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!
What do You think about Teacher Man (2006)?
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.
—arcobaleno
"This is the situation in the public schools of America: the farther you travel from the classroom the greater your financial and professional rewards." While I can certainly related to and even laughed at many of McCourt's classroom challenges and adventures, I tried not to buy into the feeling of all being lost with today's students. No, the bulk of today's students don't appreciate their education nearly as much as they would have 50 years ago, but let's not blame our students for all of their shortcomings. Let's pay attention to the signals they are getting from the society that we've built; oftentimes our students are just playing the role they feel the world has created for them. It only takes a few minutes of bad television (which can be found on nearly every channel) to ruin a kid's belief that education is important at all. They see sports "professionals," provocative beer commercials and adults behaving every bit as opposite as teachers expect their students to act in class. Teachers have it hard, no question, but let's keep in mind that students are growing up in what is indelibly an education-last society. Still, we've got to do more than "I'll try"; we need to do. (258 pages)
—Mr. Z
I read this book years ago, at the start of my teaching career. I can't remember if I was student teaching or if it was my first year, but nevertheless, I was a newbie. I actually started reading it again forgetting this was the Frank McCourt book I had read years ago. It took me about two pages to realize my mistake, but I figured I might as well finish it since I hadn't even remembered I had read it in the first place. McCourt no doubt has some questionable pedagogy. Some of his out-of-the-box lessons are clever while others are downright ridiculous. He wrote he felt guilty not sticking to the curriculum, but I suppose sometimes it takes risks to discover gold. I feel a little cheated because we never get to experience a typical day in his classroom...there's no way he had his students reciting recipes every day throughout his decades of teaching. What did a regular day look like? He had to have touched on some of the curriculum throughout the year, but I suppose those stories may not have been as engaging.What I did not appreciate was his manner regarding his marriage. He nonchalantly writes about cheating on his wife, claiming that it was a marriage doomed from the start. Ummm, when did that make it okay to have affairs? And, what are these stories adding to this book? The best part about the book is the stories about students and their lives. I tell my students "teachers are people, too!" but maybe we sometimes forget that the same applies to our students. We see them in a bubble and make judgments based on their attentiveness in our class and their homework completion and perceived effort, but they have home lives and struggles, just like us. Oh sure, with the "troubled" kids, you can clearly see that there are outside forces pulling them from being a motivated student, but what about the others? I sometimes get jealous that other teachers get to know more about their students' outside worlds. English teachers have papers, art teachers see their pieces rife with emotion, religion teachers have journals...what about math teachers? We get to see word problems. It's hard to start deep, provocative discussions around the topic "how to solve for x"
—Amy
