A Lesson from the Teacher Man

by Nancy A.S. Miller

“Here they come.
And I’m not ready.
How could I be?
I’m a new teacher and learning on the job.”
        ~ Frank McCourt, Teacher Man

        This compelling memoir is a tribute to teachers everywhere, but it will particularly resonate with those who are teaching high school English and composition classes. Moving from school to school, attempting to teach students with little interest in schooling and even less in learning to write, Mr. McCourt eventually lands a position teaching English at Stuyvesant, a prestigious New York public high school where he notes that the students "had words to spare."

        If you asked all the students in your five classes to write three hundred and fifty words each then you had 175 multiplied by 350 and that was 43,750 words you had to read, correct, evaluate and grade on evenings and weekends. That’s if you were wise enough to give them only one assignment per week. ... If you gave each paper a bare five minutes you’d spend, on this one set of papers, fourteen hours and thirty-five minutes. ...
        You hesitate to assign book reports. They are longer and rich in plagiarism. (McCourt, 2005)

        When telling the story of his work with other, less motivated, classes, he shares some wonderful class projects. One was inspired by his desk drawer full of excuse notes, purportedly from parents, but usually penned by the students, and mostly lies."Isn’t it remarkable," McCourt writes, "how they resist any kind of writing assignment in class or at home. ... But when they forge these excuse notes they’re brilliant."

• "His sister’s dog ate his homework and I hope it chokes him."
• "A man died in the bathtub upstairs and it overflowed and messed up all Roberta’s homework on the table."
• "Her big brother got mad at her and threw her essay out the window and it flew away all over Staten Island which is not a good thing because people will read it and get the wrong impression unless they read the ending which explains everything."

        Mr. McCourt showed samples of the excuse notes to his class and announced that he was going to take examples of their "best writing, the excuse note, and [turn] it in to a subject worthy of study." The writing prompt: "You'll be making excuses the rest of your life and you'll want them to be believable and original. ... Imagine you have a fifteen-year-old son or daughter who needs an excuse for falling behind in English. Let it rip."

        He remarked that the class didn’t dawdle in getting started with this assignment. "They produced a rhapsody of excuses, ranging from a family epidemic of diarrhea to a sixteen-wheeler truck crashing into a house to a severe case of food poisoning blamed on the McKee High School cafeteria." The lesson was so successful that he contrived an extension (a homework assignment, to be started in class then completed at home): "An excuse note from Adam to God" or "An excuse note from Eve to God." Later, class discussion expanded a list of people in the world today who "could use a good excuse note."

        A second gem of a lesson combined one of the all time interests of teens, with other’s talents to generate a spirit of collaboration in writing and performance. It began with a picnic in the park where various class members brought samples of their families favorite homemade foods. Discussion of how the foods tasted, smelled and made them feel, rendered the assignment to bring in a cookbook. Each student recited a recipe. After the first few a student noted that she knew why Mr. McCourt had them recite recipes, "Because they look like poetry on the page and some of them read like poetry. They are even better than poetry because you can taste them. And, wow, the Italian recipes are pure music."

        This led to another student who offered to play his flute with the next recitation, and soon the class was engaged in "finding deeper meaning," as well as new vocabulary words, in the writing and performance of the seemingly simple "recipe."

        The decades flew by and Frank McCourt, though very busy with his career in teaching, felt a bit "two-faced" since he was "prodding and encouraging kids to write" when his own "writer dream was dying." He decides to retire. On the last day of class at Stuyvesant High School, for his seniors and himself, a student called out "Hey, Mr. McCourt, you should write a book."

        He did.

* Frank McCourt, Pulitzer prize-winning author of Angela’s Ashes, was born in Brooklyn, grew up in Limerick, Ireland and then returned to New York City in 1949. After working at menial jobs he spent two years in the Army then went to college on the G.I. bill and became a teacher of English for 30 years in New York City schools.

— Teacher Man is published by Scribner, ©2005 by Green Peril Corporation.

Nancy A.S. Miller

Nancy A.S. Miller is an education consultant in the areas of curriculum, technology and library/media services. She has been in education more than 30 years as a classroom teacher, library media specialist, consultant, trainer and data communication specialist. She has provided professional development in technology and curriculum integration, administrative leadership, data-driven decision-making and marketing for classroom teachers, library professionals and school administrators across the nation. Nancy is the Project Manager of The Buddy System Project, the sponsor of The Writing Site.

This featured article appeared in Volume 1, Number 2 issue of the Write Connections quarterly newsletter. View other archived newsletters , a topical organization of all newsletters, or sign-up to receive notification when the next newsletters are ready to download.