Bel Kaufman - Up the Down Staircase (1964)

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When I tried to tell McHabe that it would have been more valuable to let Ferone keep his appointment with me than to kick him out, he let me have it:
"When you're in the system as long as I," he said (They all say that!) "you'll realize it isn't understanding they need. I understand them all right — they're no good."

Bel Kaufman
And that's it; that's why I want to teach; that's the one and only compensation: to make a permanent difference in the life of a child.

Bel Kaufman
Good teachers, like Tolstoy's happy families, are alike everywhere.

Bel Kaufman
I want to point the way to something that should forever lure them, when the TV set is broken and the movie is over and the school bell has rung for the last time.

Bel Kaufman
Learning is a process of mutual discovery for teacher and pupil. Keep an open mind to their unexpected responses.

Bel Kaufman
To the outside world, of course, this job is a cinch: 9 to 3, five days a week, two months' summer vacation with pay, all legal holidays, prestige and respect. My mother, for example, has the pleasant notion that my day consists of nodding graciously to the rustle of starched curtsies and a chorus of respectful voices bidding me good morning.

Bel Kaufman
Like most chairmen, he teaches only one class of Seniors; the most experienced teachers are frequently promoted right out of the classroom!

Bel Kaufman
When I had asked why they were taking English, a boy said: "To help us in real life."

Bel Kaufman
Your lesson plan is excellent — except for the Emily Dickinson line: "There is no frigate like a book." The sentiment is lovely, the quotation is apt — only trouble is the word "frigate." Just try to say it in class — and your lesson is over.

Bel Kaufman
Best marks go to cheaters and memorizers. Marks depend on memorizing and not on real knowledge. When you cram into your head for a test you may get a high mark but forget it the next day. That's not an education. I suggest just Good and Bad at the end of the term on report cards. Or maybe nothing.
Frank Allen

Bel Kaufman
During what was presumably my lunch period, Admiral Ass (a Mr. McHabe, who signs himself Adm. Asst.) appeared in my room with Joe Ferone.
"This boy is on probation," he said. "Did he show up in homeroom this morning?"
"Yes," I said.
"Any trouble?" the Admiral asked.
There we stood, the three of us, taking each other's measure. Ferone was watching through narrowed eyes.
"No. No trouble," I said.

Bel Kaufman
The ceiling fell? The ink ran dry? A student dared to smile?
Of every new disaster
I prove myself the master
By sending out more circulars, more circulars to file!
A missing kid? A kissing kid? A paper on the floor?
For every major crisis
One remedy suffices:
More circulars, more circulars, to put into a drawer! A crowded cafeteria?
A substitute's hysteria?
A visitor from Syria?
A missing Book Receipt? I merely send out circulars
To add to other circulars
To add to other circulars
Numerical and neat!

Bel Kaufman
I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.

Bel Kaufman
The building itself is hostile: cracked plaster, broken windows, splintered doors and carved up desks, gloomy corridors and metal stairways, dingy cafeteria (they can eat sitting down only in 20 minute shifts) and an auditorium which has no windows. It does have murals, however, depicting mute, muscular harvesters, faded and immobile under a mustard sun.

Bel Kaufman
My words never reached him; I could almost hear them drop, one by one, like so many pebbles against a closed window.

Bel Kaufman
I don't allow anyone to talk to me like that.
So you're lucky — you're a teacher.

Bel Kaufman
Paul asks how I would have handled a love letter from a student. I don't know — by talking, maybe, by listening. I don't know.
How sad that we don't hear each other — any of us.
Major issues are submerged by minor ones; catastrophes by absurdities.

Bel Kaufman
How can I take seriously such mimeographed absurdities as "Lateness due to absence," "High under-achiever," and "Polio consent slips"?
—Syl Dear Syl,
I'll match yours any day with "Please disregard the following."
—Bea

Bel Kaufman
With me they get a solid foundation, the disciplines of learning. In my class they don't get away with hot air discussions and exchanging their opinions and describing their experiences. What opinions can they have? What have they experienced? What do they know? That's an affront! They learn what I know.

Bel Kaufman
Teaching here isn't so bad. Once you accept as one of the ineluctable laws of nature that kids will continue to say "Silas Mariner" and "Ancient Marner" and "between you and I" and "mischievious" and that the administration will continue to use phrases like "egregious conduct" and "ethnic background" you can go on from there.

Bel Kaufman
The clerical work is par for the course. "Keep on file in numerical order" means throw in wastebasket. You'll soon learn the language. "Let it be a challenge to you" means you're stuck with it; "interpersonal relationships" is a fight between kids; "ancillary civic agencies for supportive discipline" means call the cops; "Language Arts Dept." is the English office; "literature based on child's reading level and experiential background" means that's all they've got in the Book Room; "non-academic-minded" is a delinquent; and "It has come to my attention" means you're in trouble.

Bel Kaufman
You teachers are all alike, dishing out crap and expecting us to swallow it and then give it back to you, nice and neat, with a place in it for the mark to go in. But you're even phonier than the others because you put on this act — being a dame you know how — and you stand there pretending that you give a damn. Who you kidding?
We're dirt to you, just like you're dirt to the fatheads and whistle-blowers who run this jail, and they're dirt to the swindlers and horn-tooters who run the school system.

Bel Kaufman
A teacher is frequently the only adult in the pupil's environment who treats him with respect.

Bel Kaufman
"Why did you fail me? I didn't do nothing!" The reply, of course, is: "That's just it."

Bel Kaufman
One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have "windows with trees in them."

Bel Kaufman