Top 15 Bel Kaufman Quotes

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Being a female, she spurns him on.

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

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."

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.

Frances Egan, the school nurse, left her nutrition charts long enough to tell me there was nothing that could have been done. "Evelyn had a rough time with her father," she said. "Once she came in beaten black and blue."
"What did you do for her?"
"I gave her a cup of tea."
"Tea? Why tea, for heaven's sake?"
"Why? Because I know all about it," she said, shaking with anger. "I know more than anyone here what goes on outside — poverty, disease, dope, degeneracy — yet I'm not supposed to give them even a band-aid. I used to plead, bang on my desk, talk myself hoarse arguing with kids, parents, welfare, administration, social agencies. Nobody really heard me. Now I give them tea. At least, that's something."
"But you're a nurse," I said helplessly.
She showed me the Directive from the Board posted on her wall: THE SCHOOL NURSE MAY NOT TOUCH WOUNDS, GIVE MEDICATION, REMOVE FOREIGN PARTICLES FROM THE EYE...
Are we, none of us, then, allowed to touch wounds? What is the teacher's responsibility? And if it begins at all, where does it end?

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!

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

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