I really loved Angela's Ashes and 'Tis, but Teacher Man, Frank McCourt's third book, was easily my favourite. Part of it was that, brilliant as they are, his first two book are heavy going. I was exhausted at the end of each one. Glad I had read them, but even more glad that we were at the end. His childhood was hard and depressing and something no one should have to go through, but I'd finish each book feeling almost overwhelmed by the fact that his childhood was (unfortunately) not uncommon. Countless people have experienced something similar. He wrote about it in a way that most of us could probably only dream of, and they are beautiful books that I recommend everyone read, but I was so pleased that we got to finish the story here.

This book focuses entirely on his teaching career, lessons taught and learned. It's is wonderfully written, as is to be expected, but this one also felt lighter, a bit freer. There is still darkness and self doubt and plenty of difficult things, but he is now at a point where he is doing something he is good at (even if he worries that he isn't good at it) and has a purpose in his life. I finished this feeling so pleased that he became a teacher, and even more pleased that he decided to write about it.
I can think of few thing (that are not life threatening), that intimidate me more than the idea of having to stand in front of a class of teenagers and try to teach them, have them listen and understand. As I think a lot of people are being reminded as they take over schooling during lockdown, not everyone can teach -- and it's even harder to be a good teacher. As ever, I appreciated Frank McCourt's frankness here - the things that worked, the things that didn't, the self-doubt, the days when you just don't care. But also the highs of a discussion where everyone participates, that breakthrough moment in helping someone to understand, the moments that make it worthwhile.

I had delayed starting this book because I wasn't sure I felt like reading another heavy volume, however stunning the writing may be. I simply wasn't in the mood to feel such despair toward humanity -- I only have to look at the news right now to feel that! For whatever reason though, I did start reading this, and it was a lovely addition to my day. I spent a lot of time thinking about the excellent teachers I have been lucky enough to have over the years and also a lot of time being grateful for the book I was holding. It turned out to be the perfect book to read right now, for me at least, and I'm very thankful that I had a copy with me.

Highly recommended, but make sure you read Angela's Ashes first, then 'Tis, then this one.

As I recall, Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes and Tis were books that stayed with me long after I read them. I thought, what a fascinating storyteller. I thought he must have been a wonderful teacher. After reading this memoir, I'm not sure if I would have liked being in one of his classes. I would have been the right age when he finally got a job in a school where the students took his class as an elective. I would have been one of the students he would have written off because I was too unsure of myself and my voice to speak up in a classroom full of rowdy teens. Just like the Teacher Man himself.

The stories of his experiences were interesting yet it seemed that to the very end of his career, he was in the wrong profession. Something he admits to throughout the book.

I gave a higher rating because he was a very readable writer.

After "Angela's Ashes", one simply cannot help but continue reading the memoirs of this uniquely touching Irishman and/or American.
Returning to America after an infinitely sad childhood spent (first in America) in Ireland, McCourt went to serve in the military and then enrolled at New York University and became an English teacher. A New York public school teacher.
And that's where another story about his life begins. The story of a teacher man who will struggles with the class management, syllabus completion, surviving that 1968.
Asking himself how to motivate American teenagers? How to interest them in grammar and literature, poetry? How do you inspire them to start writing?
With love, patience, experimentation. Because all of us teachers have to find our own way, path, key that opens the sometimes well-locked door of attention and interest of our students. In McCourt’s classroom of English literature and creative writing, students will write kitchen recipes, which they will then read aloud, accompanied by the sounds of their classmates’ musical instruments. They will learn that the English triffle recipe does not go with the sounds of a bongo drum, and that the Benedict Egg recipe is best read with the sounds of a violin.
And along the way, he will tell them his life story in Ireland.
For some of them, this teacher will remain forever in their memory, for some he will save their lives in a way, for some he will inspire and encourage them. Because on the blackboard in his classroom, to the left is written FEAR and then the arrow goes to FREEDOM: FEAR ➡️ FREEDOM. That is what he wanted: to free them from any fear, personal, artistic, creative, professional, fear of life.
Whoever, like me, is engaged in this profession, cannot help but fall in love with this somewhat strange insecure and yet fascinatingly interesting and original teacher.
At one point, he decides to take up the academic career, but unaware of how much he loves his job / students, he leaves his long-dreamed PhD studies at Trinity College in Dublin and returns to his New York classrooms. His wife doesn't understand that. A divorce follows. He lives miserably. And when he becomes a famous writer, which he describes at the very beginning of the book, he remains modest, normal. How can you not love him?
And how can you not feel the yearning to sit in his classroom, at least for a moment...

Cuốn này mình thấy không hay như mong đợi lắm. Chắc bởi mình thấy mấy chuyện tác giả kể cũng thường thường, hoặc do nhà mình cũng liên quan một tí đến giáo dục.
Đọc cứ thấy lê thê, dài dòng không đáng có nên mình drop luôn.

3.5

Love Frank McCourt. First 70% was great, then tapered off a little. Still really enjoyed listening to the audiobook.

Almost As Good As "Angela's Ashes"

McCourties of the world rejoice! You have nothing to lose but your tears of woe anticipating when he'd return with his next book; the foremost memoirist of our time is back. Frank McCourt's "Teacher Man" is a spellbinding lyrical ode to the craft of teaching. It is a rollicking, delightful trek across nearly thirty years in New York City public school classrooms that will surely please his devout legion of fans, and perhaps win some new admirers too. Truly, without question, it is a splendid concluding volume in his trilogy of memoirs that began in spectacular fashion with "Angela's Ashes". Indeed, we find much of the same plain, yet rather poetic, prose and rich dark humor that defines his first book, along with his undiminished, seemingly timeless, skill as a mesmerizing raconteur. Is McCourt truly now one of the great writers of our time if he isn't already, with the publication of "Teacher Man"? I will say only that he was a marvellous teacher (I still feel lucky to have been a prize-winning student of his.), and that this new memoir truly captures the spirit of what it was like to be a student in his classroom.

"Teacher Man" opens with a hilarious Prologue that would seem quite self-serving if written by someone other than Frank McCourt, in which he reviews his star-struck existence in the nine years since the original publication of "Angela's Ashes". In Part I (It's a Long Road to Pedagogy) he dwells on the eight years he spent at McKee Vocational High School in Staten Island. It starts, promisingly enough, with him on the verge of ending his teaching career, just as it begins in the lawless Wild West frontier of a McKee classroom (I was nearly in stitches laughing out loud, after learning why he was nearly fired on two consecutive days, no less.). Frank manages to break every rule learned in his Education courses at New York University, but he succeeds in motivating his students, raising the craft of excuse note writing to a high literary art. He finds time too to fall in love with his first wife, Alberta Small, and then earn a M. A. degree in English from Brooklyn College.

Part II (Donkey on a Thistle) has the funniest tale; an unbelievable odyssey to a Times Square movie theater with Frank as chaperone to an unruly tribe of thirty Seward Park High School girls. But before we get there, we're treated to a spellbinding account of his all too brief time as an adjunct lecturer of English at Brooklyn's New York Community College, and of another short stint at Fashion Industries High School, where he receives a surprising, and poignant, reminder from his past. Soon Frank will forsake high school teaching, sail off to Dublin, and enroll in a doctoral program at Trinity College, in pursuit of a thesis on Irish-American literature. But, that too fails, and with Alberta pregnant, he accepts an offer to become a substitute teacher at prestigious Stuyvesant High School (The nation's oldest high school devoted to the sciences and mathematics; its alumni now include four Nobel Prize laureates in chemistry, medicine and economics; for more information please look at my ABOUT ME section, or at history at www.stuy.edu or famous alumni at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_High... or Notables at www.ourstrongband.org.).

Surprisingly, Part III (Coming Alive in Room 205) is the shortest section of "Teacher Man". After having spent fifteen years teaching at Stuyvesant High School, you'd think that this would be this memoir's longest section, replete with many tales rich in mirth (Room 205, located a few doors from the principal's office, was Frank's room throughout his years teaching full-time at Stuyvesant High School.). Indeed I'm surprised that it is so brief. Yet there is still ample fodder for Frank's lyrical prose to dwell on, most notably a hilarious episode on cookbooks and how he taught his creative writing class to write recipes for them. He describes with equal doses of hilarity and eloquence, his unique style of teaching at Stuyvesant, which he compares and contrasts with math teachers Philip Fisher and Edward Marcantonio - the dark and good sides of Stuyvesant mathematics education in the 1970s and 1980s (I was a student of both and will let the reader decide who was my teacher while I was a student in Frank's creative writing class.) - but he still implies that his students were having the most fun.

Will "Teacher Man" earn the same critical acclaim bestowed upon "Angela's Ashes"? Who knows? Is it deserving of it? I think the answer is a resounding yes. Regardless, Frank's many devout fans - his flock of McCourties - will cherish this book as yet another inspirational tale from the foremost memoirist of our time.

(EDITORIAL NOTE 7/22/09: Elsewhere online I posted this tribute to my favorite high school teacher, and I think it is worth noting here:

I've been fortunate to have had many fine teachers in high school, college and graduate school, but there was no one like Frank McCourt. Without a doubt, he was the most inspirational, most compelling, and the funniest, teacher I ever had. I am still grateful to him for instilling in me a life-long love of literature and a keen interest in writing prose. Am still amazed that he encouraged me to enter a citywide essay contest on New York City's waterfront, and would, more than a year later, in my senior yearbook acknowledge my second prize award by thanking me for winning him money (His was also, not surprisingly, the most eloquent set of comments I had inscribed in my yearbook from teachers.). He is gone now, but I am sure that for me, and for many of my fellow alumni of his Stuyvesant High School classes, he will live in our hearts and minds for the rest of our lives.)

(Resposted from my 2005 Amazon review)

"Người thầy" mở ra bằng cảnh tụi nhóc choai choai ở 1 trường nghề ném bánh mì kẹp vào nhau. Nhân vật tôi - ông thầy trẻ tuổi dạy văn trong buổi dạy đầu tiên chẳng biết xử sao với tụi nhóc. Sau khi đấu tranh tâm lý, "anh" thầy bèn nhặt chiếc bánh mì lên, ăn ngon lành! Tụi nhóc phục lăn, nhưng sau đó anh bị hiệu trưởng gọi ra khiển trách vì...dám ăn trưa ngay giữa lớp lúc 9h sáng.

Bắt đầu từ câu chuyện đó, nhân vật tôi - thầy Franck McCourt kể lại bao nhiêu kỉ niệm làm thầy. Ông kể cả thời niên thiếu khốn khổ ở Ireland, sang Mỹ, trở thành phu khuân vác ở cảng, gia nhập lính, rồi chật vật lấy bằng giáo viên rồi thành thầy giáo. Ông đã dạy ở rất nhiều trường trung học nghề, cả ở một trường cao đẳng, rồi cuối cùng dạy tại một trường trung học nổi tiếng.

Những kinh nghiệm đối phó với lũ học trò tinh quái luôn lo ra, cãi thầy, tìm cách đánh lạc hướng thầy, thờ ơ với việc học... rất thú vị và rất thật. Cùng với tác giả, tôi khám phá từng câu chuyện một về những học trò đi qua đời ông.

Nhưng thú vị nhất vẫn là những "chiêu" dạy học hết sức sáng tạo mà thầy đưa ra.

Chẳng hạn như lớp học viết thư xin lỗi. Ông nhận ra rằng tất cả thư xin lỗi mà lũ học trò đưa thầy, với chữ kí của bố mẹ, hầu hết đều do các em dùng trí tưởng tượng vô biên của mình viết nên, với những lý do rất kì quái và sáng tạo. Thế là có một lớp học mà các em được học để viết thư xin lỗi một cách quy củ. Sau đề bài viết thư xin lỗi cho con tương lai của em, để thử thách học sinh, thầy McCourt gợi ý cho các em một loạt nhân vật cần phải xin lỗi khác, như Hitler, Chúa Hung Nô, Al Capone, toàn bộ chính trị gia...

Hay lớp học về ẩm thực. Các em được tổ chức một buổi học ngoài trời, mỗi em góp vào vài món ăn nhà làm, để làm một party học từ vựng về món ăn. Sau các em còn đọc cả sách nấu ăn, và rồi còn diễn ngâm trên nền nhạc violin, trống, oboa...

"Người thầy" tràn ngập những chi tiết sống động và thú vị như vậy đấy, hoàn toàn trái với tưởng tượng ban đầu của tôi về một quyển sách đóng khung và tẻ ngắt!

Hãy đọc sách nếu bạn yêu thích việc giáo dục, hoặc yêu thích môn văn học, hoặc muốn hiểu thêm về nền giáo dục Mỹ, hoặc có thể đơn giản vì bạn muốn đọc một quyển sách cuốn hút bạn đến dòng cuối cùng!

Me ha sorprendido mucho este libro de McCourt, puesto que hace años había intentado leer algo de este autor y no me gustó nada.

Me he sentido muy identificado con él, como profesor que soy y como emigrante. Me parece una lectura muy amena, que es fiel a los sucesos que vive un profesor en su día a día.

Muy recomendable, especialmente si te dedicas o quieres dedicarte a la docencia

I tried to make it through this book, but couldn't. As endearing as a memoir about an Irish-immigrant teacher in New York sounded, I was put off by his at first minimal, and later building and consistent sexualization of young women in his classroom. To read descriptions of him, an at the time 27 year old teacher, admiring his 14-18 year old students' breasts, was inappropriate and nauseating. For him to THEN back it up explaining that it couldn't be helped given the young womens' appearances made me decide to put the book down for good. I've read enough books and seen enough movies to be tired and disgusted by the trope of the older male educator deriving sexual pleasure from his younger female students. I don't need to read a memoir about it. No thank you.

Loved this book, great spirit to it like Frank McCourt’s other books, and alive with his storytelling spirit (all of which comes out that much richer listening to the audio version, read by McCourt).

Some favorite excerpts I want to remember, and that might catch folks’ interest in the book:

Ch. 1:

• On vocational education: “Vocational schools were seen by many as dumping grounds for students ill-equipped for academic high schools. That was snobbery. It didn’t matter to the public that thousands of young people wanted to be auto mechanics, beauticians, machinists, electricians, plumbers, carpenters. They didn’t want to be bothered with the Reformation, the War of 1812, Walt Whitman, art appreciation, the sex life of the fruit fly.

But, man, if we have to do it we’ll do it. We’ll sit in those classes that have nothing to do with our lives. We’ll work in our shops where we learn about the real world and we’ll try to be nice to the teachers and get outa here in four years. Whew!”

• The amazing sandwich story: “The problem of the sandwich started when a boy named Petey called out, Anyone wan’ a baloney sandwich?

You kiddin’? Your mom must hate you, givin’ you sandwiches like that.

Petey threw his brown-paper sandwich bag at the critic, Andy, and the class cheered. Fight, fight, they said. Fight, fight. The bag landed on the floor between the blackboard and Andy’s front-row desk.

I came from behind my desk and made the first sound of my teaching career: Hey. Four years of higher education at New York University and all I could think of was Hey.

The problem of the sandwich started when a boy named Petey called out, Anyone wan’ a baloney sandwich?

You kiddin’? Your mom must hate you, givin’ you sandwiches like that.

Petey threw his brown-paper sandwich bag at the critic, Andy, and the class cheered. Fight, fight, they said. Fight, fight. The bag landed on the floor between the blackboard and Andy’s front-row desk.

I came from behind my desk and made the first sound of my teaching career: Hey. Four years of higher education at New York University and all I could think of was Hey.

I said it again. Hey.

They ignored me. They were busy promoting the fight that would kill time and divert me from any lesson I might be planning. I moved toward Petey and made my first teacher statement, Stop throwing sandwiches. Petey and the class looked startled. This teacher, new teacher, just stopped a good fight. New teachers are supposed to mind their own business or send for the principal or a dean and everyone knows it’s years before they come. Which means you can have a good fight while waiting. Besides, what are you gonna do with a teacher who tells you stop throwing sandwiches when you already threw the sandwich?

Benny called out from the back of the room. Hey, teach, he awredy threw the sangwidge. No use tellin’ him now don’t throw the sangwidge. They’s the sangwidge there on the floor.

The class laughed...

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 imperatives, about the necessity of dealing with the whole child, the gestalt, if you don’t mind, the child’s felt needs, but never about critical moments in the classroom.

Should I say, Hey, Petey, get up here pick up that sandwich, or else? Should I pick it up myself and throw it into the wastepaper basket to show my contempt for people who throw sandwiches while millions starve all over the world?

They had to recognize I was boss, that I was tough, that I’d take none of their shit.

The sandwich, in wax paper, lay halfway out of the bag and the aroma told me there was more to this than baloney. I picked it up and slid it from its wrapping. It was not any ordinary sandwich where meat is slapped between slices of tasteless white American bread. This bread was dark and thick, baked by an Italian mother in Brooklyn, bread firm enough to hold slices of a rich baloney, layered with slices of tomato, onions and peppers, drizzled with olive oil and charged with a tongue-dazzling relish.

I ate the sandwich.

They gawked up at me, thirty-four boys and girls, average age sixteen. I could see the admiration in their eyes, first teacher in their lives to pick up a sandwich from the floor and eat it in full view. Sandwich man. In my boyhood in Ireland we admired one schoolmaster who peeled and ate an apple every day and rewarded good boys with the long peel. These kids watched the oil dribble down my chin to my two-dollar tie from Klein-on-the-Square.

Petey said, Yo, teacher, that’s my sandwich you et.

Class told him, Shaddap. Can’t you see the teacher is eating?

I licked my fingers. I said, Yum, made a ball of paper bag and wax paper and flipped it into the trash basket. The class cheered. Wow, they said, and Yo, baby, and M-a-a-a-n. Look at dat. He eats the sandwich. He hits the basket. Wow…

My students smiled till they saw the principal’s face framed in the door window. Bushy black eyebrows halfway up his forehead shaped a question. He opened the door and beckoned me out. A word, Mr. McCourt?

Petey whispered, Hey, mister. Don’t worry about the sandwich. I didn’t want it anyway.

The class said, Yeah, yeah, in a way that showed they were on my side if I had trouble with the principal, my first experience of teacher-student solidarity.”

Ch. 13:

• Cookbook teaching: “Susan Gilman never raises her hand. Everything is too urgent. No use telling her calling out is against the rules. She brushes that aside. Who cares? She wants you to know she’s discovered your game. I know why you want us to read these recipes out loud like this.

You do?

Because they look like poetry on the page and some of them read like poetry. I mean they’re even better than poetry because you can taste them. And, wow, the Italian recipes are pure music.

Maureen McSherry chimes in. The other thing I like about the recipes is you can read them the way they are without pain-in-the-ass English teachers digging for the deeper meaning.

All right, Maureen, we’ll get back to that sometime.

What?

The pain-in-the-ass English teachers digging for meaning.

Michael Carr says he has his flute with him and if anyone would like to recite or sing a recipe he’ll play with them. Brian looks skeptical. He says, Are you kidding? Play your flute with a recipe? Are we going crazy in this class? Susan tells him can it and offers to read a recipe for lasagna with Michael backing her up. While she reads a recipe for Swedish meatballs he plays “Hava Negila,” a melody that has nothing to do with Swedish meatballs, and the class goes from giggling to serious listening to applause and congratulations. James says they should take it on the road and call themselves The Meatballs or The Recipes and offers to be their agent as he is going into accounting. When Maureen reads a recipe for Irish soda bread Michael plays “The Irish Washerwoman” to a tapping and a clacking around the room.

The class is alive. They tell one another this is wild, the very idea of reading recipes, reciting recipes, singing recipes with Michael adjusting his flute to French, English, Spanish, Jewish, Irish, Chinese recipes.”

• On self examination: “Maybe you could find a way of enjoying yourself less. You were always ingenious at making yourself miserable and you don’t want to lose the touch. Maybe you could try again to teach diagramming or grub for deeper meanings? You could inflict Beowulf and the Chronicles on your suffering adolescents. What about your grand program of self-improvement, Mr. Polymath? Look at your life outside the school. You belong nowhere. Periphery man. You have no wife, and a child you rarely see. No vision, no plan, no goal. Just amble to the crypt, man. Fade and leave no legacy but memories of a man who turned his classroom into a playground, a rap session and a group-therapy forum.

Why not? What the hell. What are schools for anyway? I ask you, is it the task of the teacher to supply canon fodder for the military-industrial complex? Are we shaping packages for the corporate assembly line?

Ooh, aren’t we getting solemn, and where did I leave my soapbox? Look at me: wandering late bloomer, floundering old fart, discovering in my forties what my students knew in their teens. Let there be no caterwauling. Sing no sad songs for me. No weeping at the bar.

I am called before the court, accused of leading a double life. To wit: that in the c lassroom I enjoy myself and deny my students a proper education while I toss nightly on my celibate cot and wonder, God help us, what it’s all about.

I must congratulate myself, in passing, for never having lost the ability to examine my conscience, never having lost the gift of finding myself wanting and defective. Why fear the criticism of others when you, yourself, are first out of the critical gate? If self-denigration is the race I am the winner, even before the starting gun. Collect the bets.”

Ch. 15:

• the Korean grocer & the Polish-Jewish delicatessen man: “He stayed an hour in the professor’s office, talking and crying, the professor saying it was OK, he had a father he thought was a mean son-of-a-bitch Polish Jew, forgetting that that mean son-of-a-bitch survived Auschwitz and made his way to California and raised the professor and two other kids, ran a delicatessen in Santa Barbara, every organ in his body threatening to collapse, undermined in the camp. The professor said their two fathers would have a lot to talk about but that would never happen. The Korean grocer and the Polish-Jewish delicatessen man could never find the words that come so easily in a university. Ken said a huge weight was lifted in the professor’s office. Or you could say all kinds of poison had flowed out of his system. Something like that…

He kept thinking of one remark of the professor’s, that the world should let the Polish-Jewish father and the Korean father sit in the sun with their wives, if they were lucky enough to have them. Ken laughed over how excited the professor became. Just let them sit in the goddam sun. But the world won’t let them because there’s nothing more dangerous than letting old farts sit in the sun. They might be thinking.”

Mình rất khoái giọng văn, có lẽ là do cách chuyển ngữ vui vẻ của dịch giả. Tuy nhiên, nội dung cuốn sách không quá mới lạ, cách nghĩ của tác giả cũng không quá đặc biệt. Nếu ai đã từng đọc "Giáo dục con người chân chính như thế nào" của V.A. Xu Khômlinxki thì thấy ông cũng có cách nghĩ tương tự. Mình đọc cuốn kia lâu rồi, cũng thật khập khiễng khi so sánh, vì một bên là sách nghiên cứu, còn một bên lại thiên về tự truyện. Tuy nhiên chi tiết mình nhớ nhất trong cả hai cuốn trên, đó là cách giáo dục con người thành những công dân "dễ dạy", đại khái là anh phải làm cho trẻ lắng nghe anh, phải làm cho tâm hồn nó trở nên nhạy cảm, biết xúc động, biết cảm thông, khi đó thì tự nhiên nó sẽ học được mọi điều khác.
Mặc dù nghĩ rằng cuốn này hơi "Súp gà tâm hồn" thái quá nhưng mình vẫn khá thích. Vì đọc cảm tưởng như tác giả biết mình đang đứng ở đâu. Ông không tự đặt mình vào vị thế một chuyên gia giáo dục mà luôn tự chế giễu, coi mình là kẻ vất vơ vất vưởng nhưng thích dạy, và dĩ nhiên là tâm huyết với nghề. Chính con người ông cũng phát triển song song với câu chuyện chứ không chỉ là kẻ phán xét từ bên ngoài. Ông vui vẻ và luôn luôn khiêm tốn.
Và một suy nghĩ nữa, nếu Frank McCourt dạy ở một trường THPT ở Việt Nam, liệu ông có còn dạy được như vậy?

Being a teacher myself, I loved this story by one of my favourite authors!