Bel Kaufman: Up The Down Staircase

Not a word from Ferone.

Thank you for your eloquent letter. I'd like to think you're right, but I have learned my limitations and my private failures. It was the idea of teaching, the idea of kids that I'd been in love with. I didn't really listen; not even when their parents, on Open School day, tried to tell me; not even when the children themselves, in their own words, said so much more than their words on paper said. Not until I had come face to face with one boy.

Bea has a way of knowing. She listens to her feelings; that's why for her it's simple. And Grayson— for him it's simple too. But I, Sylvia Barrett—what mark do I get?" "A" for Effort.

"A man's reach should exceed his grasp" I once taught. This implies the inevitability of frustration. Not to lower my sights, not to compromise; to accept the "challenge," to keep fighting, to find rewards even in failure because failure is due to aiming too high; not to give up, for all the leather chairs in Willowdale.

It is too much to ask.

"Sauve qui peut," Paul once—

I hear visitors at the door—

To be continued—

Bea just left. She brought news of the latest legislation: future Faculty Shows have been outlawed. All school entrances, with the exception of the main one, will be locked "except when in use." Vigilance of patrol will be redoubled. It was suggested—but vetoed—that all visitors to school be frisked. The auditorium was to be used for assemblies only. The pagoda was scrapped.

I asked about the kids. Eddie Williams is definitely dropping out, as are several others. Jose Rodriguez is staying. So is Vivian Paine. She wants to be an English teacher, and a high school diploma is a prerequisite. Bea didn't know about Rusty or Ferone.

I don't know about Ferone either. He may be my most spectacular failure, or my one real success. If he drops out, I may never know.

"What else is happening in school?" I asked.

"Life is happening there. That's where life is," she said. It was shameless propaganda. She is still trying to dissuade me from leaving.

It's not fair. I admit my ambivalence—when I reread the round robin, when I look at the ugly chrome and glass candy dish, when I think of their faces.

I have learned how vulnerable I am.

But I must look realistically at the future. Perhaps I'm not equal to what awaits me at Calvin Coolidge. Unless I stop caring. Until, one day, I find myself punching in with indifference, punching out with relief. Until I become as bitter as Loomis, as plaintive as Mary, nursing my grievances and varicose veins.

At Willowdale, I have a chance to be "mine own woman."

If I choose to remain at Coolidge, then Clarke may justly, on his End of Term Report, call me "loony"!

In the meantime, Willowdale is waiting for clearance on my resignation from the Board and for a letter from Dr. Clarke—a mere formality. I am waiting for a "Dear Sir or Madam, Resignation accepted" letter. No regret, no gratitude, just "Resignation accepted"; that, I understand, is the usual form the Board sends.

And, of course, I am waiting for a letter from you.

I shall be here at the hospital for another week or two; after that I'll take my metatarsal home in a "walking cast" till the end of the term.

Remember me in your wassail, and—to quote a student for the last time—may you have a Happy New Year always!

Love,

Syl

P.S. Did you know that teachers have been resigning from the New York City school system at the rate of approximately a thousand a year?

S.

Merry Xmas and Happy New Year

From your Poets of Eng.33 SS

BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE

CITY OF NEW YORK

DEAR SIR OR MADAM:

IN REPLY TO YOUR REQUEST FOR RESIGNATION, PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT YOURS WAS FILLED OUT IMPROPERLY.

YOU MUST OBTAIN THE PROPER FORM FROM THE OFFICE OF TENURE AND APPOINTMENTS.

January 5

Dear Miss Barrett,

We at Willowdale are looking forward to having you with us in the February semester. As you know, your appointment is contingent upon your resignation from the Board of Education and a letter from your principal. We have not as yet received either communication. Would you be kind enough to let us know the reason for the delay?

Most cordially,

Robert S. Corbin

Dept. of English and Comparative Lit.

P. S. There is every likelihood that a Chaucer seminar will be formed, open to eight students majoring in English.

Dear Miss Barrett,

I am sending you to the hospital: Circulars #42 and #43 on Teacher's Welfare. Please fill out Accident Reports A and B and the forms Miss Finch is sending you under separate cover, and mail them back at once, with witness or witnesses to the accident.

James J. McHabe

Adm. Asst.

We miss you.

JJ McH

Jan. 5

Dear Syl—

I'm glad you're up and hobbling, and that you'll be out of the hospital soon. You looked wonderful when I saw you last week—rested and relaxed. Little wonder.

School is the usual post-holiday bedlam. One forgets, when one has been out of it for a while, the pettiness, the fever and the fret; then swiftly, in a day or two, one is sucked in again! Right now we're in the midst of final reports and entries. Once more the library is closed to the kids; once more we poke and scratch in the PRC's.

It doesn't seem possible that you may not be here next term. What can we do to lure you? Give you lunch period at noon? Classes of no more than 35? All the red pencils you can use? Extra board erasers? Your broken window fixed? No patrol assignments? Honors classes? A non-floating program?

Or could you be seduced by the new building the Board has been promising us for the last seven years? According to plans carefully drawn up and dangled before us every couple of years we are supposed to be getting: a courtyard rimmed by classrooms, with "facilities for dining and study among shrubs," a complete air-conditioning system, electronic devices that sound like hoot owls to signal the end of classes, two gymnasiums and an indoor swimming pool with underwater portholes for instructors to observe and instruct swimmers!

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.

And you can go much farther with adolescents than with college people—especially you, with your gift of generating excitement and provoking thinking, whether in a slow and stumbling kid or a quick, bright one. You've seen them open their eyes and walk out, blinking, into day. You've heard that sudden intake of breath, like a sigh, when suddenly it becomes clear and they see, they see! This is what it means to teach— and you are one of the few who can.