50 pages • 1 hour read
Frank McCourtTeacher Man
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary
The fifth chapter moves away from McCourt’s life before he became a teacher and details what teaching high school students was like. He starts by estimating how many students (12,000) and classes (33,000) he taught over the course of his career. It’s daunting, he writes, to face teenagers every day. They’re focused solely on themselves and don’t care about any troubles the teacher is having. In fact, they see the teacher as a problem. McCourt warns, “Watch your step, teacher. Don’t make yourself a problem. They’ll cut you down” (68). Rainy days were good because the students were more subdued, so teachers could get more done.
Twice a year, McKee had parent-teacher conferences on what the school called Open School Day. McCourt tried to be positive about all his students, and had to be especially careful if a father was present. One could never know, he notes, whether a negative comment might result in a father beating his son. He thus learned to be protective of his students. McCourt had to learn all this for himself, as these conferences were never covered in his college classes on teaching.
Some parents were angry at McCourt for telling so many stories of his life in class. They heard from their children what went on in class, and they demanded that McCourt stick to his lesson plans. One mother called him a fraud, and he agreed with her, admitting that he was still looking for answers to what worked. He wanted to be a more effective teacher, but he didn’t know how.
Still, he had successes now and then. He describes how one day he happened upon an approach for teaching grammar. After being criticized by the mother who called him a fraud, he tried to be tougher and more organized in class. He wrote on the board, “John went to the store” and asked the students for the subject of the sentence (76). They groaned and didn’t want to work. Then they misunderstood “subject” as the topic of the sentence and told them what it was about. He was frustrated and wondered to himself about the apparent ignorance of his students.
He then gave up and asked them simply why John went to the store. A boy named Ron responded by making up a whole story about John going to get a grammar book to impress both his teacher and his girlfriend. Only John steals the book and ends up in jail. Class then ended for the day, but the next day Ron wanted to know what would happen if the word order were changed in the sentence about John. McCourt then gave the students different examples of the sentence when rearranged, such as “To the store John went” (79), with McCourt noting that it still made sense. However, putting the words in a certain order made no sense and sounded like gibberish.
Then he had the idea to compare psychology to grammar: The former was how people behave while the latter was how language behaves. He asked if they knew what psychology was and someone replied it was figuring out what made people behave strangely or erratically before they got sent to the hospital. Grammar, McCourt continued, gave words meaning through order, and without the right order, a person would end up talking gibberish. The students liked the word gibberish and hadn’t heard it before. They laughed and repeated it. McCourt realized he was finally getting through to them. When they heard the word gibberish in the future, they would think of his English class, and through his comparison between psychology and grammar, they were learning what grammar was.
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary
This chapter is about another success in the classroom, this time involving a writing lesson. McCourt recalls the story as follows. One day, a student hands McCourt an excuse note for his absence the day before. McCourt instantly knows that the mother didn’t write it—the student did. As a teacher, he often notices students forging such notes. He could confront the student about it, but everyone knows parents usually don’t write excuse notes, so he decides there is no point. He keeps all the forged notes in a drawer, and during a test later that day reads through the old ones again. They are well-written, which gives him an idea.
Later in the term, McCourt types up a bunch of them without the names and has them copied to hand out to his senior classes to read aloud. The students are confused at first, but he explains that it represents their best writing, so he’s turning it into something to study. The students respond with enthusiasm: “They’re smiling,” he writes. “They know. We’re in this together. Sinners” (86). He has them all write notes of their own, imagining they are parents and their child needs one. They get right to work and have fun with them. Then they ask to do more.
He starts to assign another note for homework before correcting himself, as the students are resistant to the idea of homework. Instead, he has them start writing in class, and just says to finish it up later. The assignment is an excuse note from Adam or Eve to God. The students enjoy it, some even staying in class to continue after the bell for lunch rings. The next day, everyone has their notes done: The notes are clever and spark enthusiastic discussions. McCourt continues to assign similar tasks and in class they write more excuse notes, this time for historical figures such as Al Capone, Judas, and Lee Harvey Oswald.
Mid-activity the principal and superintendent of schools appear and enter the classroom. They walk up and down the aisles, looking at the students’ work, frowning now and then. On their way out, the principal tells him to come see them next period. McCourt knows he’s in trouble, even though he roused the kids’ attention and interest. Surprisingly, however, the superintendent tells him the lesson was brilliant and that the students’ work he glanced at was college level. He just wanted to tell him a letter of commendation would go in McCourt’s file. McCourt is ecstatic and the next day sings a tongue-twister with his class, bonding with his students even more.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary
In this chapter, McCourt writes about a few of his students from his early years of teaching. First there’s Augie, who acts up in class so that McCourt calls his mother to ask her to intervene. The next day, Augie’s father shows up in class, “a man in a black T-shirt with the muscles of a weightlifter” (91). His father lifts Augie up and bangs him against the wall, telling him to be good in class or he will regret it. McCourt tries to intervene but is powerless. Before the man leaves, he tells the class to pay attention or they’ll end up in dead-end jobs. Afterward, McCourt is embarrassed because the students all know he called Augie’s parents, a choice of action they don’t respect. A real teacher, they think, keeps everything in the classroom.
Another vignette is of Sal and Louise, a star-crossed couple in class. He is Italian and she is Irish, and they’re together despite their families’ disapproval. Their gestures of affection in class take the other students’ attention away from McCourt’s lesson about The Scarlet Letter. It is clear to all that Sal and Louise will marry after graduation, raise a family, and live happily ever after. Then one day Sal is attacked in a park by a kid from an Irish gang even though Sal had always avoided gang activity. After that, he sits apart from Louise in class and holds a grudge against the Irish, soon transferring to a different class whose teacher isn’t Irish. McCourt wishes he could be like other teachers he sees in the hallways, comforting students and helping them work through problems. He’s too shy and indecisive, though, and does nothing.
The last story is about Kevin, a student who slips through the cracks. He’s already 19 and hasn’t graduated. Teachers refuse to have him in their classes and guidance counselors hope he will drop out. As a new teacher, McCourt ends up with Kevin, who wears a hood in class and is argumentative. McCourt doesn’t really know what to do with him, but makes him classroom manager. Kevin quickly finishes all his tasks, then finds a bunch of glass jars in the closet full of dried paint. For some reason, he is interested in them, and McCourt asks if he’d like to clean them out. Kevin works hard scrubbing and arranging the jars. He’s still working on them when school ends for the year, and McCourt lets him take the jars home. Kevin doesn’t return in the fall. Instead, he runs away from another school, and joins the army. His mother visits one day to tell McCourt that Kevin ended up missing in action in Vietnam. She leaves a jar that he made, full of paint mixed with clippings of his bright red hair. Again, McCourt feels bad that he didn’t do more to prevent Kevin from losing interest in school.
Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary
Chapter 8 is about more of McCourt’s life as a teacher, still in his early years. Here he focuses on his further education and some of his colleagues at McKee. Two years after he begins teaching, when he is 30, he marries a woman named Alberta Small. At the same time, he begins working on his master’s degree at Brooklyn College. His favorite professor there is a Yeats scholar who can lecture for hours, never taking questions or having discussions. McCourt admires his deep knowledge of literature and wishes he could teach like that: a light teaching load, enrapt students, and no classroom management to speak of. His wife tells him to stop complaining and to go earn his doctorate if he wants a role like that.
Alberta is also a teacher, and has met the wife of the writer Edward Dahlberg through her work. The McCourts are invited to the Dahlberg home, where Dahlberg dominates the conversation, at one point asking McCourt what he is reading, then condescendingly dismissing the author McCourt mentions, Sean O’Casey. McCourt fires back that O’Casey is a well-known author while Dahlberg’s work is obscure, and with that, the Dahlbergs ask him to leave. On the subway home he feels angry and humiliated, wondering why Dahlberg had to be so confrontational towards him. Although McCourt eventually manages to maintain a rather one-sided friendship with Dahlberg for a period of time, once McCourt suspects that Dahlberg is interested in Alberta, he ends their relationship.
McCourt writes of grading essays for the New York Regents English exam at the end of each school year. The job of the graders is to justify awarding enough points to pass most students, since only about half passed in the first round of grading. The students are given points for being kind, not causing trouble in class, writing in paragraphs—anything to get their grade into the 60s.
McCourt also tells of a guidance counselor at McKee, a Mr. Bibberstein, who offers to take care of any troublesome students. McCourt never takes him up on it, though, since he worries he will again cause trouble for students at home, as happened previously with Augie’s father. Bibberstein stops being friendly after McCourt encourages a bright student to look into college, and she goes to the guidance office for advice. McKee is a vocational school, Bibberstein reminds McCourt, and students are not to reach beyond their abilities. McCourt notes that the student is extremely smart and well-read, but Bibberstein replies, “I’d appreciate it if you backed off. Teach English and leave guidance to me” (110).
Part 1, Chapters 5-8 Analysis
After the early chapters of background, these four chapters focus on McCourt’s eight years teaching at McKee. He covers parent-teacher conferences, successful lessons that he discovered more by chance than by planning, specific students and the challenges they posed, and school politics. Taken as a whole, they depict McCourt as eager, but unprepared for the job. He’s indecisive and unsure of himself. This is especially evident in Chapter 7, in which he writes about some of his students. He ends each anecdote on a note of regret, wishing he had done more to reach out to them. The theme of learning from experience is prominent here—indeed, experience is virtually his only teacher, and in his depictions of these early years, McCourt portrays himself as someone barely coping with the demands of his role.
The successes he does have with his lessons come through trial and error and with much student interaction. Though he dreams of being a professor who just lectures for two hours without interruption, that style of teaching is not suitable for him. The grammar lesson on the sentence “John went to the store” goes poorly until McCourt improvises. The class devolves into speculation about why John went to the store, but the students become more interested as a result. This is how McCourt happens upon the comparison of grammar with psychology, which seems to work. Once the students are delighted by the word gibberish, he knows the lesson will stick in their minds by association. In the end, he’s pleased with the meandering lesson because the students were engaged and involved in shaping it.
McCourt’s writing style throughout is light and humorous, even when dealing with serious topics. For example, some of the parents at the conferences held on Open School Day were quite angry with him over what they heard went on in class—or rather, what didn’t go on in class. They wanted him to skip the personal stories and stay on task, teaching students grammar and the usual curriculum. After being reprimanded by one mother, he elicits her sympathy by admitting to his failure and telling her he sincerely hopes to improve. She gets choked up, so he offers her his handkerchief. It’s so old and stained that it’s almost gray, and she asks who does his laundry. He replies that he’s not married, so he does it himself. The mother says that isn’t surprising, as the handkerchief is clearly “bachelor gray.” Such is the way McCourt lightens a serious moment through his characteristic use of humor and a self-deprecating approach to the subject matter.
