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taught without much flexibility or consideration of personality. This presents a serious dilemma
for McCourt: instead of dealing with disciplined students in an Irish Catholic school, he faces the
students of the New York school system, many of who are unruly and of little respect to his
authority as a teacher. A traditional approach is hopeless; but instead of giving in, McCourt
delves deeper in to how he would be able to reach his students.
Maslows Hierarchy of Needs is divided in to five layers, in ascending order:
physiological, safety, love and belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization. Each layer provides
the base for the next. An individual cannot necessarily say they are safe if they do not have food
or clothing, nor could a person develop their self-esteem when they lack an emotional assertion
of value from friends or family. At the peak of Maslows Hierarchy is where a persons mental
development lies: morality, creativity, problem-solving, and critical thinking. (Jerome,
Application of the Maslows hierarchy of need theory.) In this sense, a student is not able to
harness any of these abilities without having all of their prior needs met.
So imagine McCourts surprise when the beginning of his teaching career is met with
opposition from students who refuse to listen to or understand his lectures. It was not that he
wasnt explaining the content properly, it was that the content itself was too contrived when his
students did not have the desire to connect with it. The majority of McCourts students whether
Italians, Irishmen, Cubans, or even an class of entirely black teenager girls present themselves
with a disdain for English. McCourt fails to crack them, at first, because he is too focused on
what he can do to help himself, and not what he can do to help them.
McCourt faces numerous cultural barriers through his experiences as a teacher, not just in
race, but sexual orientation, cultural values, and language barriers. Many of the students he faces
are in the process of learning English, so he tries to connect with them by relating his
experiences as an immigrant from Ireland to them. He explains how it was for him when he
learned English, and encourages the students to share their personal stories as well. McCourt
creates a feeling of love and belonging, which fulfills one of the lower tiers of Maslows
pyramid. As D.E. Campbell states on The Work of Maslow, creating positive and nurturing
human relationships between teachers and students and among students is one of the most
important issues of school improvement. Young people do not learn math, reading, or English
well if they are intimidated, defensive, and fearful. (Campbell)
Leila Christenbury states in her piece The Flexible Teacher that Effective teachers
alter, adjust, and change their instruction depending on who is in the classroom and the extent to
which those students are achieving. (Christenbury) McCourt, for example, in chapter 7, when
he is instructing his students on The Scarlett Letter, realizes that there is tension in the room
that draws from the conflicting backgrounds of the students. He doesnt want to offend the
students with the material he is teaching, so he tailors his lesson based to what his students are
comfort and familiarize themselves with. This ties in to Maslows theory that one of the main
needs in someones development is safety and security. The familiarity he gives to his students
provides a comfort that facilitates what they need to learn, even if in a modified setting.
Perhaps the most frustrating part of McCourts book is that time and time again he seems
to regress in his methods of teaching. His anxieties and insecurities are apparent when he feels
the pressure of administrators, parents, and other English faculty bearing down on him. Multiple
times throughout the book namely after moments where his more freeform method teaching
appears to be reaching a glorious climax he collapses and returns to roughness, sturdiness, the
book-is-law.
While working in Stuyvesant High School, he jumps from a session of home cooking and
music to honing in on his syllabus and reciting his favorite poem. (213-215) In another instance,
he fails to reach out to students who are suffering, and as a result they fade off in to his regret,
such as the cross-ethnic couple Sal and Louise (93-95) He even goes as far as allowing one of his
students to be beaten by their parents in front of his entire class, due to a misguided phone call
home, or taking matters in to his own hands and slapping one of his own students, a fallback on
his ways that is reminiscent of the harsh treatment he received in Catholic school.
Throughout the memoir his wife, who laments him as a failure, and his own contrast with
his past and present contemporaries, who maintained strict control over their classrooms and
seemed to be prepping their students for bright futures, seem to haunt McCourt. He wants to
break free of the mold. He wants to fulfill needs that he knows are there, that other teachers may
not recognize; but his doubts are driven as if he is convinced he is just looking to be accepted by
his students, and that his pride will lead to their failure in life.
McCourts troubles represent a cycle: when students are deprived of developing as a
whole at a young age, it makes it nearly impossible for them to grow in the future. As in the
example of the adults he taught during his brief stint as an adjunct lecturer, his students were
inept to question and learn beyond what he fed them. The behavior he sees in his adults are
reflective of what he sees in his younger students: that the people in my classes, adults from
eighteen to sixty-two, thought their opinions did not matter. (119)
in to a story: he provokes the students imagination, catering to their creativity and interest. The
students become enthralled and passionate. They go on inspired tangents and become invested in
the lesson. (78-79) Subvertly McCourt has taught them grammar even a new word, gibberish
and they barely realize it. He is able to break down the barrier between his lesson and what
makes his students interested.
Why does this work so well? Because McCourt is taking in to consideration what makes
his students want to become involved. Through connecting with their emotions, he recognizes
what they need and adapts his lesson to that. As he states, You might be poor, your shoes might
be broken, but your mind is a palace. At the end of the day, he realizes that it doesnt matter
who the students are or where they come from; each of them has an untapped potential within
them that he as a teacher seeks to draw out of them.
McCourt may have failed at times to reach his students, but that is the result of
institutionalized differences that separate the student from the teacher. His victories against this
system are told in all of the students he manage to reach, and cumulates in the final scene of the
novel, where he is embraced with the love of the students in the same way he has expressed his
love and attention to them. McCourt learned through his transition to not only be a teacher, but a
friend to his students. Education is meant to reach farther than books and lectures it builds
individuals. The greatest lesson we can walk away from McCourts career with is that both the
teacher and the student must fulfill one anothers needs: as we learn from one another, so do we
support.
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References
Campbell, D. E. "The Work of Abraham Maslow." The Work of Abraham Maslow. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 08 Mar. 2015.
Christenbury, Leila. "Membership." Educational Leadership:The Effective Educator:The
Flexible Teacher. ASCD, n.d. Web. 08 Mar. 2015.
Jermone, Nyameh, Dr. International Journal of Business and Management Invention 2.3
(2013): n. pag. Ijbmi.com. Department of Economics Taraba State University. Web. <http://
www.ijbmi.org/papers/Vol(2)3/Version-2/G233945.pdf>.
Martin, D., and K. Joomis. Building Teachers: A Constructivist Approach to Introducing
Education. S.l.: Book On Demand, 2012. Web.
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