Writing Log

Source: book, Teacher Man by Frank McCourt, pg. 19

Passage:
"Instead of teaching, I told stories.
Anything to keep them quiet and in their seats.
They thought I was teaching.
I thought I was teaching.
I was learning.
And you call yourself a teacher?
I didn't call myself anything. I was more than a teacher. And less. In the high school classroom you are a drill sergeant, a rabbi, a shoulder to cry on, a disciplinarian, a singer, a low-level scholar, a clerk, a referee, a clown, a counselor, a dress-code enforcer, a conductor, an apologist, a philosopher, a collaborator, a tap dancer, a politician, a therapist, a fool, a traffic cop, a priest, a mother-father-brother-sister-aunt, a bookkeeper, a critic, a psychologist, the last straw."

What Works: Firstly, McCourt pulls the reader in with the dialog style beginning of short sentences, each occupying its own line. The line breaks simplify what he is saying so that we, the reader, take the nanoseconds needed to identify with each individualized statement. Although this rhetorical strategy is appealing, I most appreciate the way he balances it with his use of asyndeton (lack of conjunctions) in the paragraph following. By eliminating the final conjunction before the final phrase of the sentence, "the last straw," he places equal value on each of the roles of the teacher; no one is more or less than the others, emphasizing the reality that a teacher is all of those things in one tidy(??) little package. And yet, by breaking his parallel structure of beginning each phrase with "a" and suddenly ending with "the," he causes the reader to pause a moment longer of his last idea, even while keeping them equal.

Using it:
Instead of writing a paragraph, I could write short statements.
Anything to catch the attention of my reader.
They think it is a dialog.
I think it is a dialog.
It is, in my head.
And they thought I was writing an essay.
Writing in this style can be part of any essay. Or not. As an essay writer, I can use a comma, a semi-colon, a conjunction, a line break, a fragment, a run on, the lack thereof.

PS: My AP students write five of these "writing logs" each week on any five pages of any reading (although, they are only require to explain when they could use the identified writing techniques rather that imitating the writing in their "using it section") I was just having too much fun! I am LOVING Teacher Man and identifying beautifully with his first year teaching experiences of over 30 years ago, so I thought I would share some of it with you.