do anything else."
What about George Bernard Shaw's statement that, "'Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.'? asks interviewer Rene Syler.
"Of course, he didn't know his ass from his elbow," replies McCourt in his gentle Irish brogue.
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