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

Bel Kaufman

Teachers try to make us feel lower than themselves, maybe because this is because they feel lower than outside people. One teacher told me to get out of the room and never come back, which I did.
BEL KAUFMAN

People Teachers Trying
Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion.
BEL KAUFMAN

Collapse Erratic Time
When giving comes directly from the heart, it can never disappoint or embarrass.
BEL KAUFMAN

Heart Kindness Volunteer
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.
BEL KAUFMAN

Long Teaching Writing
Laughter keeps you healthy. You can survive by seeing the humor in everything. Thumb your nose at sadness; turn the tables on tragedy.
BEL KAUFMAN

Laughing Laughter Sadness
Education is not a product: mark, diploma, job, money-in that order; it is a process, a never-ending one.
BEL KAUFMAN

Education Jobs Teaching
The preciousness of every moment is emphasized with every tick of the clock. Isn’t it a magnificent day today?
BEL KAUFMAN

Moments Tick Today
“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.
BEL KAUFMAN

Cops Fight Relationship Stuck
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!
BEL KAUFMAN

Listening Looks Teacher
Children are the true connoisseurs. What’s precious to them has no price, only value.
BEL KAUFMAN

Children Connoisseurs Value
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.
BEL KAUFMAN

Morning Mother Summer
I suggest just Good and Bad at the end of the term on report cards. Or maybe nothing. Frank Allen
BEL KAUFMAN

Bad End Good Suggest
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.
BEL KAUFMAN

Broken Reading School
I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.
BEL KAUFMAN

Distance Perspective Sense Of Humor
The clerical work is par for the course. “Keep on file in numerical order” means throw in wastebasket. You’ll soon learn the language.
BEL KAUFMAN

Art Children Reading
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.
BEL KAUFMAN

Children Differences Want

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

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

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