In high school, I was Mr. Choir Boy. I had solos, I was helping out the tenors with their parts and our choir teacher would ask me what songs we should do.
Adversity is a great teacher, but this teacher makes us pay dearly for its instruction; and often the profit we derive, is not worth the price we paid.
Sports are such a great teacher. I think of everything they've taught me: camaraderie, humility, how to resolve differences.
I actually got thrown into my Bar Mitzvah because my teacher, my Cantor, did not tell me that they would all say 'amen' at the end of each, for want of a better word, paragraph. And that threw me completely. I almost went into an Ella Fitzgerald sort of scat.
School district policies and practices have not kept pace with student and teacher needs.
I feel really good in the teacher role.
I never did very well in math - I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally.
There is no recipe to be a great teacher, that's what is unique about them.
I'd never been a teacher before, and here I was starting my first day with these eager students. There was a shortage of teachers, and they had been without a math teacher for six months. They were so excited to learn math.
While teaching, I also worked undercover in the lower courts by saying I was a young law teacher wanting experience in criminal law. The judges were happy to assist me but what I learned was how corrupt the lower courts were. Judges were accepting money right in the courtroom.
I did tap dancing and stuff like that at drama school. I did ballet as well. My dance teacher and I didn't necessarily get along all that well sometimes. She's brilliant... but it's just because I don't like wearing tights that I put up a bit of a fight there, I think.
But the fact is, no matter how good the teacher, how small the class, how focused on quality education the school may be none of this matters if we ignore the individual needs of our students.
Ask everyone whether they're an actor or a doctor or a teacher or whatever is entitled to his or her opinion. But unfortunately, because actors are in the public eye, whether we want it or not, sometimes our opinions carry more weight or influence than they deserve.
I studied with Sandy Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse. I was in the last class to study with him before he had his larynx removed, so I actually remember the sound of his voice. He was an incredible teacher.
Probably the biggest influence on my career was the late John Hersey, who, while he was at 'The New Yorker,' wrote one of the masterpieces of narrative non-fiction, 'Hiroshima.' Hersey was a teacher of mine at Yale, and a friend. He got me to see the possibility of journalism not just as a business but as an art form.
When I was eight, an uncle, great uncle, gave a violin to me, and my father took me off to have lessons. After about six weeks, the violin teacher told my father he was wasting his money, wasting his time, and wasting my time, and it's one of my big regrets.
I remember telling my creative writing teacher that you never want to have a journal, because if you lose it, then someone's going to know all your secrets. And then she stopped using a journal, but I always write everything down... Anytime I travel, I try and fill up notepads.
Jackson went from the professor's chair to the officer's saddle. He carried with him the very elements of character which made him odious as a teacher; but I never saw him in an arbitrary mood.
The processes of teaching the child that everything cannot be as he wills it are apt to be painful both to him and to his teacher.
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
They say that people teach what they need to learn. By adopting the role of happiness teacher, if only for myself, I was trying to find the method to conquer my particular faults and limitations.
Although I am basically self taught, I consider Debussy my teacher - the most important elements are colour, light and shadow.
I draw inspiration from everything I've seen and been through. My life has been my biggest teacher.
Students never think it can be the teacher's fault and so I thought I was stupid. I was frustrated and would come home and cry because I couldn't do it. Then we got a new teacher who made math accessible. That made all the difference and I learned that it's how you present it that makes it scary or friendly.
Every child grows; everything depends on the teacher.
Mama was my greatest teacher, a teacher of compassion, love and fearlessness. If love is sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love.
Writing, I'm convinced, should be a subversive activity - frowned on by the authorities - and not one cooed over and praised beyond common sense by some teacher.
If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.
I think my parents were happy that I'd gone to university and gotten a degree in history so they thought, 'Well if acting doesn't work for him, he can always become a history teacher or something.' Fortunately, the acting worked out.
I do think we know that a teacher who knows what he or she is doing, knows their subject matter, and knows how to impart knowledge to kids is a critical piece of closing the achievement gap.
Liz Benedict, a teacher of mine at Iowa, is the person who introduced me to James Salter's work.
I can remember exactly where I sat when my teacher first read Roald Dahl's 'James and the Giant Peach'.
My first career was as a coach and a teacher.
I still remember asking my high school guidance teacher for permission to take a second year of algebra instead of a fifth year of Latin. She looked down her nose at me and sneered, 'What lady would take mathematics instead of Latin?'
In high school, I once sang 'Let's Get It On' and 'Brown Sugar' with a band that included my English teacher and my math teacher.
You know how to tell if the teacher is hung over? Movie Day.
