In another - committee reports on slum clearance. In another - a hum of voices and toned French conjugations. In one - a lesson on the nature of Greek tragedy. An older colleague tells her, walk through the halls, listen at the classroom doors. There's a section towards the close of the book when the young teacher despairs she hasn't been able to make a difference in her students' lives. The very title has become a metaphor for bureaucratic nonsense. "Up The Down Staircase" sold more than 6 million copies - was made into a popular film. It was both an alarm bell and a love letter told in a series of notes and memos that range between the ridiculous and the stirring. Her 1965 bestseller "Up The Down Staircase" told of a new teacher's first year in a public high school that was tough, gritty and chaotic before school bureaucrats began to say diverse. She died yesterday in Manhattan at the age of 103. So Bel Kauffman wrote a book that taught the world. What happened - did you rob a bank? No, he said, a grocery store. She liked to tell a story about a student who came in late. Bel Kaufman was a substitute teacher who bounced between public high schools in New York because her Ukrainian accent was considered a little thick.
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