In TEACHER MAN, Frank McCourt starts out as a bit of a whiner. He has trouble holding a teaching job; he has personality conflicts with administrators; he can't finish his thesis when he attends Trinity College in Dublin.

That's not to say that McCourt doesn't have his moments. The funniest part of the book occurs while he's teaching at Seward Park High School, where he teaches English a class consisting of 29 black girls and two Puerto Rican boys. They look at him "as if you were a white snowman about to melt." He takes them on a field trip to see a movie on Times Square, where they set about wreaking havoc. Serena, the ring leader, refers to the two boys as Spic and Span. When the movie is finally over, the girls refuse to leave. They want to see the movie again.

McCourt hits his stride when he takes a job at exclusive Stuyvesant High in New York City. He really is an innovative teacher. Some of his methods include having his students read recipes aloud, with musical accompaniment, as poetry. Then there's "dinner interrogation." He asks James what he had for dinner last night, which ultimately leads to the realization that James and his father don't lift a finger to help James's mother and sister prepare the meal. Some of the girls in class are outraged and a raucous discussion ensues. Daniel says he had veal medallions for dinner, served by the maid. Through interrogation, McCourt ultimately discovers that Daniel ate alone because his father is at Sloan Kettering dying of cancer.

As a former English teacher I could relate to much of what McCourt said. He says, "Of course I favor the girls. Give me five classes with a majority of girls and I'm in heaven." Girls do their homework; girls participate in class. If I had taught in a girls' school, I'd still be teaching. He also obsesses over the amount of compositions he's got to read, always on the lookout for excuses not to grade them.

What I always liked about teaching was that you got to meet new people every semester; McCourt really comes alive when he talks about some of his special students. Ben Stein wanted to be a farmer, a pig farmer to be specific, which really upset his Rabbi father. I defy you not to cry when McCourt and Ben meet up six years after graduation. Then there's Phyllis who wrote about alternating between watching Neil Armstrong land on the moon on TV and attending her father who was on his death bed in the bedroom.

Probably the most uplifting thing about TEACHER MAN, besides the human connections McCourt makes, is the realization that McCourt achieved his greatest success at the age of 66, when he published ANGELA'S ASHES and he wrote TEACHER MAN while in his seventies. I guess it's true that it's never over until it's over.