Bel Kaufman

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

— 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

During what was presumably my lunch period, Admiral Ass (a Mr. McHabe, who signs himself Adm. Asst.) appeared in my room with Joe Ferone."No. No trouble," I said.

— 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

Teachers try to make us feel lower than themselves, maybe because this is because they feel lower than outside people. One teacher told me to get out of the room and never come back, which I did.

— Bel Kaufman

In Memory of Those Who Died Waiting for the Bell

— 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

Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.

— Bel Kaufman

How can I take seriously such mimeographed absurdities as "Lateness due to absence," "High under-achiever," and "Polio consent slips"?—Bea

— Bel Kaufman

If a teacher wants to know something why doesn't she look it up herself instead of making we students do it? We benefit ourselves more by listening to her, after all she's the teacher!

— 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

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

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

— Bel Kaufman

Being a female, she spurns him on.

— 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.Major issues are submerged by minor ones; catastrophes by absurdities.

— 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

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

— Bel Kaufman

We got this jerky sub. she don't know a thing and she's trying to teach it.

— 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