Teacher Man by Frank McCourt see larger photo List Price: $26.00 Our Price: $17.16 Released 15 November, 2005 Hardcover Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

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Customer Review
Required Reading for Anyone Interested in Teaching in NYC
5/5 Stars
This is my first year teaching in a New York City Public School. I listened to this book prior to moving to New York and enjoyed it immensely. Hearing the author read his own words, especially in this author's expressive brogue, was outstanding. I highly recommend the CD simply for entertainment purposes.

For anyone considering following in Mr. McCourt's footsteps, beware! The city schools are every bit as challenging as they were in Mr. McCourt's day, but more so in that principals hide the disruptive and violent behavior of students by refusing to take discipline beyond the classroom. There is a unspoken but strongly encouraged practice by certain LISs that want to hide the real problems in the schools they supervise to make their performance look stronger than it actually is. Suspensions and SAVE room use count against them and the building principals under the new city guidelines as well as NLRB. The school violence statistics are severely underreported due to these dangerous and hidden practices, to the extent that the UFT has set up their own hot-line for reporting school violence to get a more realistic picture of what is actually happening in the school.

Woe to you if, like me, you are lured to a building with an untenured principal under these false pretences! I have been told fist fights are a "Classroom management issue" and to "call the parents if you feel you can't handle it." Although there is a security officer in the school, calls for help when children are attacking others, using chairs or other movable objects in the room as weapons, are ignored by the office staff because they require a write up and these write-ups reflect on the administrative staff as well. It took me two phone calls to the office, one to security and over fifteen minutes to get help disarming a knife wielding elementary student who was jumping on the desks shouting, "I'm going to slice people in this room!" recently. The five little girls in the class were cowering and crying while I protected them from his rampage as best I could. I was reprimanded for not having control of my classroom and am now being subjected to harassment about my planning since, according to the principal, incidents like this wouldn't happen if my lessons were written out more completely.

Disruptive behavior is constant and unless a teacher is willing to browbeat or bribe students into enough docility that teaching can take place, 90% of time is spent correcting constant outbursts rather than instruction. Don't listen to this CD thinking, "How wonderful things have changed since then." It's as bad now, but the disruptive behavior Mr. McCourt describes in the challenging High School settings he taught in has moved down into Kindergarten.

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