Bel Kaufman Quotes
-
Lady stand on line before me, speak English so good, like genius, in America only four years, I ashamed tell twenty-two years; I tell twenty!” To class she went only once. “I don’t go back,” she said emphatically. “Too foolish book, Dick and Jane.” She shrugged disdainfully. “Not Tolstoi!"
-
Appreciation is appreciated.
-
That night they stayed up until eleven-thirty, an unusually late hour for them, going over some of the practical aspects of the divorce. When they discovered they were hungry, they continued in the kitchen, over an unaccustomed snack.
-
Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It's the skim milk that needs good teachers.
-
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.
-
The preciousness of every moment is emphasized with every tick of the clock. Isn't it a magnificent day today?
-
Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion.
-
Is Rrawssian saying: ‘Better small fish than big cockroach.’ Some hawsband drrunk, some hawsband play all time cards, some hawsband fleert with woman. . . . Rrogov make only with brread.
-
I am writing this during my free . . . oops! un-assigned period, at the end of my first day of teaching. So far, I have taught nothing — but I have learned a great deal. To wit: We have to punch a time clock and abide by the Rules. We must make sure our students likewise abide, and that they sign the time sheet whenever they leave or reenter a room. We have keys but no locks (except in lavatories), blackboards but no chalk, students but no seats, teachers but no time to teach. The library is closed to the students.
-
You’re not God. Nothing is your fault, except, perhaps, poor teaching.
-
TO: ALL TEACHERS FROM: JAMES J. MCHABE, ADM. ASST. PLEASE PLOT AND HAND IN THE MEDIAN PERCENTILE CURVE BASED ON THE MIDTERM MARKS IN EACH OF YOUR CLASSES. IF A CLASS CURVE FALLS BELOW THE PERCENTILE OF FAILURES ALLOTTED TO IT, THE EFFICACY OF THE TEACHER MUST BE QUESTIONED. TEACHERS WITH THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF PASSING STUDENTS ARE TO BE COMMENDED.
-
The books we are required to teach frequently have nothing to do with anything except the fact that they have always been taught, or that there is an oversupply of them, or that some committee or other was asked to come up with some titles.
-
She hesitated, searching in her scant vocabulary of taken for granted health the precise word to convey the inchoate distress, the alien sense of something gone wrong.
-
She tucked a vial of perfume into her purse, to apply when she was outside the apartment.
-
I like the word OLD. Not senior, that's for proms. Older? Older than whom? 'Old' is honorable and ripe...
-
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.
-
I haven’t seen her since. I wrote to her a few times, not really expecting an answer, for—as she often used to say—the tongue is longer than the pen and can lead you straight to Kiev.
-
A man couldn’t jump higher than himself, she pointed out to me. And he couldn’t help it if he was a “zoodnik”; one so annoying, he made you itch.