Bel Kaufman has turned 100 years old. Reasons to celebrate? She wrote one of the best books about teaching ever written, at least according to this former teacher: Up the Down Staircase, a book about keeping heart in a difficult job. It spent 64 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list in 1965 and still speaks to all aspirants to that often withering job, perhaps all the moreso in today’s America, where education has been devalued and its bureaucracies hardened.

It wasn’t an easy job for Kaufman to get, according to a New York Times profile by Joseph Berger.

The examiners had her explain a sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and told her afterward she had given “a poor interpretation.” Having been blocked once before because of a trace of a greenhorn accent, she refused to be stopped a second time. So she did what any true aspirant would have done: she wrote a letter to Ms. Millay and had her evaluate her interpretation.

“You gave a much better explanation of it than I myself should have,” the poet wrote back, and the chastened examiners saved face by urging Ms. Kaufman to try for the license again.

Kaufman, however, doesn’t seem to be dwelling on her memories, although as the granddaughter of the great Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem, she’s got a few good ones. Nor, she once confessed (according to this Wikipedia biography) does she like writing, even though she went on to publish another novel, Love, etc.: “I do not LIKE writing; in truth, I HATE writing, and would rather do anything else. But the joy comes when, almost in spite of myself, I come close to what I want to say. A sentence or an insight leaps from the page.”

But what she does like is teaching, which she continues to do — to this day. She currently an adjunct professor at Hunter College teaching a class on Jewish humor. The reporter is in the Times piece is lucky enough to get a sample lecture:

“The Frenchman says: ‘I’m tired and thirsty. I must have wine.’ The German says: ‘I’m tired and thirsty. I must have beer.’ The Jew says: ‘I’m tired and thirsty. I must have diabetes.’ ”