Up the Down Staircase

Up the Down Staircase, by Bel Kaufman

Another trip down memory lane: fall play junior year of high school. This is the book that became a play as well as a movie. As a future secondary English Language Arts teacher, I might call it the Freedom Writers of its time, a true inspiration. Even if you aren’t headed towards a career in education, this book still has a lot to offer. I have owned two copies of this book in my lifetime, and both have been taken from me by fellow book lover friends and never returned.

“Hi, Teach!” Calvin Coolidge is a new environment for Miss Sylvia Barrett, who expects anything but the conditions she finds at this troubled school. Still full of high hopes, the committed and idealistic teacher tries to do her best in a building that is falling apart with students who don’t care about school. She continues to “fight the good fight” against what stands in the way of good teaching, everything from school bureaucracy and teacher relationships to the personal lives of the students. Sylvia tries to do her best to inspire and motivate a classroom of extremely diverse pupils, but finds it hard without the support of her administration and a department head that does not have enough copies of Romeo and Juliet so recommends Ivanhoe instead. The students have their own troubles without interacting with a teacher they do not yet believe legitimately cares for them: the rebel Joe Ferone, the dreamer Alice Blake, the class president Harry Kagan, and the class clown Lou Martin, just to name a few. Of course, the teachers are not immune to having their own problems, with one teacher who would rather be a writer, a school nurse who wants to help but is forbidden by rules, a librarian who wants to keep her books inside the library, and another English teacher who feels she has found a balance and offers Sylvia constant encouragement. With everything going on at Calvin Coolidge, Sylvia has some hard choices to make about how to deal with the environment, how to reach the students (if possible), and whether or not to seek out a new job. It is a funny and touching story with lessons for teachers, students, parents and anyone concerned with public education, or even those who aren’t.

I have never seen another book written like this. Instead of the normal format, Russian-born Bel Kaufman offers up something original. The majority of the novel is portrayed in various forms of written text: letters to an old friend, administrative memos, teacher-to-teacher communications, student essays, as well as comments from the suggestion box that came to impact the classroom the most. This format offers a means for the characters to speak for themselves in a way that simple dialogue cannot convey. I will admit that in the beginning the format makes it hard to keep student names straight, but there is a lot of white space on the page that makes the reader feel successful with the amount of page turning going on. It serves as a completely enjoyable quick read, while having the impact of a major canonical literary work. “Hi Pupe!”

This book is definitely in my top favorites. I can and am recommending this book to all types of readers, but I think for all current and future teachers, it is a mandatory piece.

“Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.”
- Marcel Proust