Teacher Man. Frank McCourt

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СКАЧАТЬ and attracting cockroaches and various rodents. Squirrels have been chased from these rooms, and I won’t even mention rats. If we’re not vigilant these kids, and some teachers, your colleagues, young man, will turn the school into one big cafeteria.

      I wanted to tell him the truth about the sandwich and how well I handled the situation, but if I did it might be the end of my teaching job. I wanted to say, Sir, it was not my lunch. That was the sandwich of a boy who threw it at another boy and I picked it up because I’m new here and this thing happened in my class and there was nothing in the courses at college on sandwiches, the throwing and retrieving of. I know I ate the sandwich but I did it out of desperation or I did it to teach the class a lesson about waste and to show them who was in charge or, Jesus, I ate it because I was hungry and I promise never to do it again for fear I might lose my good job though you must admit the class was quiet. If that’s the way to capture the attention of kids in a vocational high school you ought to send out for a pile of baloney sandwiches for the four classes I still have to meet today.

      I said nothing.

      The principal said he was there to help me because, Ha, ha, I looked like I might need a lot of help. I’ll admit, he said, you had their full attention. OK, but see if you can do it in a less dramatic way. Try teaching. That’s what you’re here for, young man. Teaching. Now you have ground to recover. That’s all. No eating in class for teacher or student.

      I said, Yes, sir, and he waved me back to the classroom.

      The class said, What’d he say?

      He said I shouldn’t eat my lunch in the classroom at nine a.m.

      You wasn’t eatin’ no lunch.

      I know, but he saw me with the sandwich and told me not to do it again.

      Man, that’s unfair.

      Petey said, I’ll tell my mom you liked her sandwich. I’ll tell her you got in a lot of trouble over her sandwich.

      All right, Petey, but don’t tell her you threw it away.

      Naw, naw. She’d kill me. She’s from Sicily. They get excited over there in Sicily.

      Tell her it was the most delicious sandwich I ever had in my life, Petey.

      OK.

      Mea culpa.

      Instead of teaching, I told stories.

      Anything to keep them quiet and in their seats.

      They thought I was teaching.

      I thought I was teaching.

      I was learning.

      And you called yourself a teacher?

      I didn’t call myself anything. I was more than a teacher. And less. In the high school classroom you are a drill sergeant, a rabbi, a shoulder to cry on, a disciplinarian, a singer, a low-level scholar, a clerk, a referee, a clown, a counselor, a dress-code enforcer, a conductor, an apologist, a philosopher, a collaborator, a tap dancer, a politician, a therapist, a fool, a traffic cop, a priest, a mother-father-brother-sister-uncle-aunt, a bookkeeper, a critic, a psychologist, the last straw.

      In the teachers’ cafeteria veterans warned me, Son, tell ’em nothing about yourself. They’re kids, goddam it. You’re the teacher. You have a right to privacy. You know the game, don’t you? The little buggers are diabolical. They are not, repeat not, your natural friends. They can smell it when you’re going to teach a real lesson on grammar or something, and they’ll head you off at the pass, baby. Watch ’em. Those kids have been at this for years, eleven or twelve, and they have teachers all figured out. They’ll know if you’re even thinking about grammar or spelling, and they’ll raise their little hands and put on that interested expression and ask you what games you played as a kid or who do you like for the goddam World Series. Oh, yeah. And you’ll fall for it. Next thing is you’re spilling your guts and they go home not knowing one end of a sentence from the other, but telling the moms and dads about your life. Not that they care. They’ll get by, but where does that leave you? You can never get back the bits and pieces of your life that stick in their little heads. Your life, man. It’s all you have. Tell ’em nothing.

      The advice was wasted. I learned through trial and error and paid a price for it. I had to find my own way of being a man and a teacher and that is what I struggled with for thirty years in and out of the classrooms of New York. My students didn’t know there was a man up there escaping a cocoon of Irish history and Catholicism, leaving bits of that cocoon everywhere.

      My life saved my life. On my second day at McKee a boy asks a question that sends me into the past and colors the way I teach for the next thirty years. I am nudged into the past, the materials of my life.

      Joey Santos calls out, Yo, teach….

      You are not to call out. You are to raise your hand.

      Yeah, yeah, said Joey, but…

      They have a way of saying yeah yeah that tells you they’re barely tolerating you. In the yeah yeah they’re saying, We’re trying to be patient, man, giving you a break because you’re just a new teacher.

      Joey raises his hand. Yo, teacher man….

      Call me Mr. McCourt.

      Yeah. OK. So, you Scotch or somethin’?

      Joey is the mouth. There’s one in every class along with the complainer, the clown, the goody-goody, the beauty queen, the volunteer for everything, the jock, the intellectual, the momma’s boy, the mystic, the sissy, the lover, the critic, the jerk, the religious fanatic who sees sin everywhere, the brooding one who sits in the back staring at the desk, the happy one, the saint who finds good in all creatures. It’s the job of the mouth to ask questions, anything to keep the teacher from the boring lesson. I may be a new teacher but I’m on to Joey’s delaying game. It’s universal. I played the same game in Ireland. I was the mouth in my class in Leamy’s National School. The master would write an algebra question or an Irish conjugation on the board and the boys would hiss, Ask him a question, McCourt. Get him away from the bloody lesson. Go on, go on.

      I’d say, Sir, did they have algebra in olden times in Ireland?

      Mr. O’Halloran liked me, good boy, neat handwriting, always polite and obedient. He would put the chalk down, and from the way he sat at his desk and took his time before speaking you could see how happy he was to escape from algebra and Irish syntax. He’d say, Boys, you have every right to be proud of your ancestors. Long before the Greeks, even the Egyptians, your forefathers in this lovely land could capture the rays of the sun in the heart of winter and direct them to dark inner chambers for a few golden moments. They knew the ways of the heavenly bodies and that took them beyond algebra, beyond calculus, beyond, boys, oh, beyond beyond.

      Sometimes, in the warm days of spring, he dozed off in his chair and we sat quietly, forty of us, waiting for him to wake, not even daring to leave the room if he slept past going-home time.

      No. I’m not Scotch. I’m Irish.

      Joey looks sincere. Oh, yeah? What’s Irish?

      Irish is whatever comes out of Ireland.

      Like St. Patrick, right?

      Well, СКАЧАТЬ