Up the Down Staircase
Synopsis
Sylvia Barrett is a rookie teacher at New York's inner-city Calvin Coolidge High: her lit classes are overcrowded, a window is broken, there's no chalk, books arrive late. The administration is concerned mainly with forms and rules (there's an up and and a down staircase); bells ring at the wrong time. Nevertheless, she tries. How she handles the chaos and her despair in her first semester makes up the film: a promising student drops out, another sleeps through class, a girl with a crush on a male teacher gets suicidal, and a bright but troublesome student misunderstands Sylvia's reaching out. A discussion of Dickens, parents' night, and a mock trial highlight the term. Can she make it?
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Frances Sternhagen
Charlotte Wolf, school librarian
Jean Stapleton
Sadie Finch
Bud Cort
Student
Esther Rolle
Teacher
Eileen Heckart
Henrietta Pastorfield
Sorrell Booke
Dr. Bester
Linda Gillen
Student
Ruth White
Beatrice Schacter
Patrick Bedford
Paul Barringer
Florence Stanley
Ellen Friedenberg
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