Teacher Man
Written by:Frank McCourt


SYNOPSIS: For 30 years Pulitzer Prize-winning author Frank McCourt (ANGELA’S ASHES) taught high school English in New York City and for much of that time he considered himself a fraud.

TEACHER MAN, based on his book by the same name, tells of these years, as he danced a delicate jig between engaging the students, satisfying often bewildered administrators and parents, and actually enjoying his job.

While he tried to present an image of composure and self-confidence, he regularly felt insecure, inadequate, and unfocused. After much trial and error, he eventually discovered what was in front of him (or rather, behind him) all along--his own experience.

"My life saved my life," he writes. At the beginning of his career it had never occurred to him that his own dismal upbringing in the slums of Limerick could be turned into a valuable lesson plan.

Indeed, his formal training taught him to arouse fear and awe, to be stern, to be impossible to please--but he couldn't do it. McCourt was too likable, too interested in the students' lives, and too willing to reveal himself for their benefit as well as his own.

He was a kindred spirit with more questions than answers: "Look at me: wandering late bloomer, floundering old fart, discovering in my forties what my students knew in their teens."