Frank McCourt and Other Teachers

"Long before he was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, the late Frank McCourt was a teacher in the New York City schools. Relationships formed with 12,000 mostly teenaged students over 30 years form the basis for his new memoir, Teacher Man. McCourt tells Jacki Lyden about life in the classroom." Listen here, from All Things Considered (1/14/06 - 8:14)

Musings

1. How would you characterize McCourt's attitude towards teaching in his interview or reading the Prologue to his book, Teacher Man (available here)? Would such an attitude likely to make him a good or a bad teacher?
   
   
2. David Brown's retrospective piece (All Things Considered, 8/4/06) on the Kashmere High School soul band--dubbed the "greatest high school band ever"--reveals the value of audio files in delivering a wealth of information in compact form (in this case, 8:19 minutes). Much of the piece here is a touching interview with the 92-year-old master teacher, Conrad Johnson, someone who dared to break the mold—and that’s exactly what Johnson did with the Kashmere band, producing a full, commercial-sounding funk band when other high school bands were playing tired and timid semi-classical pops standards. In your own words, what made Johnson such an inspiring teacher?
   
   
3. Try reminiscing about a favorite teacher of your own, especially one as eccentric one like Conrad Johnson.
    
4. Identify the outstanding characteristics of any of the following teachers: math teacher George Nobl, Kimberly Oliver, the 2006 Teacher of the year (NPR interview, 6/5/06 - 6:31), a math teacher, Louis Leithold, music teacher Johanna Grussner, or Alix Black discussing her teacher-mom. Compare or contrast any two of these teachers.
    
5. Here's a list of films about educators from UAB and one from Amazon.com. Here's a list of books about great teachers, from Amazon's listmania: Very Special Teachers. Describe a noted teacher from one of these films or books.