Teacher Man: A Memoir (22 page)

The Hasidim were wild: six men in black costume, black hats and long black coats, hair and beards flying out. You could almost hear the high clarinet wail and the fiddle chirp and soar.

Yonk said he didn’t give a damn about religion himself, Judaism or anything else, but if you could dance your way to God like the men in his picture then he was right with them.

At the Aqueduct track I watched him watching. He seemed to be the only one at the track interested in what he called the laggard nags, the ones who trailed in at the end of the field. He ignored horses being led into the winner’s enclosure. Winning was winning but losing made you dig deep. Before I knew Yonk I saw nothing but groups of horses being pointed in one direction and running their hearts out till one of them won. I looked through his eyes at a different Aqueduct. I knew nothing about art or the mind of the artist but I knew he took horse and rider images home in his head.

At dusk he’d invite me for a brandy in his corner room, where we looked down Atlantic Avenue toward the waterfront. Trucks grunted up the avenue, wheezing and hissing when they changed gears at the red traffic light while the ambulances of Long Island College Hospital screamed day and night. We could see the blinking red neon sign for Montero’s Bar, a gathering place for seamen off freighters and container ships and the ladies of the night who made them welcome to Brooklyn.

Pilar Montero and her husband, Joe, owned the bar and building on Atlantic Avenue. She had a vacant apartment over the bar that I could have for two hundred and fifty dollars a month. She could give me a bed, some tables and chairs and, I know you’ll be happy up there, Frankie. She said she liked me because of the time I said I preferred Spanish bagpipes to Irish bagpipes and I wasn’t like the rest of the Irishers, who wanted to fight fight fight, all they ever wanted to do.

The apartment looked out on Atlantic Avenue. Outside my window, the
MONTERO BAR
neon sign blazed on and off, turning my front room from scarlet to black to scarlet while on the jukebox downstairs the Village People sang and pounded “YMCA.”

I could never tell my classes how I lived over one of the last waterfront bars in Brooklyn, how every night I struggled to drown out the sounds of rowdy sailors, how I stuffed cotton wool in my ears to muffle the shrieking and laughing of women who offered shore love, how the pounding of the jukebox in the bar below, the Village People singing “YMCA,” jolted me nightly in my bed.

A
t the start of each term I told the new students of creative writing, We’re in this together. I don’t know about you, but I’m serious about this class and sure of one thing: at the end of the term, one person in this room will have learned something, and that person, my little friends, will be me.

I thought that was clever, the way I presented myself as the most eager of all, elevating myself above the masses, the lazy, the opportunists, the indifferent.

English was a required subject, but Creative Writing was an elective. You could take or leave it. They took it. They flocked to my classes. The room was packed. They sat on windowsills. One teacher, Pam Sheldon, said, Why don’t they just let him teach in Yankee Stadium? That’s how popular I was.

What was this enthusiasm for “creative writing”? Did the boys and girls suddenly want to express themselves? Was it my masterly teaching, my charisma, my Irish charm? The old faith and begorrah factor?

Or had the word spread that this McCourt just rambled on and then disbursed high marks as easily as peanuts?

I didn’t want to be known as an easy marker. I would have to toughen my image. Tighten up. Organize. Focus. Other teachers were spoken of in awe and fear. Up on the fifth floor, Phil Fisher taught mathematics and terrified all who came before him. The stories came down. If you struggled with the subject or showed little interest, he roared, Every time you open your mouth you add to the sum total of human ignorance, or Every time you open your mouth you detract from the sum total of human wisdom. He could not understand how any human brain could find difficulty with advanced calculus or trigonometry. He wondered why the stupid little bastards could not apprehend the elegant simplicity of it all.

At the end of the term, his stupid little bastards flaunted passing grades from him and bragged of their achievement. You could not be indifferent to Phil Fisher.

Ed Marcantonio was the chairman of the Mathematics Department. He taught in a room across the hall from mine. He taught the same courses as Phil Fisher, but his classes were oases of reason and serious purpose. A problem was presented and for forty minutes he led or urged the class toward an elegant solution. When the bell rang his students, satisfied, floated serene in the hallways, and when they passed Ed’s course they knew they had earned it.

Adolescents don’t always want to be set afloat on seas of speculation and uncertainty. It satisfies them to know that Tirana is the capital of Albania. They don’t like it when Mr. McCourt says, Why was Hamlet mean to his mother, or why didn’t he kill the king when he had the chance? It’s all right to spend the rest of the period going round and round discussing this, but you’d like to know the answer before the goddam bell rings. Not with McCourt, man. He’s asking questions, throwing out suggestions, causing confusion, and you know the warning bell is about to ring and you get this feeling in your gut, Come on, come on, what’s the answer? and he keeps saying, What do you think? What do you think? and the bell rings and you’re out in the hallway knowing nothing and you look at other kids from the class pointing to their heads and wondering where this guy is coming from. You see the kids from Marcantonio’s class sailing down the hall with that peaceful expression that says, We got the answer. We got the solution. Once, just once, you wish McCourt had the answer to something, but no, he throws everything back at you. Maybe that’s how they do it in Ireland, but somebody should tell him this is America and we like answers here. Or maybe he doesn’t have the answers himself and that’s why he throws everything back to the class.

I wanted to teach with Fisher passion and Marcantonio mastery. It was flattering to know that hundreds wanted to be in my classes, but I wondered about their reasons. I didn’t want to be taken for granted. Oh, McCourt’s class is just bullshit. All we do is talk. The old yack, yack, yack. If you don’t get an A in his class, man, you’re just plain stoopid.

Yonk Kling was having an afternoon brandy at Montero’s. He told me I looked like shit.

Thanks, Yonk.

Have a brandy.

I can’t. I have a million papers to correct. I’ll have a glass of Rioja, Pilar.

Good for you, Frankie. You like the Spanish bagpipes. You like the Rioja. You find a nice Spanish girl. Keep you in bed all weekend.

I sat up on the bar stool and told Yonk my story. I think I’m too easy. There’s no respect for easy teachers. One teacher at Stuyvesant was called Something for Nothing. I want to make them earn their grades. Have respect. They’re signing up for my classes by the hundreds. That bothers me, the idea those kids might be saying I’m easy. One mother came to the school and pleaded with me to let her daughter into my class. Mom was divorced and offered to spend a weekend with me in a resort of my choice. I said no.

Yonk shook his head and said that sometimes I was not too bright, that there was an element of the tight ass in my character and if I didn’t loosen up I’d slide into a miserable middle age. Christ, man. You could have spread joy. A weekend with the mother, a bright writing future for her little girl. What’s the matter with you?

There wouldn’t be any respect.

Oh, the hell with respect. Have another Rioja. No. Pilar, give him some of that Spanish brandy on me.

All right, but I have to go easy, Yonk. All these papers. One hundred and seventy papers, each three hundred and fifty words if I’m lucky, five hundred if I’m not. I’m buried.

He said I deserved two brandies, and he didn’t know how I did it. He said, All you teachers. I dunno how you do it. If I ever became a teacher I’d have one thing to say to those little bastards: Shut up. Just shut up. Tell me this. Did you let the little girl into your class?

Yes.

And the mother’s offer still stands?

I suppose so.

And you’re sitting here drinking Spanish brandy when you could be off in the resort of your choice losing your teacher integrity?

After fifteen years in four different high schools — McKee, Fashion Industries, Seward Park, Stuyvesant — and the college in Brooklyn, I’m developing the instincts of a dog. When new classes come in September and February I can sniff their chemical composition. I watch the way they look and they watch the way I look. I can pick out types: the eager, willing ones; the cool; the show-me; the indifferent; the hostile; the opportunists here because they’ve heard I’m an easy marker; the lovers here simply to be near the beloved.

In this school you have to get their attention, challenge them. There they sit, row after row, bright intelligent faces looking up at me, expectant, ready to let me prove myself. Before Stuyvesant, I was more taskmaster than teacher. I wasted class time in routine and discipline: telling them to take their seats, open their notebooks, fielding requests for the pass, dealing with their complaints. Now there was no more rowdy behavior.

No more complaints about pushing or being pushed. No sandwiches in flight. No excuses for not teaching.

If you don’t perform you’ll lose their respect. Busywork is an insult. They know when you’re blathering or killing time.

Broadway audiences meet actors halfway with politeness and applause. They’ve paid high prices for their tickets. They cluster at stage doors and ask for autographs. Public high school teachers perform five times a day. Their audiences disappear when bells ring and they’re asked for autographs only on yearbooks at graduation.

You can fool some of the kids some of the time, but they know when you’re wearing the mask, and you know they know. They force you into truth. If you contradict yourself they’ll call out, Hey, that’s not what you said last week. You face years of experience and their collective truth, and if you insist on hiding behind the teacher mask you lose them. Even if they lie to themselves and the world they look for honesty in the teacher.

At Stuyvesant I decided to admit it when I didn’t have answers. I just don’t know, friends. No, I’ve never read the Venerable Bede. I’m hazy on Transcendentalism. John Donne and Gerard Manley Hopkins can be tough going. I’m weak on the Louisiana Purchase. I’ve glanced at Schopenhauer and fallen asleep over Kant. Don’t even mention mathematics. I used to know the meaning of condign but now it escapes me. I’m strong on usufruct. I’m sorry, I couldn’t finish
The Faerie Queen
. I’ll try again someday after I sort out the Metaphysicals.

I won’t use ignorance as an excuse. I won’t take refuge behind the gaps in my education. I will lay out a program of self-improvement to make me a better teacher: disciplined, traditional, scholarly, resourceful, ready with answers. I will dip into history, art, philosophy, archaeology. I’ll sweep through the pageant of English language and literature from the Angles and Saxons and Jutes to the Normans, the Elizabethans, the Neoclassicists, the Romantics, the Victorians, the Edwardians, the War Poets, the Structuralists, the Modernists, the Postmodernists. I’ll take an idea and trace its history from a cave in France to that room in Philadelphia where Franklin and the rest hammered out the Constitution of the U.S.A. I’ll show off a bit, I suppose, and there might be sneering, but who can begrudge the ill-paid teacher a moment to prove a little learning is a dangerous thing?

The students never stopped trying to divert me from traditional English, but I was on to their tricks. I still told stories, but I was learning how to connect them with the likes of the Wife of Bath, Tom Sawyer, Holden Caulfield, Romeo and his reincarnation in
West Side Story
. English teachers are always being told, You gotta make it relevant.

I was finding my voice and my own style of teaching. I was learning to be comfortable in the classroom. Like Roger Goodman, my new chairman, Bill Ince, gave me free rein to try out ideas about writing and literature, to create my own classroom atmosphere, to do whatever I liked without bureaucratic interference, and my students were mature and tolerant enough to let me find my own way without the help of the mask or the red pen.

There are two basic ways of capturing the attention of the American teenager: sex and food. You have to be careful with sex. Word goes back to the parents and you’re called on the carpet to explain why you’re allowing your writing students to read stories about sex. You point out that it was done in good taste, in the spirit of romance rather than biology. That is not enough.

Kenny DiFalco called from the back of the room to ask if I’d like a marzipan. He held up something white and said he’d made it himself. I told him in my proper teacher way it was against the rules to eat or drink in class and what was marzipan anyway. Taste it, he said. It was delicious. There was a chorus of requests for marzipans, but Kenny said he’d run out of them. Tomorrow he’d bring in thirty-six marzipans, which, of course, he’d make himself. Then Tommy Esposito said he’d bring various bits and pieces from his father’s restaurant. They might be leftovers but he’d make sure they were nice and hot. That started a chorus of offers. A Korean girl said she’d bring in something her mother made, kimchee, a hot cabbage that could take the roof off your mouth. Kenny said if all this food was coming in we should forget class, meet tomorrow in Stuyvesant Square next door and lay everything out on the grass. He said also we should remember to bring plastic utensils and napkins. Tommy said no, he’d never eat his father’s meatballs with plastic. He was willing to bring in thirty-six forks and didn’t mind one bit if we used them for other dishes. He suggested also that Mr. McCourt be excused from bringing anything. It’s hard enough teaching kids without having to feed them, too.

Next day people walking in the park stopped to see what we were doing. A doctor from Beth Israel Hospital said he’d never seen such an array of food. When he was offered bits and sips he rolled his eyes and hummed with pleasure till he tasted the kimchee and had to beg for a cold drink for his burnt palate.

Instead of laying the dishes out on the grass we spread them along park benches. There were Jewish dishes (kreplach, matzos, gefilte fish), Italian (lasagna, Tommy’s meatballs, ravioli, risotto), Chinese, Korean, a huge thirty-six-person meatloaf made with beef, veal, potatoes, onions. A police car cruised by. The cops wanted to know what was going on. You’re not supposed to have fairs in the park without city permission. I explained this was a lesson in vocabulary and look at what my students were learning. The cops said they’d never had a vocabulary lesson like this in Catholic school, everything looked delicious, and I said they should step out of the car and try something. When the Beth Israel doctor warned them to watch out for the kimchee they said bring it on, there wasn’t a hot food in Vietnam and Thailand they hadn’t tried. They spooned it in and yelped and called for something cold. Before they drove away, they asked how often we planned to have these vocabulary lessons.

The homeless shuffled and edged their way into the group and we gave them the little that was left over. One spat out a marzipan, saying, What kinda crap is this? I might be homeless, but you don’t have to insult me.

I stood on a park bench to announce my new idea. I had to compete with student chatter, the mumbling and complaining of the homeless, the remarks of the curious public, the hoot and honk of Second Avenue traffic.

Listen. Are you listening? Tomorrow I’d like you to bring to class a cookbook. Yes. A cookbook. What? You don’t have a cookbook? Well, then, I’d like to plan a visit to the family that doesn’t own a cookbook. We’ll take up a collection for you. Don’t forget, tomorrow the cookbook.

Mr. McCourt, why do we have to bring cookbooks?

I don’t know yet. Maybe I’ll know tomorrow. There’s something in my head that might become an idea.

Mr. McCourt, don’t get mad, but sometimes you’re like weird.

They brought the cookbooks. They said, What does this have to do with learning how to write?

You’ll see. Open your book to any page. If you’ve already been through the book and have a favorite recipe open to that. David, read yours.

What?

Read your recipe.