At Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet Academy, I studied under a brilliant and fiery teacher. This tiny, stuttering old man flew into a rage if his students' white socks failed to reach mid-calf level. Nor could he tolerate floppy hair. We wore hairnets to class - an athletic brigade of short order cooks.
I have earned wages as a waitress, a nanny, a librarian, a personnel officer, an agricultural laborer, an advertising secretary, a typesetter, a proofreader, a mental-health-care provider, a substitute teacher, and a book reviewer. In and around the edges of all those jobs I have written poems, stories, and books, books, books.
Margot Livesey, my dear friend, reads all the drafts of what I write, and I read hers. We have an intense working relationship. I've been really lucky to know her. She's a great reader and teacher as well as an astonishingly good writer.
Critics at their best are independent voices; people take seriously their responsibility to see as many things as they can see, put them in the widest possible perspective, educate their readers. I really do think of myself as a teacher.
My mother was a first-grade teacher, so I credit her with this lifelong intellectual curiosity I have, and love of reading and learning.
Pride adversely affects all our relationships - our relationship with God and His servants, between husband and wife, parent and child, employer and employee, teacher and student, and all mankind.
I think day care is terrific. Kids get to be around other kids, and they're playing, and they're teaching each other. When I was in college, my summer job was being a preschool teacher. I loved it, and after that experience, I said I can't wait to put my kid in day care because I could see how much they loved it.
At school, I was the classroom clown - I was always being thrown out for being naughty. Before I left, a teacher called me in and suggested I became an actor.
My mom is an art teacher and is very much into the performing arts. What can I say? She is the female in my life and has guided me on how to act and conduct myself. A lot of my strength comes from her.
In middle school, I had the best math teacher I've ever had, and he was deaf... and I felt inspired by him. I knew from then on that I wanted to be a math teacher.
I have decided not to give interviews and not to hold conversations with journalists who deal with the political activity of my wife rather than my activity as university teacher and researcher.
You can choose your family sometimes. You can choose people, it could be a teacher, it could be a professor, it could be someone you work with that actually genuinely cares about you and wants you to succeed.
I was funny in a way that was not dissing the teacher; I was funny just to be funny. A real charmer with a prominent mustache that he didn't know what to do with and a smart-alecky attitude.
I remember when I was in school I had this teacher give me this E.L. Doctorow quote: They asked him how much historical research he does for his books and he said, 'As little as possible.' So I try and adhere to that.
I had a science teacher in middle school who inspired me... simply because she acknowledged me and made me feel that what I had to offer was worthy.
I had a really creative teacher at primary school. He used to get us doing things such as singing Spandau Ballet in drag in the choir, and I remember loving it.
I gleaned different style ideas over the years. In Southern California, there is a big rockabilly sub-culture. So when I would go to car shows, I would see women dressed like this. I had a teacher in high school that always had her Bette Paige bangs.
My art teacher was really encouraging me, because he really liked that I could draw. I felt very torn. At that time, I had to pick one, and I felt much more confident in the arts than I did in chemistry. My big thing was that I actually wanted to be like Jacques Cousteau.
I was always into sports and a lot of physical activities. My dad was a kickboxer and a body builder. My mom was an aerobics teacher.
When I was in the ninth grade, I had a teacher in Dallas, Texas, named Elizabeth Enlow in English class. Every Friday, we had to write a little essay, and you had to incorporate three particular words into the story. That was the sole direction. And to me, this was so much fun.
Iggy Pop is a pure Michigan product - gritty, smart, but not afraid of looking stupid or foolish. His father was once a high school English teacher. I love Iggy as a physical entity, sinewy, twisty - even in old age - an embodiment of rock and roll history.
My father is a teacher; my mother was a telecom employee. I come from Palermo; I was raised in Ethiopia. I am homosexual. I didn't go to film school.
We had a teacher in school who would organize dramatic shows. And she decided to put on a show about - I don't know whether you remember - 'Ferdinand the Bull', the comic script. However, she decided, you're going to sing Ferdinand, me, as a role.
Oh, stuff the critics. I don't care. Too many people are snooty about classical. Look, I wasn't brought up in a home where we listened to classical music. It was a singing teacher that thought it would be best for my voice. Then I moved into crossover. And if that makes the music accessible to more people, then great.
I want to be a science teacher. My friends asked me why, but I'm intrigued by it and I'm quite good at science at school.
I went to school at the San Francisco Art Institute, thinking I was going to become an art teacher. Within the first six months I was there, I was told that I couldn't be an art teacher unless I became an artist first.
I had a teacher who stressed for me the importance of diction in terms of... I want to be very careful about how I say this... in terms of supporting one's voice when one is singing. In other words, if you hold on to your words, your voice will pull through for you when you're singing. So be true to your vowels.
I had a high school English teacher who made me really work at writing. And once, when I got an assignment back, she'd written: 'This is so good, Andrew. This should be published!' That made a big impression on me.
I think that I had read so much fiction that the craft itself sort of sank into me. I didn't read any 'how to' books or attend any popular-fiction-writing classes or have a critique group. For many years into my writing, I didn't even know another author. For me, a lot of reading was the best teacher.
Personal trainers, however nice, give me PE teacher flashbacks.
My students know I have a life, they know I've written about my life. They know some detail, probably more than they know about their physics teacher, but I would've told them anyway!
I believe there's not a harder job in the world than being a teacher, and there isn't a job with a more direct impact on the performance of our students.
My job requires me to put on a little dress and run around the streets of New York in heels. But I also had the financial means to hire a yoga teacher to come to my house while my sitter watched the newborn. For 95 percent of the world, that's not realistic.
I got married at 19 and graduated from a commuter college in Texas that cost $50 a semester. The way I see it, I'm a janitor's daughter who became a public school teacher, a professor, and a United States Senator. America is truly a country of opportunity!
My father was a teacher of the Russian language and literature in high school.
I started studying music at the age of five and a half. My older sister was taking piano lessons. When her teacher left our apartment, I would get up on the piano bench and start picking out the notes that were part of my sister's lessons.
