Up the Down Staircase

Product Description Our reissue of Bel Kaufmans bestselling 1964 novel timelessly depicts the shambolic joys and myriad frustrations of a young teacher. With an introduction by Diane Ravitch.Sylvia Barrett arrives at New York Citys Calvin Coolidge High fresh from earning literature degrees at Hunter College and eager to shape young minds. Instead she encounters broken windows, a lack of supplies, a stifling bureaucracy, and students with no interest in Chaucer. Her bumpy yet ultimately rewarding journey is depicted through an extraordinary collection of correspondence: sternly worded yet nonsensical administrative memos, furtive notes of wisdom from teacher to teacher, polio consent slips, and student homework assignments that unwittingly speak from the heart.Up the Down Staircase stands as the seminal novel of a beleaguered public school system that is redeemed by teachers who love to teach and students who long to be recognised. It is poignant, devastating, laugh-out-loud funny, and in our current moment of debate around the future of education more relevant than ever. Review [Kaufman] fully grasped the thankless position of the teachers left to impart knowledge and instil citizenship in the face of awesome obstacles [T]he most enduring account we have of teachers lives not nave, not exculpatory, but empathetic and aware. -- Samuel G. Freedman The New YorkerShot through with despair and hopefulness, violence and levity, bureaucratic inanity and a blizzard of official memorandums so mind-bendingly illogical as to seem almost Kafkaesque A stunningly accurate portrait of life in an urban school. -- Margalit Fox The New York TimesThe most excellent and useful portrait of a[n] American teachers life that we are likely to have for a long time. Life[T]he seminal book on the hardships and joys of teaching. -- Joseph Berger The New York TimesEasily the most popular novel about U.S. public schools in history. TimeUp the Down Staircase should be read by anyone interested in children or education. The New York TimesUp the Down Staircase is even more pertinent, useful, charming, important, and utterly adorable than it was twenty-five years ago. -- Garson Kanin, actor, writer, and director About the Author Bel Kaufman was an author and schoolteacher. Born in Berlin in 1911, she spent her childhood in Odessa and emigrated with her family to the Bronx when she was twelve. Her grandfather was the Yiddish humourist Sholem Aleichem. In addition to Up the Down Staircase, she is also the author of the novel Love, Etc. She died in 2014.