Teacher Unmasked

John Merrow - at Learning Matters - has a podcast of an interview he did with Frank McCourt (author of Angela's Ashes, which won the Pulitzer). This interview is from 1999 or early 2000.

In it, Merrow asks McCourt to read from his upcoming book 'Tis: A Memoir. It is McCourt's memoir of becoming a high school English teacher and the obstacles he faced.

This is one of my favorite parts that McCourt reads.

From 'Tis: A Memoir -

I followed the teacher’s guides. I launched the prefabricated questions at my classes. I hit them with surprise quizzes and tests and destroyed them with the ponderous detailed examinations concocted by college professors who assemble high school text books.

Everyday I’d teach with my guts in a knot, lurking behind my desk at the front of the room playing the teacher game with the chalk, the eraser, the red pen, the teacher guides, the power of the quiz, the test, the exam. I’ll call your father, I’ll call your mother. ,I’ll report you to the governor, I’ll damage your average so badly kid you’ll be lucky to get into a community college in Mississippi. Weapons of menace and control.

A senior, Jonathan, bangs his forehead on his desk and wales, Why? Why? Why do we have to suffer with this shit? We’ve been in school since kindergarten, thirteen years, and why do we have to know what color shoes Mrs. Dalloway was wearing at her goddam party and what are we supposed to make of Shakespeare troubling deaf heaven with his bootless cries and what the hell is a bootless cry anyway and when did heaven turn deaf?

Around the room rumbles of rebellion and I’m paralyzed. They’re saying Yeah, yeah to Jonathan, who halts his head banging to ask, Mr. McCourt, did you have this stuff in high school? and there’s another chorus of yeah yeah and I don’t know what to say. Should I tell them the truth, that I never set foot in a high school till I began teaching in one or should I feed them a lie about a rigorous secondary school education with the Christian Brothers in Limerick?

I’m saved, or doomed, by another student who calls out, Mr. McCourt, my cousin went to McKee on Staten Island and she said you told them you never went to high school and they said you were an okay teacher anyway because you told stories and talked and never bothered them with these tests.

Smiles around the room. Teacher unmasked. Teacher never even went to high school and look what he’s doing to us, driving us crazy with tests and quizzes. I’m branded forever with the label, teacher who never went to high school.

So, Mr. McCourt, I thought you had to get a license to teach in the city.

You do.

Don’t you have to get a college degree?

You do.

Don’t you have to graduate high school?

You mean graduate from high school, from high school, from from from.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Don’t you have to graduate from high school to get into college?

I suppose you do.

Tyro lawer grills teacher, carries the day, and word spreads to my other classes. Wow, Mr. McCourt, you never went to high school and you’re teaching at Stuyvesant? Cool, man.

And into the trash basket I drop my teaching guides, my quizzes, tests, examinations, my teacher-knows-all mask.

I’m naked and starting over and I hardly know where to begin.

***

Call me crazy, but I think that should be mandatory reading for any teacher or any student thinking about going into teaching.

It seems that there is a crossroads all teachers face. McCourt is at that crossroads in the above passage. Does he chuck all the pre-fabricated curriculum junk and go about teaching his own way (and likely lose any merit pay because will his kids show growth on the tests?) and work to get kids to think for themselves (which - and this is just my opinion - those pre-fabricated, teacher proof guides don't really allow for)? Or does a teacher chuck all their ideals and cling to those curriculum guides and standards?

I guess you can tell which way I went when I came to that cross roads.

But that is what makes teaching an art. I think it is also what makes my classes enjoyable and refreshing for my students.

Teach unmasked.

It doesn't get any better than that.

That's what teaching is about - personality and passion and getting kids to think and challenge and defend and refute and delve and imagine and create - all in their own unique ways.

There's no damn formula or pre-fabricated lesson that will allow for that.

You get one shot at it. Sometimes it's lights out - like the day Gene, a liason with the MNHS who stopped by to observe me last year as part of the MNHS grant, came to class and we hit the ball out of the damn state with a discussion on "The Yellow Wallpaper." Sometimes it fizzles and you don't get anyway (too many times to think of one specific time).

But that's the art of teaching. That's what McCourt was beginning to work toward when he dropped those curriculum guides into the waste basket.

I love the part where the student talks about how past students said he was an alright teacher because he told stories and didn't bother them with ponderous detailed examinations.

To me, that's teaching.

Now, I'm not saying get up and lecture all day.

But get up there and be interesting. Make the subject matter come alive for the kids. Let them feed off your passion and enthusiasm.

That's how you start to teach. Once you've got them there, then you get them to open up in discussion or in their writing. Then you run with it.

And when you're doing that, you're also doing all the stuff the high stakes testing is supposed to measure - you're getting them to analyze and to think critically and to question and to create and to learn.

That's the magic.