Such a great and satisfying book for where I'm at right now. I love Frank McCourt and who knows why it took me this long to read the third of his memoirs. But thick in the middle of my first year of teaching it hit the spot it ways I can't fully articulate.

What I loved:
His honesty. It has been so long since I read his first two that I forgot how much I love his writing style. But especially applied to the crucible of teaching, it was just exactly what I needed. He lays it out in a very refreshing way.

What I learned:
That I'm not alone. That it's just the nature of the beast to never feel completely sufficient for the task.

A favorite passage:

I didn't always love teaching. I was out of my depth. You're on your own in the classroom, one man or woman facing five classes every day, five classes of teenagers. One unit of energy against one hundred and seventy-five units of energy, one hundred and seventy-five ticking bombs. And you have to find ways of saving your own life. They may like you, they may even love you, but they are young and it is the business of the young to push the old off the planet. I know I'm exaggerating but it's like a boxer going into the ring or a bullfighter into the arena. You can be knocked out or gored and that's the end of your teaching career. But if you hang on you learn the tricks. It's hard but you have to make yourself comfortable in the classroom. You have to be selfish. The airlines tell you if oxygen fails you are to put on your mask first, even if your instinct is to save the child.

I would have given this book 4 stars as it was very entertaining but for the constant use of religious deity as profanity. Others may say it was necessary, especially if the children actually used those words but I disagree.

Frank McCourt beschreibt auf sehr selbstironische und emotionale Art und Weise seine Karriere als Lehrer an verschiedenen New Yorker Schulen. Dabei geht es immer um sein Verhältnis zu den Schülern und um innovative Ideen, sie zu fesseln.
Sehr schön, viel leichter als McCourts erstes Buch über seine irische Kindheit. Auch nimmt er sich selbst und seine pädagogischen Fähigkeiten nicht allzu wichtig.

Teacher man

Nothing better than reading a book about teaching career in a teacher’s day.
I can say I feel the same way as the author from the university life as well as life as a teacher, choose teaching just because I couldn’t do anything else, have a love-hate relationship with it, and before I realize, I have loved my career to the point that I have no life outside my school,my students, my workload.
I love the way he see opportunities to teach from every where, just like me.
When the author shares his experience as teaching English as a foreign language to students, that reminds me of the teacher in a tv show ‘’Mind your language’’ ,
I spent the best morning reading this all the way to the end, and I found the answer, “ ENCOURAGEMENT “ is the key for great teacher. I keep that in mind and treasure every chance I have with students.

i hated this book. i didn't like the style of his writing. i didn't like the way he talked about his teaching and what he did in his classroom. as i kept on reading, i was just like- dude- you are not a good teacher. but maybe it's just the way he presented himself.

when i got to the end, i was like- so. what was the point? but i guess the point was that this is part of his life story.

Frank McCourt. How did I miss his books all these years?
I have found his writing to be a relief. He’s put into words things I have felt and experienced and would never want to admit to anyone. Feelings of insecurity and a long lasting belief that an immigrant background (even first-generation as my own) is insurmountable for someone to actually play at the same table as all those people with their “beautiful white teeth” and their seemingly carefree lives.
Children of immigrants from certain countries can suffer deprivations in the land of milk and honey, just from being under economic restrictions of a mentality that won’t “splurge” on anything but bare necessities. “Survival mode” does not often allow for the luxury of cultural development.

In this book, Teacher Man, Frank McCourt’s feelings of inadequacy just seem to persist, even after experiencing times of success. I could relate to his feeling lost as students walk into the classroom and he realized how many different mentalities are about to confront him, and not knowing what persona to assume to conduct a class. There is much more to glean from his experience as a teacher, but my own radar picked up on what I have just described.

McCourt encourages his students (and readers) that they too have a story to tell.

Non è così appassionante e coinvolgente come Le ceneri di Angela, ma lo stile è ugualmente molto scorrevole, con la solita vena di ironia; l'ho letto tutto d'un fiato, nonostante sia un racconto non unitario, ma un succedersi di tanti episodi legati comunque tra loro dalla vita di insegnante di McCourt. Così emerge una miriade di personaggi, di alunni con le loro storie, storie uniche, personali, spesso con le loro vite difficili di figli di immigrati. In tutto questo mondo McCourt si trova coinvolto sempre in prima persona e io stessa, come insegnante, mi sono lasciata coinvolgere, ritrovandomi a volte ad arrabbiarmi per la poca convinzione di McCourt nel suo lavoro, per la sua indolenza, ma altre volte a condividerne gli obiettivi, considerando ogni alunno un pezzo unico da rispettare e anche amare e sempre comunque ho invidiato le sue grandi qualità di "affabulatore". Insomma, ho vissuto allegramente, dall'inizio alla fine, sensazioni contrastanti che mi hanno portato, in definitiva, anche a giudicare me stessa, pur riconoscendo di non aver mai dovuto affrontare, per mia fortuna, situazioni altrettanto complicate.

These quotations resonate like a tuning fork in my teacher's heart:

"And you call yourself a teacher?
I didn't call myself anything. I was more than a teacher. And less. In the high school classroom you are a drill sergeant, a rabbi, a shoulder to cry on, a disciplinarian, a singer, a low-level scholar, a clerk, a referee, a clown, counselor, a dress-code enforcer, a conductor, an apologist, a philosopher, a collaborator, a tap dancer, a politician, a therapist, a fool, a traffic cop, a priest, a mother-father-brother–sister–uncle–aunt, a bookkeeper, a critic, a psychologist, the last straw" (19).

"Hey, Mr. McCourt, did you ever do real work, not teaching, but, you know, real work?"
"Are you joking? What do you call teaching? look around this room and ask yourself if you'd like to get up here and face you every day. You" (57).

"My arithmetic tells me that about twelve thousand boys and girls, men and women, sat at desks and listened to me lecture, chant, encourage, ramble, sing, declaim, recite, preach, dry up. I think of the twelve thousand and wonder what I did for them. Then I think of what they did for me" (66).

"Facing dozens of teenagers every day brings you down to earth." (67)

"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!

I read Teacher Man on a whim. I read Angela's Ashes seemingly in a past life, and scarcely remember much of it. Did he throw up his communion wafers, & did the priest chastise him for rejecting the body of Christ? And do I remember him having to lick it up? Was there also some closing section that involved the long death of a sweetheart to tuberculosis, or am I confusing that with Van Morrison's "T.B. Sheets"?

Teacher Man doesn't demand extensive knowledge of Frank McCourt's other two memoirs, and could easily stand as its own work. McCourt records his experiences in education - trying to get a job, trying to get certified, getting advanced degrees, realizing he's not good, realizing he might be good, and finally realizing that maybe the job he was half-heartedly doing was his calling.

McCourt is unusually honest, and unsentimental, about the experience of teaching. I'm pretty tired of the Dead Poets' Society version of teaching - where you tear the pages out of the book, where each kid is a romantic poet waiting to be born out of the welter of adolescence. McCourt describes the fears every classroom teacher has - can I keep control? What will they do next? What if I run out of things to do with them? How do I win over a kid that wants to fight me? How do I manage to discuss personal & intimate things with these confused people, and yet maintain the right boundaries?

He talks a lot about the anxieties of teaching, and the rewards, but he also spends a surprising amount of time talking about his personal relationships - his girlfriends, his wife, his mentors. It was refreshing to see a teacher that didn't retreat to a cat-laden apartment and tend the mould growing on his personality. Years and years of treating children as a fragile endangered species have restricted who you're allowed to be as a teacher. According to this idea, you should especially avoid being yourself. But McCourt shows that there's no way to teach without using personal experience. And most of all, you can't show kids how to know something without knowing who you are.

I would've liked to have seen more of his classroom dilemmas - perhaps selfishly, because I want to see how someone else solves them. McCourt is right - when you're teaching, the classroom has little to do with pedagogical theories or trends. It's relationships between individuals. And there's nowhere to hide.

I had read this one before, but decided to listen to the audio version from the library because #1 it's good, and #2 it's read by the author. Hearing the author made it even better the second time around. His accent is great, and his sense of humor comes through better on the audio. A couple times, as he tells a story, he chuckles, and it's so great I had to rewind to hear it again.

I really wanted to love this book. Having just qualified as a teacher, it very much appealed to read a novel about somebody from a deprived background falling almost accidentally into the teaching profession in New York without being remotely prepared for what he has let himself in for.

The first few chapters delivered exactly what I wanted - inspirational quotations about teaching, about how misunderstood the profession is and the common assumptions that get thrown around regarding the amount of time off teachers get. It was quite gratifying to know that even in 1950s New York, this was the same as it is today.

But as the novel went on, and McCourt documents his journey through the profession and the various schools which he finds himself working in, it started to get a little dull, and by the last 50 pages I was skim reading large chunks of it.

Enjoyable in parts, but a bit of a drag to get through. Not really got much else to say about it which I think shows that it did not have a great effect on me.