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Frank McCourt, who died on Sunday, spent three decades teaching in the New York City schools before becoming an internationally renowned author.

McCourt began his career in 1958 in a vocational school, and moved on to Stuyvesant High School in 1972. Administrators at Samuel Gompers Vocational High School in the Bronx and William E. Grady Vocational High School in Brooklyn turned him away because his Irish accent was too thick.

During his first few months at Ralph R. McKee Vocational High School in Staten Island, McCourt felt caught between two models of teaching. There were the old-timers, he wrote, who were veterans of World War II and considered students “the enemy.” Then were the new teachers, who had read John Dewey and wanted to meet the students’ “felt needs.” Uncomfortable with both strategies, McCourt taught in his own idiosyncratic style, to mixed reviews.

From his second book, ‘Tis:

They don’t want to read and they don’t want to write. They say, Aw, Mr. McCourt, all these English teachers want us to write about dumb things like our summer vacation or the story of our life. Boring. Every year since our first grade we write the story of our life and teachers just give us a check mark and they say, Very Nice. (more…)