Not since Bel Kaufman's 1964 novel Up the Down Staircase has a funnier book been written about teachers and teaching. In 1971 Richard Nixon is in the White House preparing to run for a second term and Watergate is on the near horizon. Though winding down toward "peace with honor," the war in Vietnam is still in the headlines and protestors are in the streets. On Long Island, in Union Free School District 71, it is the beginning of...