The preciousness of every moment is emphasized with every tick of the clock. Isn’t it a magnificent day today?
BEL KAUFMAN… good teachers, like Tolstoy’s happy families, are alike everywhere.
More Bel Kaufman Quotes
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“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.
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Laughter keeps you healthy. You can survive by seeing the humor in everything. Thumb your nose at sadness; turn the tables on tragedy.
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People ate bread made of the shells of peas because there was no flour.
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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.
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I’ll never retire as long as I live—that’s like retiring from life! I’ll never stop writing, teaching, lecturing. If you’re in good health, living is exciting on its own.
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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.
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I so enjoy being old because for the first time I don’t have to do anything-work, teach, study. I feel very good about myself-and at my age I can say no to anything now if I don’t want to do it. What a liberating word.
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Learning is a process of mutual discovery for teacher and pupil. Keep an open mind to their unexpected responses.
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“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.
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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.
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… good teachers, like Tolstoy’s happy families, are alike everywhere.
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Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion.
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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!
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I suggest just Good and Bad at the end of the term on report cards. Or maybe nothing. Frank Allen
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Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.
BEL KAUFMAN






