Up the Down Staircase
Page 10
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FROM: DR. SAMUEL BESTER
CHAIRMAN, LANGUAGE ARTS DEPT.
TO: MISS BARRETT
Dear Miss Barrett,
Please announce to your students the New York Chamber of Commerce Essay on: PRESERVING HISTORIC BUILDINGS IN NEW YORK.
Encourage all students to participate.
S. Bester
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May I borrow your window-pole? Please give to bearer.
S.B.
Dear Syl– Someone has swiped mine. There’s a run on window-poles today. And on pole-bearers!
Bea
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Late Pass:
Admit to class: 8:36 A.M.
Unexcused: Claims IRT stuck.
JJ MCH
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My Best Friend
My best friend is Miss Barrett, our English teacher. Although this is the first term I have met Miss Barrett, she is pretty, a good dresser, a good marker, and fair in her attitude. She is the type teacher every student likes. For the reasons above mentioned I choose Miss Barrett.
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DEAR (SIR
(MADAM
I AM (PLEASED TO INFORM YOU THAT
(SORRY
YOUR (SON’S WORK HAS SO FAR
(DAUGHTER’S
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My best friend is a good book. I enjoy good books that are educational very much. Books help your grammer and spelling. Also increase your vocabulary. I am a great reader of books. My best favorite is “Antony and Cleopatra” by Shakespear. In this book I like the part where the author tries to show love. Where Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton make love which I like. I like other good books too, mostly classical.
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Memo: Return English as a Communications Art.
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I have some best friends and also some worst friends but its hard to write down, its hard to explain what I really want to say about friends and others its hard to explain to anybody I often wisht I had a friend thats understanding. But its very hard.
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Please admit bearer to class–
Detained by me for going Up the Down staircase and subsequent insolence.
JJ MCH
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My best friend
I believe my Mother to be my best friend because. She always listens to my troubles and trys to comfort me. She has been sacrafìcing all her life so I could be a credit to her and not a bum and all I did since born is cause her trouble by shooting pools and doing such things. I am apoligizing in this letter. Very truly yours.
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INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION
FROM: Paul Barringer, Room 309
TO: Sylvia Barrett, Room 304
Sylvia!
Where did you disappear after dinner last night?
Was I that blotto?
Must be the latest rejection slip. The tone is not only polite but patronizing: Why don’t I write of something familiar to me?
The school system is familiar to me.
Am I to write of kids sprawling in classrooms? Yawning in assembly? Pushing through the halls? (You know I never venture forth in hall traffic.)
Am I to write of teachers marking papers? Of McHabe’s circulars? (You know I have a low boredom-threshold.)
The only thing I can do with him is give him a song to sing. I call it J.J.’s Lament:
The ceiling fell? The ink ran dry? A student dared to smile?
Of every new disaster
I prove myself the master
By sending out more circulars, more circulars to file!
A missing kid? A kissing kid? A paper on the floor?
For every major crisis
One remedy suffices:
More circulars, more circulars to put into a drawer!
A crowded cafeteria?
A substitute’s hysteria?
A visitor from Syria?
A missing Book Receipt?
I merely send out circulars
To add to other circulars
To add to other circulars
Numerical and neat!
I want him to star in the Faculty Show, but he has another commitment. I’d like to write him a splendid aria, entitled: “It Has Come to my Attention That.”
Why do you refuse to be in the Show? You are wasting yourself in the classroom.
Why do you refuse? You are wasting yourself.
A girl who is patient like patient Griselda
Will find all she’s getting is elder and elder.
Meet me for lunch?
Meet me at three?
Meet me this evening? I promise to stay sober.
Paul
I wish other teachers would be brave like you and put in a Suggestion Box. They’re always telling us what’s wrong with us, what about the other way around? Boy, would I like to tell them off. But you’re OK even if you are a teacher.
(You said we don’t have to sign our name)
Scram! Hit the road! Leave town! If you know what’s good for you! (You asked for it!)
A Well Wisher
Don’t think you’ll get off so easy just because you speak nice and you don’t seem scarred of us, last term we had a man teacher and we made him cry.
Not enough boys and too many girls in the room. But that’s not your fault. Also some schools they have danceing in the cafeteria and they put on different things, why not? You only live once.
Linda Rosen
It was very interesting of you to give the compositions on My Best Friend, there are quite a few persons you’ve helped. Keep up the good work.
Harry A. Kagan
(The Students Choice)
Being you’re so young don’t be so leniant, we take advantage, especially Joe Farrone, he must be your pet because he gives you so much trouble. Also give out more up to date books then the Oddesseys. They should rewrite the Oddessey over with more up to date incidence.
Failing
Can you make the chalk stop from squeeking?
Nervous
Please tell Lou Martin to quit showing off, he thinks he’s so comic well I don’t.
Signed–Serious Student
Fuk. Screw. Crap. Goddam. Nerts to you.
Unsinged
You ask for revelant matters only. Assemblys too boring. I always know what he’s going to say (Clark). Show movies instead.
Don’t try so hard, you’ll live longer, sit down & relax when you teach.
I have many problems but won’t burden you with them in this Box. They’re not fit for human ears. Though you seem to be a very understandable person. By that I mean you understand us being not so old yourself. Too bad you’re a teacher and pretty like my sister. I wish you were a plain person then we could be close.
Vivian Paine
Sitting near the window in this room I have caught a cold because there’s a hole in it. Well life is like that, you have to pay for your pleasure, with cash or otherwise.
Fifth Row Last Seat
This school is run like a Army. The least little thing he (McHaber) get excited. He better watch his step, after all I pay his sallary with taxes!
Tax Payer
Linda Rosen–sex pot, Alice Blake–stuck up, and you like Joe Feroni, he’s just asking for attention.
Neglected
You’re lucky you’re a women teacher, if it was a man he would of walked into something he didn’t see coming his way, with a women my temper is controlled but a man doesn’t last long. (This is the last time I am writting!)
Dont call the Roll so early.
Late Bird
In the past I always looked forward to my English classes with regret but when I entered your room, low and behold, I saw your cheerful countenence standing in front of the class & I got really interested in the subject. You seem to mean it when you smile.
A Bashful Nobody
Homer is not a very g
ood writer.
Reader
Everybody is always picking on me because of prejudice and that goes for everybody. Mr. Machabe realy has it in for me just because I am color. I have allready fill a complain to Dr. Clark.
Edward Williams, Esq.
Clean up the slums! Before you go to the moon! And stop the Atomb Bomb! Before its too late! As far as school, without us there could be no school, ha-ha! And no futures!
Lou Martin
How about a date? I’ll fix you up like you never had it before.
Loverboy
Throw out myths. Throw out old teachers and put in new. Throw down this delapidated school and build a clean one, more moderner, like my other was. With Loud Speakers in every class room where they told you over the Loud Speaker about personal hygene and forest conservation and things like that even if it came in the middle of a lesson. With telephones inside the rooms where if a teacher forgot a pencil she could call up to find out if it’s there and later go get it. The traffic in the halls was more roomier and the cafeteria wasn’t in the basement. You could sit down and eat. But I couldn’t stay.
Stander
Don’t start up with me!
Poisen
There is one thing you shouldn’t do and that is look so beautiful. You distract the attention of Lou and me very much and causes us to pass notes while you talk.
Anonimus
Is it possible to change my seat to next to Linda Rosen because of my eyesight?
Frank Allen
What makes you think you’re something? You’re only a female and I can’t stand females. I got enough trouble at home I don’t need school.
Rusty
You’re a good teacher except for the rotten books you have to teach like the Oddissy. I wouldn’t give it to a dog to read.
Disgusted
I suggest you and other teachers get a raise in salary so they can live right. I’m sorry I talk out of turn during your teaching, I admit it.
Loudmouth
Parents are too pushy.
Doodlebug
I want to thank you for giving me your time after school, for encouraging me to write, for trying. But with 40 others in the class, whose problems are so different, I realize how little you can do, and I feel we are both wasted.
Elizabeth Ellis
Teach more interesting stories that are hopeful. How in Pygmalian and Galatea the statue got human for the marriage.
Yours for Happy Endings
I am not a good penman but I must tell some one. I put this in the Suggestion Box for the record. Today is my birthday. Happy Birthday!
Me
INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION
FROM: 508
TO: 304
Dear Syl–
I’m returning window-pole. Thanks.
Just now, a former student dropped in to see me. “You still teaching?” he asked. Turns out he’s making more money than you and I together, playing saxophone in a band. Flunked English, I think. His PPP wasn’t so hot, either. Why didn’t they give me piano lessons? Why did I ever learn to read?
It must be Indian summer that’s making me so droopy–or the quiz on Hamlet I’ve been marking. Sample: “Mr. Hamlet, Sr. appears to Mr. Hamlet, Jr. as a dead ghost and bids him revenge.”
Bea
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INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION
FROM: 304
TO: 508
Dear Bea– I’ve been wading through a pile of “Due before 3” mimeos–but now at last I know what to do with them: into the wastebasket! I’m also hep to the jargon. I know that “illustrative material” means magazine covers, “enriched curriculum” means teaching “who and whom,” and that “All evaluation of students should be predicated upon initial goals and grade level expectations” means if a kid shows up, pass him. Right?
I’m a bit nervous about Bester’s visit. He tells me he plans to “drop in” again, and suggests that this time I do not give “a written lesson on friendship” (!)
Would you let me know what you think of the enclosed lesson plan on book reports? I wish I’d had real training instead of a few Ped courses and six months of pupil-teaching. I feel so inadequate!
Are there any compensations?
Syl
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INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION
FROM: 508
TO: 304
Of course there are! I invite you to visit my Honors class in Shakespeare, or my Creative Writing class–you wouldn’t believe you were in the same school. Actually these kids would do well on their own. To me there are greater compensations when a slow student glimpses an idea, when an apathetic or hostile kid raises a faltering hand.
Don’t underestimate Bester. Behind the pedagese language is a man who knows all about teaching; you would do well to attend to what he says when he comes to observe you.
Your lesson plan is excellent–except for the Emily Dickinson line: “There is no frigate like a book.” The sentiment is lovely, the quotation is apt–only trouble is the word “frigate.” Just try to say it in class–and your lesson is over.
Bea
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INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION
FROM: 304
TO: 508
Dear Bea– Thanks for the tip on frigate. How about: “There is no steamship like a book”? I myself have already vetoed Channing’s: “It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds.”
In the meantime, I’ve been filling out follow-up slips on my Joe Ferone: Truant Officer reports there’s no such address as the one he has given. Ella Freud says he never showed up for interview. Subject teachers claim he’s been cutting classes. Nurse says he’s on Dental Blacklist. And McHabe floods me with warnings.
But I’m not discouraged. I think the problem is not unreachable kids but unteachable teachers.
The Board of Ed has been Sir-or-Madaming me with the enclosed:
Please translate.
Syl
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INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION
FROM: 508
TO: 304
Dear Syl–
Looking alert won’t help. If you want a raise, take a course. No coursie, no money. A First Aid course will do. You don’t even have to take it–just ask the nurse to give you a paper saying you know how to apply tourniquet. Do you? Because you may need to!
As far as kids are concerned, you’re on right track, but don’t misjudge teachers–they’re not so much unteachable as unrewarded. And even McHabe has his uses–before he came to Coolidge there was Chaos. He’s trying to create order the only way he knows how. His pupil-load is 3,000 kids!
Bea
(Henrietta is looking high and low for Paul; dying to be in Faculty Show; wants him to write some lyrics for her. Do you know where he is? He looked a bit fuzzy again yesterday.)
B.
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INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION
FROM: 304
TO: 508
Dear Bea–
I don’t know where he is; he has an unassigned 1st period, but he never appears until the 2nd. Someone punches him in–right under Sadie Finch’s nose. Hope she doesn’t find out.
I’m treasuring her latest: “Teachers must not punch each other out.”
Just saw Grayson scuttling through the main floor; so he does exist! Ferone was with him. What goes on?
Syl
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INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION
FROM: 508