I come from Nigeria, and we live by the idea that it takes a village. So my entire team. I live by my team: my friends, my neighbors, my teachers - they're the people who taught me how to be a free actor.
For some students, school is the only place where they get a hot meal and a warm hug. Teachers are sometimes the only ones who tell our children they can go from an Indian reservation to the Ivy League, from the home of a struggling single mom to the White House.
There's a high school in Camden, New Jersey, I call the Jill Scott School. It's the Camden Creative Arts High School. Those teachers and kids are so passionate about what they do, and 98 percent of the senior class went on to college.
We don't need mandatory, non-sectarian prayers read over the loudspeaker to 'put God back in schools.' God never left the schools. God is still at work through the hundreds of thousands of gifted teachers and administrators, committed parents, and passionate volunteers who seek to help give our children 'a future with hope.'
Those who know how to think need no teachers.
Aside from a few master teachers that we have had over the years, this has been a completely local talent development. But people have started to come now from Chicago, we have a number of students from Chicago and different places of the country and even in the world.
And I was lucky enough to have teachers that really, really looked out for me and really encouraged all that. And in rural Louisiana, that was a rare thing back then.
Teachers are not supposed to be repositories of information which they dish out. That is from an age when there were no other repositories of information, other than books or teachers, neither of which were portable. A lot of my big task is retraining these teachers.
In other words, unlike some people with new theories, we will go out, we'll go into a school and we get products and the products are evaluated, whether it's by teachers or others. The scores are quantified and then we compare performances.
Too often we act - ask our schools to be truant officers, our teachers to be truant officers, because we're giving them children who have, you know, they're not ready to learn. And if they're not ready to learn by the third grade, they know they're behind.
Inexperienced personal development teachers always tell you to visualize, but often in a tragically limited way. They tell you to visualize nothing but victory. But high-achievers know that it's even more important to visualize themselves at the point where they want to quit, and then see themselves working through the struggle.
We have to provide good teachers, good environment, community involvement with schools.
Education is the silver bullet to improve this Nation's standing worldwide... and our teachers know that.
We expert teachers know that motivation and emotional impact are what matter.
I'm lucky I had some teachers who saw something in me.
Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is, you need to talk with children, to teachers, and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early.
I have fought to protect those benefits that ensure better salaries for teachers across the Nation such as grants to pay off student loans and funding for Teach for America. Still, we must all do more to show our continued appreciation for our Nation's leading role models.
Teachers tell me that they'd like to work more closely with parents.
For they, the philosophers, were considered teachers of right living, which is far more excellent, since to speak well belongs only to a few, but to live well belongs to all.
Being the offspring of English teachers is a mixed blessing. When the film star says to you, on the air, 'It was a perfect script for she and I,' inside your head you hear, in the sarcastic voice of your late father, 'Perfect for she, eh? And perfect for I, also?'
We know the parental support, community support, makes a difference. It's not just the metrics of testing and putting pressure on the schools and on the teachers.
What we have done with No Child Left Behind is squeeze the creativity out of the classroom because teachers have begun to just teaching to the test.
It's okay to make mistakes. Mistakes are our teachers - they help us to learn.
You can do and use the skills that you have. The schools need you. The teachers need you. Students and parents need you. They need your actual person: your physical personhood and your open minds and open ears and boundless compassion, sitting next to them, listening and nodding and asking questions for hours at a time.
We are fortunate to have some of the greatest and best teachers in the world, but we want to make sure that those few that try to sneak through the system are caught in advance.
Why can't teachers end up owning schools, the way waiters can open their own restaurants?
Instead of just giving lip service to improving our schools, I will actually put the kids first and the teachers union behind in giving our kids better teachers, better options and better choices for a better future.
Manipal was the best time I ever had in life: a great university with wonderful teachers, fantastic memories and deep, lifelong friendships.
When I was 17, I was hyperactive and annoyed my teachers.
Instruction does not prevent wasted time or mistakes; and mistakes themselves are often the best teachers of all.
I'll get boxes full of books and objects from perfect strangers in the oddest places. Teachers will send me students' drawings, etc. It's hard to sift through it all.
I was a very bad student. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn't want to go farther in school. I hated school and was always the bad one; I was always insulting the teachers.
I taught myself to read music at a very young age, so when I started to take lessons in school, the teachers used to give me other instruments to keep me busy, because I was more advanced than the other kids.
We passed a bill in 1997, signed by Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles, which created a pilot program for a novel experiment called Florida Virtual School. The notion of children using a computer for a classroom and reporting to virtual teachers wasn't exactly mainstream thinking in those days.
Charter schools are public schools that operate, to a certain extent, outside the system. They have more control over their teachers, curriculum and resources. They also have less money than public schools.
I think all of us could play the teacher because we all grew up with teachers. It's just kind of this peeking-over-the-shoulder presence that we've all grown up knowing.
