Teacher Man

McCourt taught English in New York City public schools for thirty years — vocational schools, tough kids, impossible conditions, an administration that ranged from indifferent to hostile. He survived by telling stories. His own story: Irish immigrant, Angela's Ashes childhood, arrived in America with nothing. His students' stories. The stories in the books he was supposed to teach but mostly ignored in favor of whatever was actually happening in the room. McCourt writes about teaching the way a jazz musician talks about playing — as improvisation under pressure, as a daily negotiation between what you planned and what the room needs, as something that is simultaneously exhausting and alive. The most honest and funniest memoir about public school teaching ever written. The book that tells every teacher that surviving with your humor and humanity intact is its own form of heroism.