Up the Down Staircase

by Bel Kaufman

  A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1964 by Prentice Hall Press.

  UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE. Copyright © 1964, 1988, 1991, 2012 by Bel Kaufman. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Open Road Integrated Media, 180 Varick Street, New York, NY 10014.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First Open Road edition published in 2012

  ISBN: 978-1-4532-5924-5

  For all the dedicated teachers still struggling up that down staircase, and all their students, present and future

  Acknowledgments

  In a busy multimedia organization like Open Road, many people are involved in producing ebooks. I’m a novice in this new world of publishing, and I would be hopelessly lost in it were it not for one remarkable man—my literary agent, John Campbell­, who has been constantly at my side, working tirelessly on my behalf for long hours without any compensation, fighting my battles and solving my problems with unfailing devotion, above and beyond the call of any duty. These ebooks and new print editions would never have seen the light of day without him. Because of his clarity of vision, multifaceted education, and literary experience, he has been invaluable to me and has become my good and faithful friend. I am happy to have this chance to express my deep gratitude to John Campbell of the John Campbell­ Agency.

  ______________

  A number of people at Open Road, whose names I do not know, were involved in creating my books, but one whose name I know very well, Tina Pohlman, publisher-cum-editor, was in charge and I want to thank her for her interest, her time, and her encouragement. Thank you, Tina.

  Introduction

  For many years, in many places, this book has been read by many people, but never before has it appeared as an ebook. You are holding a recognized classic, a beloved story produced for the first time digitally and made easily available to new readers. I am proud and happy that my book has stepped into the future.

  —Bel Kaufman

  New York, August 7, 2012

  Introduction

  PART I

  1 Hi, Teach!

  2 Let It Be a Challenge

  3 From Miss Barrett’s Letterbox

  4 Intraschool Communication

  5 And Gladly Teche #1

  6 No One Down Here

  7 And Gladly Teche #2

  PART II

  8 From The Calvin Coolidge Clarion

  9 Those Who Can’t

  10 Faculty Conference Minutes

  11 Pupil-Load

  12 A Doze of English

  13 Enrichment Etc.

  PART III

  14 Persephone

  15 From Miss Barrett’s Wastebasket

  16 JJ’s Lament

  17 From the Suggestion Box

  18 You Still Teaching?

  19 The Greek Underground

  PART IV

  20 Life Situation

  21 Bulletin Board, Room 304

  22 A Probing Question

  23 The Funny Sides

  24 From the Right-Hand Drawer, Room 304

  PART V

  25 A Message to Garcia

  26 Touch Wounds

  27 Clarification of Status

  28 From the Suggestion Box

  PART VI

  29 The Road Not Taken

  30 The Author Tries to Say

  31 Communication Arts

  PART VII

  32 Over the Time Clock

  33 Open School

  34 You’re the Teacher

  35 Please Do Not Erase

  36 Integration

  PART VIII

  37 Neatly, in Ink

  38 Unfortunate Incident

  39 Debits and Credits

  40 From the Suggestion Box

  PART IX

  41 Do You Plan to Indulge in a Turkey?

  42 I’m Not Cheating, I’m Left-Handed

  43 As Far as Marks

  44 Lavatory Escort

  45 It Has Come to My Attention

  46 From the Suggestion Box

  PART X

  47 My Reading Life

  48 What Did I Miss?

  49 Willowdale

  50 The Lighter Side of Education

  51 Love Me Back!

  52 “Teacher for a Day” Day

  PART XI

  53 Up the Down Staircase

  54 Greetings on Your Illness

  55 A for Effort

  56 Ballad

  57 Dear Sir or Madam

  PART XII

  58 Hi, Pupe!

  This book has had many lives. More than a half-century ago a young editor discovered in a three-and-a-half-page story the novel you are holding in your hand. Now, after many printings, editions, and translations, it has been reborn as an ebook and trade paperback available to a new generation. The staircase that never seems to rust has come full round.

  I never intended to write any novel, certainly not a bestseller or a “classic on education.” I didn’t even think of myself as a professional writer. I was a high-school English teacher who published occasional short stories in magazines—a teacher with no dreams of glory beyond, perhaps, fewer clerical chores, a raise in salary to make thin ends meet, and now and then a word of appreciation.

  The success of this book astounded me. It created dramatic reversals in my life that were like a soap opera I would never allow in my fiction. Denied a license to teach, I became a noted teacher. Having flunked the oral exams at the Board of Education, I became a professional public speaker. Struggling with poverty and loneliness, I was catapulted to fame, fortune, and the affections of millions. Even the short story on which this novel is based was initially rejected by several magazines.

  My story was composed of scraps of paper presumably found in the wastebasket of a large metropolitan high-school classroom. Ironically juxtaposed, these papers told a tale of chaos, confusion, cries for help, bureaucratic gobbledygook, and one teacher’s attempt to make a difference in the life of one youngster. Magazine editors rejected it because, they said, it was “weird looking typographically” and its style was “too different.”

  I tend to give up easily, but somehow I could not abandon this story. It was finally accepted by The Saturday Review of Literature, which published it on November 17, 1962, under the title “From a Teacher’s Wastebasket,” next to sober articles on teacher shortages and inadequate salaries. Actually, I had written this story in 1961, more than half a century ago. Yet it seems more timely now, and more urgent.

  Though I was paid $200 (minus a $20 agent’s commission)—a substantial sum in those days—I was dismayed by the funny stick-figure drawings the magazine provided as illustrations. Anyone stumbling upon this story, I thought, would consider it just a collection of boners and jokes. I was wrong.

  The day the magazine hit the newsstands, an enterprising young editor at Prentice Hall, Gladys Justin Carr, contacted me and asked me to expand the story into a novel. No, I replied, absolutely not. I had said everything that needed to be said in those three-and-a-half pages. But I didn’t protest long, for she offered me a much-needed advance, which I accepted. And spent. So I had to write the book.

  I became a novelist by chance, only because an alert editor happened to notice my short story. It was by chance, too, that I became a teacher. As an undergraduate at Hunter College, I took a course in Education because my best friend wa
s taking it. One of the course requirements was student teaching. The first time I stood in front of the class and saw all those eyes upon me, waiting for me to say something, I knew: For me this was it!

  But I found it difficult to get a license to teach English in New York City high schools. I had come to this country from Russia at twelve, long corkscrew curls down my back and not a word of English on my tongue. I was placed in first grade with seven-year-olds. Small, skinny, scared, I was monitor of nothing. The first time I dared to speak in class, propelled by sheer necessity, I mouthed a frantic “Mwooom?” which I subsequently learned was supposed to be, “May I leave the room?”

  I soon learned English by osmosis. Yet years later, when I came up for my orals, the Board of Examiners took a dim view of my overcareful enunciation, afraid, I suppose, that it would corrupt the speech of my students. They sent me a “Dear Sir or Madam” letter informing me of my failure. Each year I took additional speech courses; each year I received additional “Dear Sir or Madam” letters. I spent my youth flunking the orals.

  This was in the depth of the Depression, during the 1930s, when public school teaching jobs were few and candidates for them many. I was offered college teaching positions, but I was eager to work with adolescents in whose lives, I felt, it was still possible to make a difference. Until I got my regular license, I was what’s known in the trade as a “permanent substitute.” I had the same number of classes as a regular teacher, a lower salary, no tenure, and I was stuck with all kinds of nonteaching chores. As a sub, I taught in some of the best and some of the worst high schools in New York City, schools that later became the background for this book. In schools where I used to patrol the toilets, I am today “Required Reading.”

  I even served briefly as a “per diem sub”: one who comes for the day only, is expected to teach any subject, wields no mighty mark, and has the children for just forty-five minutes out of their lifetimes. Once I taught gym. “All you have to do,” I was told, “is blow the whistle.” I blew—loud and clear.

  In one school, I found a man standing outside of the classroom assigned to me, holding on to the doorknob. From the room came shrieks and the sound of breaking glass. “You the sub?” asked the man. “I’m covering the class for you till you get here.” He vanished. I took a deep breath and opened the door. I knew I had to mesmerize those youngsters within the first few seconds, or all would be lost. I entered saying: “Ya ne ponimayu ochervo toot tak shoomno! Kak mozhno sebya tak vesti?” This stunned them into a bewildered silence: Who is this maniac? What is she saying? I was speaking Russian, but at least I had their attention. Maybe I could even teach them something. At the end of the period a boy came up to me and said, “You’re okay, you can come back tomorrow. Yesterday we had a man sub—we made him cry!”

  This was way back when I was a very young teacher. Yet some schools in those “good old days” were not much different from today’s. In one high school, in a special annex for boys, two tall boys served as my bodyguards when I walked down the hall. One walked in front, the other behind me. One morning a boy came to class three months late. I greeted him with a feeble joke: “Welcome back! What happened? Did you rob a bank?” “No,” he said. “A grocery store.” And in an English class, while I was reciting Lady Macbeth’s speech, a cop walked in: “Lady, that kid I gotta have,” he said, and handcuffed him right out of the room.

  But I also taught in some fine schools. I remember eager students, earnest class discussions, the children’s touching compositions, the sound of laughter in the room. My one hope was to become a regular teacher in such a school.

  I finally passed the orals the year the Board concentrated on the “Sibilant S.” The sentence that got me through was, “He sstill inssisstss he sseezz the ghosstss.” I hissed it to their satisfaction, got my license, and spent many more years within high-school walls.

  The opportunity to write this book came during the lowest point in my life. I was living alone in a tiny apartment with very little money or hope for the future. My children were grown and far away. My mother was seriously ill. Some of the funniest pages I was writing had to be torn up and retyped because of the blisters on the paper from my tears.

  With the advance from my publisher I was able to resign from the school system in order to have the time and energy to write. I found a job teaching three times a week at a community college, and another one writing lyrics for a musical that was never produced. This was less fatiguing than teaching in a high school everyday.

  All I knew was that the novel would begin with “Hi, teach!” and end with “Hi, pupe!” and that the opening chapter had to be spoken aloud, not written on paper. First a cacophony of voices striking the note of confusion and frustration in the classroom, then, in the rest of the book, nothing but a blizzard of papers, flying, crying to be heard.

  I chose for my fictional school—a composite of all the schools in which I had taught—the name of one of our least memorable presidents: Calvin Coolidge. In the original short story, the characters were mere initials. I had to develop these initials into people, to follow the few clues scattered in the story, and to plunge Sylvia Barrett, the young, inexperienced, idealistic teacher, into the maelstrom of an average city high school, where, inundated with trivia in triplicate, she had to cope with all that is frustrating and demeaning in the school system, while dealing with larger human issues. I wanted to show the lack of communication all the way down the line, and to reveal glimpses of the children’s lives outside of school through their own inarticulate eloquence.

  The children in my story began to come into focus: the class comedian, the sycophant-politician, the over-ripe girl bursting with sexuality, the African-American boy with a chip on his shoulder, the Puerto Rican boy who finds himself, the silent girl who doesn’t. Each of them, apple-polisher or window-smasher, seemed to be crying out: “Here I am! Care about me!” Gradually I became aware that I was saying something important, poignant, even desperate, through such notes as HIS MOTHER CAN’T COME, BEING DEAD. PLEASE EXCUSE.

  Memory is short. Because the book is funny, I later began to think it was fun to write it. I had blocked out pain and remembered only chuckling at my inventions of absurdities, such as LATENESS DUE TO ABSENCE and POLIO CONSENT SLIPS. I recall waking up one morning laughing, because I had thought of something a boy might say about The Odyssey: “I wouldn’t give it to a dog to read.”

  I did not realize how much work had gone into it until I went to the New York Public Library, to which in 1965 I had donated two huge cartons of my work in progress. There, in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, behind a locked door, under the watchful eye of the guard, I dug into the past. In those cartons I found masses of messy manuscripts, hundreds of pages of outlines, lists of characters, and diagrams of my fictional school, with exact locations of rooms and the timing of erratic bell schedules. I found pages bedoodled, scratched out, scotch-taped, blotted with ink or tears. I saw how relentlessly I had kept polishing my material, shortening and sharpening it. A chapter on racial prejudice became a paragraph, which in turn became one sentence. A child writes: “Can you tell by my handwriting if I’m white or not?”

  The most difficult chapter to write, I saw, was the confrontation between Sylvia and her problem student Joe Ferone. He was vivid in my mind: leather jacket, toothpick, insolence, but it took many drafts to write that scene because Joe refused to do what my careful outline dictated.

  To let the children speak in their own words, I invented a suggestion box into which they dropped their comments with funny little pictures or pseudonyms. I had made lists of each child’s pseudonym and real name, along with their characteristic misspellings and idiosyncratic styles. When the book was in galleys, a zealous copy editor kept sending me corrections of their misspellings, which I kept sending back, misspelled as intended.

  Some reviewers paid me the ultimate compliment: They thought I had merely collected and arranged the material in the book. But everything in the novel
is invented, except a few directives from the Board of Education, which I had to tone down for credibility. I made up reports, memos, notes, records, forms, announcements, confidential files of the school nurse and the school psychologist, class minutes, lesson plans, administrative circulars, and comments from the kids themselves. All of it sounded so authentic that I was delighted to learn that when the assistant principal of my former school sent directives to his teachers, he would add in red pencil: “Do not show this to Bel Kaufman.”

  I made long lists of possible titles for this book. I said them aloud. I typed them in caps on blank paper and stared at them. I pictured them on book jackets. I tried them out on friends. One wag suggested: Don’t Shoot Till You See the Pupils. The title I finally chose came from the book itself—a picayune note by the administrative assistant: “Detained by me for going up the down staircase and subsequent insolence.” In those days there were UP and DOWN signs on narrow school stairs to facilitate traffic. Up the Down Staircase stood for the pettiness of administration; at the same time, it was a metaphor for going against traffic, bucking the system. I worried that it sounded too clumsy and unwieldy. How would anyone remember it?

  One thing I did not worry about was the morality of my book, so I was astonished to learn that the completed manuscript was going to be the subject of an obscenity conference at my publisher’s, which I was invited to attend. An obscenity conference? Me? There we sat, several editors and I, with photocopies of the manuscript in hand, speaking in low voices so as not to corrupt the typists outside the door.

  “Miss Kaufman, let’s look at the words fuck teacher. We are also an educational publisher and sell a large number of books to schools, colleges, and universities. Can you see your way to spelling it fuk?”

  “These kids,” I said, “are poor students, lousy spellers, but that’s one word they know how to spell!”

  We compromised: The word was spelled with a c in one place, without it in another.

  Next we turned to a page on which the word balls is scratched on the back of a seat in the auditorium.