Bel Kaufman: Up The Down Staircase

"A question to pursue and ponder:

Does abstinence make the heart grow fonder?"

Health Ed teacher just sent me cutting slip for Alice Blake. Apparently only today has someone bothered to take attendance in Gym. Apparently no one has as yet removed her name from Delaney Book.

I've kept in touch with her mother. Alice has been transferred to another hospital, she is in pain, she still refuses to have anyone from school visit her.

What's all the excitement about "Teacher for a day"?

Syl

INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION

FROM: 508

TO: 304

Dear Syl—

That's the day kids turn the tables on us. It always takes place just before Xmas; it's the occasion for certain responsible seniors to run the school for one day. President of G.O. becomes principal, chosen seniors prepare a lesson to teach lower classes, and it's all very sound.

But by a series of mutations and deteriorations, it is becoming more fraught and frantic each year. The humor of teachers dressed as kids cavorting on the stage escapes me, but there is a strong faction in its favor. They call it "the lighter side of education."

Surely, Willowdale has nothing like it to show you!

What's wrong? You sound a bit fed up.

Bea

INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION

FROM: 304

TO: 508

Dear Bea—

I am—more than a bit fed up.

I once taught a lesson on "A man's reach should exceed his grasp/Or what's a heaven for?" I'm no longer sure that this is so; the higher I reach, the flatter I fall on my face.

How do you manage to stand up?

Syl

INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION

FROM: 508

TO: 304

Dear Syl,

Look at the cherub who is delivering this note. Look closely. Did you ever see a lovelier smile? A prouder bearing? She has just made the Honor Society. Last year she was ready to quit school.

Walk through the halls. Listen at the classroom doors. In one—a lesson on the nature of Greek tragedy. In another—a drill on who and whom. In another—a hum of voices intoning French declensions. In another—committee reports on slum clearance. In another—silence: a math quiz.

Whatever the waste, stupidity, ineptitude, whatever the problems and frustrations of teachers and pupils, something very exciting is going on. In each of the classrooms, on each of the floors, all at the same time, education is going on. In some form or other, for all its abuses, young people are exposed to education.

That's how I manage to stand up.

And that's why you're standing, too.

Let's meet at 3. If you're swamped with work, let's at least walk to the subway together.

Bea

Fri., Dec. 11

Dear Ellen,

I chuckled at your description of your in-laws and the shrunken turkey. I needed to chuckle.

The invitation to spend the Xmas holidays with you is very tempting, but I won't be able to make it. Neither am I going to visit Mother. Her letters have switched into lower gear: She now sends me clippings on marriages. No, it isn't the "extravagance of the flight," as you so delicately put it. Since I'm unable to whip up an appetite at 10:17, I've saved a fortune on lunches. It's the term papers, reports, CC's and final marks, which are due right after the holidays, "to facilitate records," although there will still be a month of school left.

Other teachers, more efficient or more experienced, seem to manage to take this time off; some (on maximum salaries?) even go on cruises!

But I'm at a loss on how to give each of my 201 students a numerical mark in a subject like English. Based on what?—Average of tests? "Class attitude"? Effort? Attendance? Native intelligence? Memory-span? Emotional problems? The kind of reading their parents had exposed them to?

About Henrietta and the Book Room Incident: She's back, galumphing more energetically than ever through the classics, devising means of bringing them to the students' level, as the phrase goes. Her latest is: Great Poems Turned into Tabloid Headlines .

I wouldn't have believed it, had I not seen two kids in my homeroom at it:

MIDNIGHT RIDER WARNS OF FOE

SEAMAN GUILTY OF SHOOTING BIRD

WIFE TELLS ALL IN PORTUGUESE LOVE LETTERS

MAN REPORTS TALKING RAVEN

As for your question about Ferone and the Lavatory Escort episode, it passed with no repercussions. Ferone had neither failed nor cheated. As a matter of fact, his mark was 89. The day of the exam his paper was gone over, with a fine tooth comb, by Bester and me; after Thanksgiving, it was re-combed by McHabe. There was no evidence of foul play. And there was no apology offered him—or me.

But the boy did finally agree to see me after school. He is coming next week. I don't know why I feel it's so important. I haven't done too well with the others.

I couldn't change Eddie Williams' conviction that the white world is against him, no matter how many proofs and protestations I offered him. He knows better. He has always known.

And I couldn't, in any way, change Harry Kagan, nor cut through the fawning politician to find the boy beneath. Perhaps there isn't any.

And I couldn't do much for Lou Martin; the need for attention that prompts his clowning is too desperate.

My victories are few; Jose Rodriguez, who learned that he counts; Vivian Paine, who learned that she is nice; and a few who learned where to put commas and periods.

I think, like me, they're all seeking a way to make contact, to communicate, to be loved.

"Hey, teach—you back?" one of my boys greeted me.

"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."

I want to be "with it," but they need some concrete proof. Like Grayson's.

Quite inadvertently (the kids had been sworn to secrecy) I discovered the mystery of Grayson.

It seems he runs a sort of one-man free kitchen, lending-bank, drug-cure center, flophouse and employment agency in the basement.

While the rest of us were busy making out graphs and Character Capsules, he gave the kids sandwiches, lent them money, found jobs for them after school, or gave them jobs to do himself. He kept them off the streets and off "the junk," and on occasion let the temporarily homeless ones sleep illegally overnight in the basement.

What Ferone and some of the other kids were getting from him was not the pedagogic gobbledygook, not concepts and precepts, not conferences and interviews, not pleas and threats, not words—not any words at all—but simple action, immediate and real: food, money, jobs.

I admit to a momentary pang of dismay: What tangibles could I offer them?

It may be easier at Willowdale.

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.

Whatever tensions, back-biting or jockeying for position exist in a place like this—and I know they do—I, as a lady and a Chaucerian scholar, was made unaware of anything but their delight at my visit. If it should prove mutually satisfactory, I would teach three classes a day, three times a week; the other two days would be for individual conferences with students. Classes are small. Although I would be stuck with Freshman Composition—the Chairman shrugged apologetically—there would be an assistant to mark the papers. I would be required to do nothing but teach. I might even have a Chaucer seminar. And certainly, they would arrange to give me as much time as possible to complete the work for my doctorate, after which, "one might rise quickly on the academic ladder."