On McCourts first day of teaching he is anxious and completely unprepared.

He pictures himself commanding the attention and respect of the class, and quickly
replaces this thought with negative self-talk. He is an invisible man at the front of
the classroom and has no idea where to begin. Then someone throws a sandwich.
McCourt takes it, and while the class expects discipline, he eats it instead (16). Still
convinced of his inability to teach, McCourt begins to tell stories. He realizes that
the job requires him to take on multiple roles besides teacher, and just like in his
own life, he has to navigate his own way through. His early encounters with
administration teach him to dislike the bureaucrats, the higherups, who have
escaped the classroom only to turn and bother the occupants of those classrooms
(24).
To McCourt, teaching becomes telling stories about his youth. The source of his
many insecurities begins to emerge, such as his difficulty fitting into either America
or Ireland because of his blended accent (27), the constant guilt engrained into him
by his Irish school teachers over his own short comings and Original Sin (29), or his
humble beginnings after returning to New York (33).
Mr. McCourt would like to teach through stories and music, but he is not
allowed to do so, and a comment he makes about sheep gets him into trouble.
Despite having a teaching license, McCourts fears and insecurities prevent him
from working as a teacher and he retreats to the safety of dockside labor. It is
interesting that as a child, school was not a place of positive experiences for
McCourt, and as an adult he feels no more confident in school as a teacher than he
did as a student.
One of Franks students ask him why he doesnt do real work instead of
being a teacher. Frank starts off answering this question with retelling his past work
experiences on the docks in Hoboken. Frank started talking to his class about his
work on the docks.
The question of what to teach and how to teach it arises for McCourt when he
perceives that getting down to the grind of writing paragraphs has little relevance to
the real life of teenagers at a technical high school. At the same time he meets
parents that have traditional opinions about what should be taught in an English
class. He is confronted with pressures to be a stern, no-nonsense teacher but
cannot follow through. His students disengage (77). He quickly slides back into a
style of teaching where learning involves animated class discussion and story (7880).
Frank reveals his frustrations in dealing with parents of vocational students as
well as one of his big breaks in his personal education philosophy. The chapter
opens with Frank telling us of the number of lessons, schools, students, and
statistics of he has encounter in his years as a teacher. In Franks situation, this
challenge of making his subject matter to not only his students, but their parents as
well is an everyday struggle. Towards the end of the chapter, Frank begins to realize
that he can make his students understand things like grammar by teaching them.
Mr. McCourt describes a lesson in which he teaches students grammar. He is
very proud because he has managed to teach students one big word. McCourt
becomes familiar and rather impressed with the creative and well-crafted forged
note. Wanting that effort to translate into the classroom, McCourt has the class
write their own excuse notes and ventures into more difficult topics such as Adam to
God, Hitler, and other infamous people in history. The class loves it, he loves it, and
administration even loves it with minor reservations.

McCourts past helps him to empathize with his own students and makes him
more aware of the impact of his words and actions. He recalls three scenarios. In the
first, an angry parent storms into the classroom to beat some sense into his son
after McCourt made a call home (91). He quickly realizes calling home could worsen
the situation. In the second scenario, he tries to monitor what he says about The
Scarlet Letter in the face of ethnic romantic tensions in the classroom (93). In the
third scenario, he acknowledges a troubled teen that everyone else has given up on,
and includes him in the class without treating him like a lost cause (9599). Despite
having so little time for each student, McCourt is able to see students as more than
just faces. They are human beings with their own set of vulnerabilities.
Frank tells us three stories that involve the "teacher student" relationship. He
begins the chapter with a shocker. McCourt was forced to contact the mother of a
disruptive student, Augie, to inform her of her son's behavior. The next day, the
boy's gargantuan father busts into the classroom, and beats his child against the
wall. He concluded by warning the students about being disruptive to the teacher. I
found this to be both shocking and funny. Shocking, in the sense that I would
probably never have expected it to happen. I found it funny because this is just
another outrageous incident that's happened to this poor teacher. Frank's next story
involves the issue of race. Sal, an Italian boy, is jumped by an Irish kid one day in
Prospect Park after school. He is struck in the head with a two-by-four. This
experience immediately alienates Sal from his girlfriend, Louise (an Irish girl), and
McCourt. Sal goes on a racial outburst and storms out of the class. He requests a
transfer to another teacher, a nonIrish teacher. What bothered me most about this
was McCourt's reaction, which is nothing. He doesn't bother trying to talk to either
of the two, because he knows he'll "fumble and stammer." The final story is about a
"royal pain in the ass" troublemaker type student. Frank, as the schools greenest
teacher, automatically gets stuck with this kid. The school administration hopes that
Frank, as an Irishman will be able to find some connection with this boy, an Irish
student. If that fails, the administration will do nothing but sit back and hope that
the kid drops out and joins the army. This is a student that identifies with nothing,
an "impossible case." He interrupts the class with irreverent commentary. His
mother can't do a thing with him. McCourt sees him as a "bright boy with a lively
imagination, which doesn't seem to make much of a difference outside of the
classroom. So how does McCourt connect with this student? He assigns him busy
work. McCourt gives Kevin housekeeping responsibilities such as washing the board,
cleaning the erasers, etc. The kid gets the biggest kick out of cleaning old paint jars,
taking dozens home with him at the end of the year. The kid gets assigned to
another school, drifts out, and gets drafted to go to Vietnam.
McCourt sought more self-worth in having more knowledge. He longed for the
kind of recognition and respect that he perceived his professors to have. This begins
to change when an educated acquaintance condescends to him in front of others
leaving him humiliated (105). When it comes to his students, McCourt does not
judge their worth nor intelligence based on test results (107). He uses what one
might call a generous marking system that enables more students to pass the state
English exam. He openly disagrees with a colleague who does not think he should
allow students to reach beyond their grasp (109).
McCourt takes a job for a year lecturing at a community college, teaching tired,
working class adults who are there for credit in the hope of career advancement. He
runs into some cultural blind spots when he is challenged on things he takes for
granted as common sense, such as attendance, footnoting, or florid style writing. It

bothers McCourt that none of his adult students believe their opinion matters.
Perhaps because it has taken McCourt years to realize that his own opinion matters.
His next position is equally brief and he clashes with the administrators personality.
One day he loses patience with a defiant student and slaps him in the face with a
magazine. He had assumed the student was Cuban, but later learns the student was
struggling with exclusion from his community and peers on account of his CubanIrish background and sexual orientation.
Mr. McCourt is teaching at a high school again. He is also going through a bad
patch in his marriage. A student tries his patience and he hits him across the face
with a magazine. He loses his job at the end of term. His new school is very diverse,
and McCourt is teaching students from all continents. Many of them are learning
English, so he shares his own stories of learning English in America (132) and allows
the students to share stories that validate their own experience. His most difficult
class of 29 black females is described as a gender clash generation clash culture
clash racial clash (136). To have any hope in this class means to have the alpha
female on his side. So, McCourt agrees to take the class on a field trip because that
is what they want. He tolerates some embarrassment at their rowdy behaviour but
its a small price to pay in the larger scheme of giving them the same opportunities
any other class would have.
Mr. McCourt is forced to teach in (what he calls) a meltingpot school. At this
school, a number of kids were raised speaking different languages and learning
different cultural practices. As a result, much of what Mr. McCourt tries to teach is
too languagedense for the students to understand or too much in opposition of what
the students stand for. In an effort to connect with them, he indulges their offthewall, pointblank questions he takes them to see movies and plays and he tells
them stories about how he used to teach English to tough, Puerto Rican cooks.
McCourt struggles with his role and is determined to become a tough,
disciplined teacher, organized and focused (147). He is faced with a student in his
class who sits with his chair leaning on wo legs. McCourt wants to show his authority
in front of the class and disciplines the student, embracing the student in front of
this girlfriend and other students. The following day he finds out that the childs
mother, who McCourt once knew well, has died and the student if forced to leave to
live with his stepfather. After discussions with his wife McCourt decides to attend
Trinity College to complete his PhD in English on IrishAmerican Literary Relations,
18891911 (173). He fails and returns to America.
McCourt begins characterizing the good teacher. Good teachers have
control, power, and authority. Good teachers never allow their students to talk out
of turn, to swear, or to go to the bathroom for more than five minutes. Good
teachers, in short, follow the rules and know how to please the administrators. From
there, McCourt seems to fall into a trance. Hes not the good teacher. In fact, hes
never been really good at anything his whole life. He just walks aimlessly from one
job to another. He has no goals. He has no ambitions. He really doesnt know what
to do with himself. All he has are his silly little fantasies and his what couldhave
been.
At Stuyvesant High School, McCourt teaches a new cliental of students. These
are the students who come from prosperous families and will likely attend college.
He has an administrator that believes in his abilities and allows him to experiment
and teach freely in the classroom. In his third-year McCourt is invited to teach a
creative writing course where he encourages students to write from their own
experiences.

McCourt gets a new lease on life. Hes offered a position at one of the most
prestigious high schools in New York, and the apple of his eye, daughter Maggie, is
born not long after. Professionally and personally, life is looking up for McCourt. At
Stuyvesant, High School, McCourt makes friends with his supervisor. They have
drinks together, and McCourt is trusted to teach whatever grade and whatever
topics he wants. Never before has McCourt been given this much freedom in the
classroom, and he enjoys every minute of it.
McCourt begins to develop his own style and comfort in the classroom
admitting to students when he does not know the answer and declaring to the
students that they are one and the same and that together teacher and student
would develop and teach the class. The creative writing class was an elective yet
the class was full every semester with so many students there would not be
sufficient seating. A student offers a piece of marzipan to McCourt at the beginning
of one class. Other students too want to show off their culinary skills and so in a
following class the students bring many different types of foods to share and the
students have a picnic in the park. This flourishes into sharing of recipes in
subsequent classes to music and song. McCourt enjoys the experience immensely
but struggles with what others might think of his teaching.
Internal struggles continue for McCourt between being the organized and
orderly teacher and the creative teacher. He has the class study and analyze poetry
and nonfiction pieces but he does so in an unconventional way using accessible
selections for the students such as fairy tales, restaurant reviews and obituaries. He
realizes that the material being taught is not as important as the students learning.
During the ParentTeacher meetings, he got a sense of what it must be like for
his students at home outside of his class. He came to appreciate that each student
comes from a different home life and that this is sometimes what is reflected in that
student's personality and from this he learned better to teach each individual.
Mr. McCourt starts teaching at one of the very best schools in New York. He is
invited to be the Creative Writing teacher and becomes very popular, but he feels
this is because his classes are easier than the rest
McCourt is able to find a way to reach the students inspiring them to write
about their own experiences encouraging even the most unmotivated to write
meaningful pieces about their own lives. He inspires students to talk with elderly
relatives learning about their life experiences and developing their own sense of
identity based on what may or may not have shaped their predecessors in the past.
McCourt allows students to provide self-evaluations for the course believing he is
opening the doors to freedom of thought for the students.
Although most days he is positive about teaching and is encouraged by the
thought of doing something he loves, he is tired and ready to move on. McCourt
gives advice to a new teacher. On the last day of McCourts career a student shares
a story of his experiences living through an accident which left him partially
paralyzed on one side of his body. The student embraces the experience stating
that it has given him a new perspective on life. The bell rings and the students
spray McCourt with confetti. Through the hall, a student calls Hey, Mr. McCourt, you
should write a book. (257)