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Bel Kaufman Biography

Bella "Bel" Kaufman (May 10, 1911 – July 25, 2014) was an American teacher and author, well known for writing the bestselling 1964 novel Up the Down Staircase.

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Bel Kaufman Quotes

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!

Teacher, Listening, Looks, Know, Students

Children are the true connoisseurs. What’s precious to them has no price, only value.

Children, Connoisseur, Precious, Price, Values, Whats

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.

Art, Attention, Book, Children, Clerical, Come

Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It's the skim milk that needs good teachers.

Cream, Good, Mind, Needs, Teacher

To the outside world, of course, this job is a cinch: 9 to 3, five days a week, two months' summer vacation with pay, all legal holidays, prestige and respect. My mother, for example, has the pleasant notion that my day consists of nodding graciously to the rustle of starched curtsies and a chorus of respectful voices bidding me good morning.

Bidding, Five, Morning, Mother, Nodding, Summer

When giving comes directly from the heart, it can never disappoint or embarrass.

Embarrass, Giving, Heart, Kindness, Volunteer

Laughter keeps you healthy. You can survive by seeing the humor in everything. Thumb your nose at sadness; turn the tables on tragedy. You can’t laugh and be angry, you can’t laugh and feel sad, you can’t laugh and feel envious.

Laughing, Laughter, Sad, Sadness

Learning is a process of mutual discovery for teacher and pupil. Keep an open mind to their unexpected responses.

Discovery, Mind, Process, Teacher

Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion.

Accordion, Collapse, Collapses, Erratic, Like, Time

But if there is such a thing as social commitment in literature, I think it must manifest itself in a reader's awareness of the human condition, in the writer's touching some common nerve ending. I think this kind of social commitment, like a lady's slip, should be there but it must not show.

Awareness, Commitment, Social, Thinking, Touching

I feel no different than I felt at 99, 98 or 97. Just because you live a long time, you get all this attention. Just because you survived? Of course, I survived a lot.

Different, Felt, Inspiring, Long, Time

I want to point the way to something that should forever lure them, when the TV set is broken and the movie is over and the school bell has rung for the last time.

Bell, Broken, Point, Reading, School, Set

Best marks go to cheaters and memorizers. Marks depend on memorizing and not on real knowledge. When you cram into your head for a test you may get a high mark but forget it the next day. That's not an education. I suggest just Good and Bad at the end of the term on report cards. Or maybe nothing. Frank Allen

Cheater, Good, Maybe, Next Day, Real

To the young, cliches seem freshly minted.

Cliche, Freshly, Language, Minted, Young

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

Dream, School, Students, Tree, Windows, Written

Education can't make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.

Follow, Knowledge, Leader, Make, School, Teach

I am writing this during my lunch period, because I need to reach towards the outside world of sanity, because I am overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the clerical work still to be done, and because at this hour of the morning normal ladies are still sleeping.

Done, Morning, Sleep, Weight, Writing

And that's it; that's why I want to teach; that's the one and only compensation: to make a permanent difference in the life of a child.

Children, Compensation, Difference, Differences, Make, Want

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

Distance, Humor, Perspective, Sense, Sense Of Humor, Used

Love is the ultimate giving, an expression of one's best self.

Expression, Giving, Love, Love Is, Self

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Bel Kaufman Biography

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