Bel Kaufman Quotes

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!<p>A crowded cafeteria?
A substitute's hysteria?
A visitor from Syria?
A missing Book Receipt?<p>I merely send out circulars
To add to other circulars
To add to other circulars
Numerical and neat!

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

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

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.

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!

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.

Being a female, she spurns him on.

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."

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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