Up the Down Staircase Quotes

“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, Up the Down Staircase

“What makes you think you’re so special? Just because you’re a teacher? What he was really saying was: You are so special. You are my teacher. Then teach me, help me, Hey, Teach, I’m lost—which way do I go? I’m tired of going up the down staircase.”
― Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase

“How can you wish on a turkey wishbone with a man who is capable of correcting a love letter?”
― Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase

“I'm buried beneath an avalanche of papers, I don't understand the language of the country, and what do I do about a kid who calls me "Hi, teach!"?
Syl
INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION
FROM: Room 508
TO: Room 304
Nothing. Maybe he calls you Hi, teach! because he likes you. Why not answer Hi, pupe?
The clerical work is par for the course. "Keep on file in numerical order" means throw in waste-basket. 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, Up the Down Staircase

“Extraordinary—that Willowdale Academy and Calvin Coolidge High School should both be institutions of learning! The contrast is stunning. I had a leisurely tea with the Chairman of the English Department. I saw several faculty members sitting around in offices and lounges, sipping tea, reading, smoking. Through the large casement windows bare trees rubbed cozy branches. (One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have "windows with trees in them"!) Old leather chairs, book-lined walls, air of cultivated casualness, sound of well-bred laughter.”
― Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase

“Dear Bea— I've been wading through a pile of "Due before 3" mimeos—but now at last I know what to do with them: into the wastebasket! I'm also hep to the jargon. I know that "illustrative material" means magazine covers, "enriched curriculum" means teaching "who and whom," and that "All evaluation of students should be predicated upon initial goals and grade level expectations" means if a kid shows up, pass him. Right?”
― Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase

“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, Up the Down Staircase

“I have this colored friend Betty well, I never thought about it one way or the other until one day I went over her house for the first time and her father opened the door and I was surprized to see he was colored. Because, to me I was so used to her she always looked normal.
Lazy Mary”
― Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase

“There is a need for closeness, yet we can't get too close. The teacher-pupil relationship is a kind of tightrope to be walked. I know how carefully I must choose a word, a gesture. I understand the delicate balance between friendliness and familiarity, dignity and aloofness. I am especially aware of this in trying to reclaim Ferone. I don't know why it's so important to me. Perhaps because he, too, is a rebel. Perhaps because he's been so damaged. He's too bright and too troubled to be lost in the shuffle.”
― Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase

“There is a premium on conformity, and on silence. Enthusiasm is frowned upon, since it is likely to be noisy. The Admiral had caught a few kids who came to school before class, eager to practice on the typewriters. He issued a manifesto forbidding any students in the building before 8:20 or after 3:00—outside of school hours, students are "unauthorized." They are not allowed to remain in a classroom unsupervised by a teacher. They are not allowed to linger in the corridors. They are not allowed to speak without raising a hand. They are not allowed to feel too strongly or to laugh too loudly.
Yesterday, for example, we were discussing "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars/ But in ourselves that we are underlings." I had been trying to relate Julius Caesar to their own experiences. Is this true? I asked. Are we really masters of our fate? Is there such a thing as luck? A small boy in the first row, waving his hand frantically: "Oh, call on me, please, please call on me!" was propelled by the momentum of his exuberant arm smack out of his seat and fell on the floor. Wild laughter. Enter McHabe. That afternoon, in my letter-box, it had come to his attention that my "control of the class lacked control.”
― Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase

“The building itself is hostile: cracked plaster, broken windows, splintered doors and carved up desks, gloomy corridors, 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 immobilized under a mustard sun.
That's where we had assembly this morning.”
― Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase

“Tm not a teach. I'm a teacher. And I have a name. How would you like it if I called you "Hey, pupe!"?
"I'd like it fine."
"Why?"
"It shows you're with it.”
― Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase

“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, Up the Down Staircase

“TO: ALL TEACHERS
FROM: JAMES J. MCHABE, ADM. ASST.
PLEASE PLOT AND HAND IN THE MEDIAN PERCENTILE CURVE BASED ON THE MIDTERM MARKS IN EACH OF YOUR CLASSES. IF A CLASS CURVE FALLS BELOW THE PERCENTILE OF FAILURES ALLOTTED TO IT, THE EFFICACY OF THE TEACHER MUST BE QUESTIONED. TEACHERS WITH THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF PASSING STUDENTS ARE TO BE COMMENDED.
JJ McH”
― Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase

“She hasn't been back since, and we have a young per diem substitute who had taught shoes in a vocational high school on her last job. Though her license is English, she had been called to the Shoe Department, where she traced the history of shoes from Cinderella and Puss in Boots through Galsworthy and modern advertising. "Best shoe lesson they ever had," she told me cheerfully. "Until a cop came in, dangling handcuffs: 'Lady, that kid I gotta have.'" To her, Calvin Coolidge is Paradise.”
― Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase

“I am writing this during my free . . . oops! un-assigned period, at the end of my first day of teaching. So far, I have taught nothing — but I have learned a great deal. To wit:
We have to punch a time clock and abide by the Rules.
We must make sure our students likewise abide, and that they sign the time sheet whenever they leave or reenter a room.
We have keys but no locks (except in lavatories), blackboards but no chalk, students but no seats, teachers but no time to teach.
The library is closed to the students.”
― Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase

“I am writing this during my lunch period, because I need to reach towards the outside world of sanity, because I am overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the clerical work still to be done, and because at this hour of the morning normal ladies are still sleeping.”
― Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase

“There is a need for closeness, yet we can’t get too close. The teacher-pupil relationship is a kind of tightrope to be walked. I know how carefully I must choose a word, a gesture. I understand the delicate balance between friendliness and familiarity, dignity and aloofness.”
― Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase

“This is just the first day; you’ll get used to it. The rewards will come later, from the kids themselves–and from the unlikeliest ones.”
― Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase

“Please admit bearer to class—
Detained by me for going Up the Down staircase and subsequent insolence.
JJ McH”
― Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase

“The books we are required to teach frequently have nothing to do with anything except the fact that they have always been taught, or that there is an oversupply of them, or that some committee or other was asked to come up with some titles.”
― Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase

“St. Peter:  “Who is knocking at my gate?” Voice: “It is I.” St. Peter: “Go away, we don’t need any more school teachers here!”
― Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase

“This is from Payroll Division: I wasn’t even teaching in June, and I certainly don’t have $2.75. Apparently they don’t know I’m file # 443-817 and have got me confused with another–possibly # 443-818?”
― Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase

“(P.S. I wish I could believe you.)”
― Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase

“Если нет сил, то и небеса не помогут.”
― Бел Кауфман, Up the Down Staircase

“Как грустно, что никто из нас не слышит друг друга.
Важное тонет в мелочах, катастрофы – в нелепостях.”
― Бел Кауфман, Up the Down Staircase

“Вы можете угадать по моему почерку, белый я или нет?”
― Бел Кауфман, Up the Down Staircase

“я срочно дала ученикам классное сочинение на тему «Мой лучший друг», и, проверяя тетрадки, я думала: как их исправлять и что исправлять – правописание, пунктуацию или одиночество, сквозящее между строк? Я не знаю, смеяться мне или плакать. Впрочем – и то и другое.”
― Бел Кауфман, Up the Down Staircase

“Мне кажется, что дело не в трудных учениках, а в неумелых учителях.”
― Бел Кауфман, Up the Down Staircase

“Я знаю, что школа вроде бы должна помочь мне в жизни, но пока этого не случилось.”
― Бел Кауфман, Up the Down Staircase