Bel Kaufman: Up The Down Staircase

Crumple this piece of paper into a small ball and swallow it!

Bea

INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION

FROM: 304

TO: 508

Dear Bea — Paper swallowed. Who is Paul Barringer?

Syl

INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION

FROM: 508

TO: 304

Glamor boy of Eng. Dept. Unpublished Writer. He drinks too much, such men are dangerous. He'll woo you with rhymes. Now you're on your own.

Bea

INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION

FROM: 304

TO: 508

Dear Bea — Can we meet for a smoke in the Teachers' Lounge between classes? I've got to talk to an adult!

Syl

INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION

FROM: 508

TO: 304

Dear Innocent — So-called Teachers' Lounge is Supply Room in basement. Has beat-up couch someone once donated; also sink and chair. But can't be used because of steam pipes in ceiling. Besides, smoking there is against fire regulations. Only place to smoke is Women's Toilet on third floor landing. Let's meet there right after 6th period. Get key to toilet from Sadie Finch. We'll have four whole minutes — if we're lucky and traffic in halls is with us. Sorry I can't come down now — trying to dissuade salvageable youngster from quitting school.

Bea

INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION

FROM: 304

TO: 508

Dear Bea—

What am I supposed to do about the number of basketballs I need?

Syl

INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION

FROM: 508

TO: 304

Nothing. Notice was put in your box by mistake.

Health Ed teacher is right under you.

Bea

INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION

FROM: 304

TO: 508

Dear Bea — I am about to send in my registers to Bester: I've got unexcused students, unauthorized students, non-authenticated students, illegitimate students, loitering students and absent students — and still they add up to 223 in my subject classes, besides the 46 in my homeroom. Will someone drop out tomorrow? Will it be I?

Syl

INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION

FROM: 508

TO: 304

Don't you dare! We need you! This is just the first day; you'll get used to it. The rewards will come later, from the kids themselves — and from the unlikeliest ones.

Bea

Sept. 7

Dear Ellen,

It's a far cry from our dorm in Lyons Hall (Was it only four years ago?); a far cry from the sheltered Graduate School Library stacks; a far cry from Chaucer; and a far and desperate cry from Education 114 and Prof. Winters' lectures on "The Psychology of the Adolescent." I have met the Adolescent face to face; obviously, Prof. Winters had not.

You seem to have done better with your education than I: while you are strolling through your suburban supermarket with your baby in the cart, or taking a shower in the middle of the third period, I am automatically erasing "Fuck Teacher" from the blackboard.

What I really had in mind was to do a little teaching. "And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche" — like Chaucer's Clerke of Oxenford, I had come eager to share all I know and feel; to imbue the young with a love for their language and literature; to instruct and to inspire. What happened in real life (when I had asked why they were taking English, a boy said: "To help us in real life") was something else again, and even if I could describe it, you would think I am exaggerating.

But I'm not.

In homeroom (that's the official class, where the kids report in the morning and in the afternoon for attendance and vital statistics) they went after me with all their ammunition: whistling, shouting, drumming on desks, clacking inkwell lids, playing catch with the board eraser, sprawling in their seats to trip each other in the aisles — all this with an air of vacant innocence, while I stood there, pleading for attention, wary as a lion-tamer, my eyes on all 46 at once.

By the time I got to my subject classes, I began to stagger under an inundation of papers — mimeos, directives, circulars, letters, notices, forms, blanks, records. The staggering was especially difficult because I am what's known as a "floater" — I float from room to room.

There's a whole glossary to be learned. My 3rd termers are "special-slows"; my 5th terms are "low-normal" and "average-normal." So far, it's hard to tell which is which, or who I am, for that matter.

I made one friend — Bea Schachter, and one enemy — Adm. Asst., who signs himself JJ McH. and I saw hate and contempt on the face of a boy — because I am a teacher.

The building itself is hostile: cracked plaster, broken windows, splintered doors and carved up desks, gloomy corridors, 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 immobilized under a mustard sun.

That's where we had assembly this morning.

Picture it: the air heavy with hundreds of bodies, the principal's blurred face poised like a pale balloon over the lectern, his microphone-voice crackling with sudden static:

"... a new leaf, for here at Calvin Coolidge we are all free and equal, with the same golden opportunity ..."

The students are silent in their seats. The silence has nothing to do with attention; it's a glazed silence, ready to be shattered at a moment. The girl next to me examines her teeth in her pocket mirror. I sit straight on the wooden seat, smoothed by the restless bottoms of how many children, grown now, or dead, or where? On the back of the seat directly in front of me, carefully chiseled with some sharp instrument, is the legend: Balls .

"... knocks but once, and your attitude ..." Tude booms, unexpectedly amplified by the erratic microphone, "towards your work and your teachers, who so selflessly ..."

The teachers dot the aisles: a hen-like little woman with a worried profile; a tall young man with amused eyebrows; a round lady with a pepper-and-salt pompadour — my colleagues, as yet unknown.

"... precious than rubies. Education means ..." — he's obviously winding up for a finish — "not only preparation for citizenship and life plus a sound academic foundation. Don't forget to have your teacher sign your program cards, and if you have any problems, remember my door is always open." Eloquent pause. "And so, with this thought in mind, I hope you will show the proper school spirit, one and all."

Released at last, they burst, clang-banging the folding seats, as they spill out on a wave of forbidden voices, and I with them, into the hall.

"Wherezya pass?" says the elevator man gloomily. "Gotcher elevator pass?"

"I'm a teacher," I say sheepishly, as if caught in a lie.

For only teachers, and students with proof of a serious disability, may ride in the elevators. Looking young has certain disadvantages here; if I were a man, I'd grow a mustache.

This morning, the students swarming on the street in front of the entrance parted to let me pass — the girls, their faces either pale or masked with makeup; the boys eyeing me exaggeratedly: "Hey eeah — howzabadis! Gedaloadadis — whee-uh!" the two-note whistle of insolent admiration following me inside.

(Or better still — a beard.)

It seems to me kids were different when I was in high school. But the smell in the lobby was the same unmistakable school smell — chalk dust? paper filings? musty metal? rotting wood?

I joined the other teachers on line at the time clock, and gratefully found my card. I was expected: Someone had put my number on it — #91. I punched the time on my card and stuck it into the IN rack. I was in.