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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.

Bel Kaufman

“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.
BEL KAUFMAN

Book Experimental Level Mindset
A teacher is frequently the only adult in the pupil’s environment who treats him with respect.
BEL KAUFMAN

Adult Environment Teacher
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.
BEL KAUFMAN

Age Firsts Want
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 like the word OLD. Not senior, that’s for proms. Older? Older than whom? ‘Old’ is honorable and ripe
BEL KAUFMAN

Honorable Prom Senior
The heart has its reasons; it’s the mind that’s suspect.
BEL KAUFMAN

Heart Mind Reason
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
Education can’t make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.
BEL KAUFMAN

Knowledge Leader School
Love is the ultimate giving, an expression of one’s best self.
BEL KAUFMAN

Expression Love Self
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
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.
BEL KAUFMAN

Morning Sleep Writing
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
You can’t laugh and be angry, you can’t laugh and feel sad, you can’t laugh and feel envious.
BEL KAUFMAN

Angry Envious Laughing Sad
To the young, cliches seem freshly minted.
BEL KAUFMAN

Cliche Language Young
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
Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It’s the skim milk that needs good teachers.
BEL KAUFMAN

Mind Needs Teacher
Best marks go to cheaters and memorizers. Marks depend on memorizing and not on real knowledge. When you cram into your head for a test you may get a high mark but forget it the next day. That’s not an education.
BEL KAUFMAN

Cheater Day Next Real
“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
… good teachers, like Tolstoy’s happy families, are alike everywhere.
BEL KAUFMAN

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

Children Connoisseurs Value
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
People ate bread made of the shells of peas because there was no flour.
BEL KAUFMAN

Bread People Shells
Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion.
BEL KAUFMAN

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

Dream School Tree
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.
BEL KAUFMAN

Different Inspiring Long

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 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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Popular Authors

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