Teacher Man

Teacher Man: A Memoir is a 2005 nonfiction book by Frank McCourt. It is the third and final memoir in a series by McCourt, the first being the Pulitzer Prize–winning Angela’s Ashes (about McCourt’s childhood and teen years in Ireland) published in 1996, and the second being ’Tis (about his life after immigrating to America at age 19), published in 1999. Teacher Man focuses on McCourt’s decades-long teaching career in various New York City schools, during which he gradually develops from an insecure and unprepared young teacher to a mature, confident, and unconventional pedagogue. This guide is based on the first edition hardcover published by Scribner, and all page citations refer to that edition.

Summary

Divided into three parts, Teacher Man chronicles McCourt’s teaching career from his days at New York University studying English to his retirement from Stuyvesant High School in the 1980s. As such, there’s some overlap with ’Tis, but this book focuses solely on his teaching career. The first section, entitled “It’s a Long Road to Pedagogy,” covers his first teaching job at McKee Vocational and Technical High School on Staten Island. Chapter 1 opens with his first couple of days at McKee, in 1958. He makes two mistakes that almost get him fired before his career even begins. The next three chapters provide background about McCourt’s life before he became a teacher, presented as stories he told his students when they asked about his life and he digressed from the lesson plan. Chapter 2 is about his own student days in Ireland; Chapter 3 describes his college years at New York University, studying to be a teacher; and Chapter 4 recounts his days working on the docks around New York before he got his first teaching job.

Chapter 5 gives an overview of what it was like teaching teenagers, dealing with their parents, and having the occasional breakthrough in the classroom. Chapter 6 is about a breakthrough he has with a writing lesson, in which he asks his students to write letters of excuse for various people in history. Chapter 7 details several of McCourt’s students from his early McKee years. In each case, McCourt wishes he could have done more to help them, but he is too indecisive and shy. In Chapter 8, he describes his life in his early 30s, newly married and working on a master’s degree at Brooklyn College.

The second section is called “Donkey on a Thistle,” and contains three chapters. Chapters 9 and 10 are about McCourt’s teaching jobs after he finishes his master’s degree and leaves McKee. He first teaches at a community college, then at another vocational high school, followed by Seward Park High School, where his wife Alberta teaches. Chapter 11 tells of his time in Dublin, working on (but not finishing) his PhD at Trinity College.

The third and last section, “Coming Alive in Room 205,” presents McCourt finally coming into his own as a teacher, which he begins describing in Chapter 12. Not long after returning to New York from Dublin, he gets hired at Stuyvesant High School, a top school for students planning to go to college. He and Alberta have a daughter in 1971, and he begins to feel more settled despite the challenges teaching still poses. His supervisor at Stuyvesant is more supportive than those he had in the past, and after three years he takes over the creative writing classes at the school. By the end of the decade, however, he and Alberta divorce, and McCourt struggles for a while to adjust to his new circumstances.

Chapters 13 and 14 detail some of McCourt’s writing classes and unconventional techniques, with lessons ranging from reading recipes from cookbooks and writing restaurant reviews to responding to poetry and children’s rhymes. Chapter 15 focuses on certain students at Stuyvesant, while Chapter 16 highlights how McCourt has finally learned what works in the classroom and feels more comfortable as a teacher. The last two chapters sum up his career and his teaching philosophy as he retires.

The main themes in the book are learning from experience, which McCourt does in both the classroom and life in general; the purpose of education; and the writing life, as it applies to both McCourt and his students.