The expression of educational problems in frank McCourt's “Teacher man”

Teaching is one of the most challenging professions in our life. Every lesson a teacher conducts is equal to a work of art. Teachers prepare young generation to step forward to their independent lives and to gain confidence in every action they take. Yet, it is not always possible to be a good teacher. It requires a lot of time, energy, self-sacrificing and patience.

Frank McCourt, an author of three popular memoirs, the Pulitzer-winning author of “Angela’s Ashes” and “’Tis”, wrote his last memoir “Teacher Man” in which he described his own life experiences of being a teacher. “Teacher Man” is a compelling narrative about the challenges, insecurities and triumphs that come with being an educator. All teachers can face up such problems in their life and this work is a good source for learning and teaching. “Teacher Man” is a fascinating book, which gives an opportunity to look at education from different perspectives, an optimistic book about possibility for both teachers and students. This book has become very popular in the USA not only among teachers but also among ordinary people of the country. The novel was also included in the curriculum of teacher re-training institutes of the country.Renaltz Schulz, a Senior Scholar in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the Faculty of Education of the University of Manitoba, USA, has conducted a research to investigate how stories can be a learning tool to help teachers make sense from their own stories of teaching. For his research he used Frank McCourt’s story “Teacher Man”.

Teacher Manis an account of an English teacher in New York during the 1960s and 1970s and deals with the expectations and disappointments of teachersand teaching. The novel has been advertised as “the true story of a teacher”. McCourt describes the difficulties of keeping a class in check and tells about the constant confrontation between what he has learned in theory and what he has experienced in practice. Teacher Man is more than just an account of the American teaching system of the 1960s and 1970s but turns out to be a memoir in which the protagonist is in constant search of himself as a teacher and human being. Besides, the novel is a narrative about the importance of using storytelling. The protagonist, Frank McCourt, incorporates narratives to overcome his students’ inhibitions to teaching materials and simultaneously makes use of them to defuse conflicts. The various themes dealt with in the novel make that Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man has a rich potential for pre-service teachers to stimulate discussion and reflection upon pedagogical and didactical issues and to become fully aware of their future position as a teacher.Any teacher reading through this excellent memoir will instantly recognize situations facing every teacher nearly every day – classroom management, parent conferences, mindless mid-level bureaucrats, the children who fall between the cracks, grammar and the research paper for students whose lives will never require either, and more. The book clearly and thoughtfully explores, through McCourt’s assumed confusion and lack of self-confidence, the chasms of despair and the few peaks of exaltation every teacher seeking to move children’s experiences.

McCourt describes an educational system in which teachers are discouraged from letting their students see them as anything more than authority figures in front of the room behind a desk. It is a system that values discipline and order even at the expense of learning. This is not to say that education can take place where there is anarchy, but it is to say that quiet classrooms do not necessarily mean that anyone is learning anything. It is a system that asks teachers to patrol halls and bathrooms, to tend to administrative paper work, and make sure that parents are satisfied with whatever it is their children are learning and how quickly they are learning it. It is a system that puts them in five classes with some thirty five students in each, that asks them to take home 175 or so student essays, read them, correct them for spelling and grammar, to edit them for substance and clarity, make constructive criticisms, and finally to put that all important grade on them. It is a system in which for most teachers the greatest ambition is to escape from the classroom, to become a guidance counselor perhaps ultimately the goal of goals–administrator. Although by far the greatest share of the book is devoted to his educational career, McCourt does sprinkle in some seasoning from his life outside the classroom. He talks about working on the docks while attending college. He describes his abortive attempt at a doctorate at Trinity College in Dublin.

As a narrator, McCourt talks of his successes, his dynamic creative teaching experiences: students writing fictional excuse notes for Adam, for Eve, for God; an ethnic food picnic in the park outside the school. He talks about his failures: a student pressed to describe in detail the dinner he had eaten alone the night before, only to learn that the student was eating alone because his father was in the hospital dying of cancer. These are, of course, his experiences, but in a sense they are the experiences of a good many teachers who have spent their lives in the classroom, and he uses these experiences to pay just a little attention where some attention is long overdue.

Unlike many young English teachers, McCourt is also saddled with a nearly unbearable and often humorous load of Irish Catholic guilt and a self-image approximating that of his most damaged immigrant students who come from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds. Slowly, he learns to allow his authentic self to emerge in the classroom, beginning to tell his own story and elicit the honest stories of his charges in return. His willingness to step aside from himself and ask “What’s going on here?” represents an important step in his development. Such questions are ones students in pedagogy courses rarely learn to ask of themselves. McCourt begins to understand himself within the context of his life with his students. Along the way, he drifts from school to school and even spends a couple of failure filled years vainly trying to re-connect with his Irish self by seeking a PhD at Trinity University, Dublin. His hopeless failure at this goal begins his road toward rehabilitation and success. McCourt falls into teacher hell as he is relegated to working as an itinerant substitute teacher in the vast New York City school system. Meanwhile, his marriage falls apart and he finds himself living in a dingy apartment over a waterfront bar in Brooklyn. McCourt, over the years, develops an idiosyncratic teaching style which reaches its culmination when he is hired for a long-term substituting position at Stuyvesant High School, one of New York’s elite, competitive entry schools. There he is blessed with an enlightened English department chair, who offers him a full-time position. In a series of events featuring a feast of student produced ethnic foods and developing into a reading of recipes soon accompanied by student produced music and parental visits, McCourt develops a strongly student oriented, open ended teaching style which relies on asking questions and following student leads to triumph. Soon, his classes are filled with questing, able students, many of whom have never before had an opportunity to explore and develop their own stories.

While reading the story, one can be amazed at his versatility and shear courage in the face of administrative conformity and student apathy. There is a true epiphany that the lesson would be read and picked up by some pedagogue who would write it up as a model lesson plan and publish it for other teachers to replicate, sending it irretrievably to the dustbin of educationalism. The real lesson in Teacher Man lies in Frank McCourt’s search for an inner authenticity that allows students the freedom to tell their own stories. The search is sometimes agonizing, often inspiring, and always compelling. As McCourt comes to accept who he is, his students can learn to learn from him. The lesson for prospective teachers lies more in their becoming than it does in the tricks of trade so many rely on. Teacher Man is a lesson in becoming a real person. Frank McCourt finishes his trilogy by his memoir “Teacher Man” which describes his own life and teaching carrier. It is an inspiring novel about a man pursuing his dream of becoming an English teacher. Beginning his first year teaching he slowly figures out universal secrets of becoming the ultimate teacher. He almost gets fired during his first few days. Frank McCourt overcomes these difficult times and continues with his teaching. In his memoir he reveals problems in education and shows how he tried to handle with these problems. Between the different cultures of students F.McCourt had varieties of difficult situations, for them to overcome their problems along with him. Because of the different cultures he had to face, Frank was able to overcome his fears and stand with confidence in front of the classroom. Gaining control of the classroom was one of the biggest accomplishments the author overcame. He displays this by first going into a new classroom timid, but then after a while he feels he has the freedom to show the class he is open to new and exciting ideas.

Frank McCourt's emotional account on his experiences as a teacher is sure to open the eyes of those who think teaching is 'easy' and 'so what if teachers are underpaid, they get all those days off'. He falls nothing short of genius and his words are undoubtedly captivating. While describing educational problems, the author uses a mix of humor, honesty, courage, grit, and sarcasm which makes this book delightful to the reader. He also uses a very unconventional teaching style in which he teaches his students in the ways that they know best. The author also uses sarcastic remarks, irony and repetition to strengthen the effect of the situations described in the book. They were such problems as problems with staff members and parents, problems with students, problems in managing class, problems with authority, problems concerning teachers’ social status in life and others. Frank McCourt questioned teaching and thought about quitting, but he never gave up. This book showed how unique he was in his teaching. He taught a couple of lessons that no one thought would apply to anything, yet in the end the students loved the lesson and learned many new things.