Teacher Man
Frank McCourt, 2005
★ 3.77 from 40.8k ratings on Goodreads
A New York teacher's wry, profane memoir of thirty years in public-school classrooms, where the real subject is how to become a person. The memoir moves in loose, funny, tender anecdotes, with a wry teacher's voice and a streak of wonder at what classrooms hold.
Feels like wonder, humor and joy. About memory, identity and society.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy classroom memoirs told through digressive, humorous stories and a teacher's blunt, self-questioning voice. Some readers find the rambling, self-focused tone frustrating, and the questionable teaching conduct may sit uneasily.
Why read it
It offers a funny, tender look at how a teacher learns from students and from his own mistakes, and why a classroom can be a place to become yourself.
A page from the book
A fantasy of a date so detailed it never needs to leave the cinema.
No, young man. No jokes here. There’s a time and place. When you say something in class they take you seriously. You’re the teacher. You say you went out with a sheep and they’re going to swallow every word. They don’t know the mating habits of the Irish. What readers say
Readers often find the memoir witty, warm, and moving, especially teachers who connect with its classroom stories. Others are frustrated by the rambling, self-focused tone and questionable teaching conduct.
Frank McCourt.McCourt was born in Brooklyn, raised in poverty in Limerick, and didn't publish Angela's Ashes, his first book, until he was sixty-six.
Books that feel like this
More by Frank McCourt
Angela's Ashes
Frank McCourt, 1996
A boy grows up poor in Limerick with an often-absent father and a mother who keeps the family alive, told with comic timing that makes squalor bearable.
Tis
Frank McCourt, 1996
A memoir of poverty, education, and Irish identity, written with a voice of biting wit and deep, unexpected tenderness.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Teacher Man for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy classroom memoirs told through digressive, humorous stories and a teacher's blunt, self-questioning voice. Some readers find the rambling, self-focused tone frustrating, and the questionable teaching conduct may sit uneasily.
- What is Teacher Man like?
- The memoir moves in loose, funny, tender anecdotes, with a wry teacher's voice and a streak of wonder at what classrooms hold. Feels like wonder, humor and joy. About memory, identity and society.
- What should I read after Teacher Man?
- If you liked Teacher Man, try Alistair Cooke's America (Alistair Cooke), A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway) and Me (Katharine Hepburn).
A taste of the feed
What a lifetime of news looks like when it's recited in one breath.
During thirtyfive years as a foreign correspondent, I must have covered just about everything, from the public life of six Presidents to the private life of a burlesque stripper; from the black market in beef to the Black Panthers; from Estes Kefauver amid the snows of New Hampshire to Jack Nicklaus amid the azaleas of Augusta, Georgia; from Henry Kaiser’s Liberty ships to Francis Chichester’s Gypsy Moth sailing into Staten Island at one in the morning; from the Marshall Plan to Planned Parenthood; from Senator Joseph McCarthy’s last stand to the massacre of Muhammad Ali by Joe Frazier.
Alistair Cooke's America · Alistair Cooke
The cost of becoming conscious of your own gift.
His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.
A Moveable Feast · Ernest Hemingway
A man writes a letter that is mostly a knife, and exactly correct about the sums.
Your income has always been ample, and you never ought to have borrowed any money, and Mary Towle did a great wrong in lending you any money. My opinion of you is the same as it always has been—that you are an extravagant, deceitful, dishonest, worthless person. You have squandered thousands of dollars and left your honest debts unpaid. But I do not think you are capable of comprehending the mistakes that you have made. Now that you are paying up Mary Towle, how would it do to pay the various other accounts that you owe?
Me · Katharine Hepburn
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