As a teacher, I really enjoyed reading about Frank McCourt's 30+ year teaching career, but I also felt it meandered so much at times that it didn't always feel rooted in teaching. Rather, it was like a continuation of his life as he wrote in his previous two memoirs with teaching anecdotes woven in, which is fine, but I guess the title and description gave me different expectations. I learned a lot though was left a bit wanting by the end.

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?

4 estrellas, ya que es de esos libros que empiezas a leer y no esperas mucho de él... Y lo terminas con una sonrisa grande...

“There's nothing sillier in the world than a teacher telling you don't do it after you already did it.”

Debo de admitir que al empezar a leer este libro me lleve una impresión mala del mismo... no terminaba de ser un libro de carácter bibliográfico, que en lugar de comentar lo que hace a una persona ser profesor, tan solo aparentaba ser un anecdotario de la vida de Frank McCourt.

“That's what he disliked about certain artists and writers. They interfered and pointed to everything as if you couldn't see it or read for yourself.”

Después de leer algo mas, me di cuenta que esta forma de hilar la historia, hacia que la lectura fuera fácil y amena. sin pelos en la lengua te cuenta de sus encuentros sexuales y casuales, sin miedo a decirte de sus fracasos en este sentido así como escolares y sociales.

“You can't teach in a vacuum. A good teacher relates the material to real life. You understand that, don't you?”

La magia del libro es que no busca ser una guía de lo que debe de ser un profesor, sino explicarte cuales fueron las características que a el le funcionaron. ese anecdotario es algo que se puede repetir tanto en las aulas de una secundaria de New York como en las de una universidad en Sinaloa (donde soy docente).

“This is the situation in the public schools of America: The farther you travel from the classroom the greater your financial and professional rewards.”

Nos sirve para recordar que un profesor no es un trabajo mas, sino que es una actividad que trasciende las aulas y la función del profesor marca a los alumnos para bien y para mal. llena de errores, cosas que espero no hacer y cometer, pero también enseñanzas que debemos de llevarnos con nosotros. no busca ser un ejemplo a seguir, pero si un recordatorios que esto que estas viviendo, lo han vivido (y sufrido) otros antes que tu.

“El aula es un lugar de gran dramatismo. Nunca sabes lo que has hecho para o por los centenares de alumnos que llegan y se van. Los ves salir del aula: soñadores, apagados, burlones, con admiración, sonrientes, desconcertados”

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.

A very different book to Angela’s Ashes. It’s like listening to a witty, self-deprecating yet passionate man tell you stories of his life. You can even hear his accent.

McCourt talks about his time as a teacher; how it came about, his successes and failures, his talent for telling stories.
In other hands, this could read as one long ego trip. But this man is, was, a master storyteller. He draws you in with his confidences and asides, making you believe you’re sharing his secrets.

I met Susan Jane Gilman a couple of years ago. She’s a successful writer of memoir and funny anecdotes that had me snorting in hog-like fashion. She was one of Frank’s students at Stuyvesant High School and talked about him with such enthusiasm I just had to read his side of the experience. So I smiled when I came to this line in Teacher Man‚ “Susan Gilman never raises her hand. Everything is too urgent.”

The other thing that appealed to me throughout this book is his clear belief in firing young minds with the value of imagination. He loved sharing his enthusiasm for literature and writing, and it’s evident from these pages that he was a terrific teacher. This is a gentle read, filled with quietly emotional moments which make you smile, nod and choke up. I’d love to have been in his Creative Writing class.

This is a hard one to review. You almost can’t. It is full of heartfelt, personal emotion. How can you review that?
There are definitely 5-star passages, especially if you have been a teacher and understand that each child is an individual who comes to the classroom with a unique perspective and background.
There are also passages that I find difficult to read and to recommend but I would venture to guess that you would not know the author, Frank McCourt, if they were excluded.
Your heart will ache for Frank McCourt after reading this memoir.

I wish I had had Frank McCourt as a teacher. His book chronicles his years as a high school English/Writing teacher...from his first frightened, inexperienced years to his competent yet still-uncertain years. He shares with us what he has learned from other teachers and, more importantly, from his students. My favorite part of the book was the last line in Chapter 17 and the first line in Chapter 18.

(review in English below)

Interessante, mas acabou por me irritar um pouco o discurso de McCourt, que por vezes até me pareceu algo desconexo, descrevendo apenas episódios mais ou menos caricatos da sua vida como um professor de liceu irlandês em Nova Iorque e repetindo ad nauseam informações sobre o número de turmas e alunos que teve.

Acredito que os professores encontrarão muitos pontos em comum com esta narrativa, embora os contextos sejam bastante diferentes. E alguns dos recursos educativos utilizados pelo autor nas suas aulas de Inglês e de Escrita Criativa são de facto originais, conseguindo cativar os alunos mais difíceis.

Recomendo especialmente (para não dizer exclusivamente) a professores do secundário.

Yes, it's interesting, but McCourt's narrative ended up annoying me and it even seemed he was rambling sometimes, just telling more or less funny anecdotes of his life as an Irish high school teacher in New York and repeating ad nauseam how many classes and students he had.

I believe teachers will find many points in common with this story, although the contexts may be quite different. And some educational resources used by the author in his English and Creative Writing classes are indeed unconventional, managing to captivate the most difficult students.

I recommend it especially (if not exclusively) to high school teachers.

This is an unabridged version, read by author, running for 9 hours.

teacher man - frank mccourt - read by the author

tbr busting 2013
winter 2012/2013
fraudio
irish root
memoir
schoolzy
pub 2005

hm, ok - 2*

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Teacher Man is a 2005 memoir written by Frank McCourt which describes and reflects on his teaching experiences in New York high schools and colleges.

His pedagogy involves the students taking responsibility for their own learning, especially in his first school, McKee Vocational and Technical High School, in New York. On the first day he nearly gets fired for eating a sandwich, and the second day he nearly gets fired for joking that in Ireland, people go out with sheep after a student asks them if Irish people date. Much of his early teaching involves telling anecdotes about his childhood in Ireland, which were covered in his earlier books Angela's Ashes and 'Tis.

He then taught English as a Second Language and took some African American students to a production of Hamlet. He talks about when he was training as a teacher and didn't know anything about George Santayana, but was able to give a well-prepared lesson on the war poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Other highlights include his connection between how a pen works and how a sentence works (in explaining subjects and grammar, an area which he struggled with himself) and his use of resources like the students' excuse notes and cookbooks.

He taught from the time he was twenty-seven and continued for thirty years. He spent most of his teaching career at Stuyvesant High School, where he taught English and Creative Writing.

He earned a Teacher of the Year award in 1976. During the time of the book he went to Trinity College to try to take his doctorate, but he ended up leaving his first wife because of the strain.

McCourt's self-deprecating style emerges in descriptions of his shyness, lack of self-esteem, shame at gaps in his education, negative descriptions of his physical appearance, social ineptitude, jealousy when women with whom he has slept promptly leave him for other men, difficulties in his marriage, and a brief period of psychoanalytic treatment. These failures are compensated by successes, albeit often grudging and incomplete, in the classroom.

Wikipedia

Read by the author

An amusing book and the author can to spin a good yarn. It is noble that he sings the praises of being a teacher for it is a profession well worthy of being written of. However there are times where he seems self-absorbed and draws too much attention to himself (Woody Allen style).

The book can be a little too much of “McCourt and his students” instead of being “the students and McCourt”. There is self-centredness of how the students feel about the author. The writing can be wonderful when he focuses on the students rather than on his personal feelings.

There are needless tangents, like his trip back to Ireland. Plus some of the tales seem to spin out of control (exaggeration, embellished) – the hyperbole of whom he slept with on his ocean crossing to Ireland for one thing. These anecdotes should have been saved for a novel.

Angela’s Ashes is toch wel echt veruit de beste van de drie!

This memoir made me miss teaching, and writing, and being a student, and Stuyvesant High School, and all of my wonderful and weird and thoughtful and mysterious and empathetic English teachers throughout the years. And now I'll greatly miss listening to Frank McCourt on my daily walks around my newly strange neighborhood.