The most important role models should and could be parents and teachers. But that said, once you're a teenager you've probably gotten as much of an example from your parents as you're going to.
It may be said that modern Europe with teachers who inform it that its realist instincts are beautiful, acts ill and honors what is ill.
I worry that when educational counselors and teachers call in families with concerns about a child having a learning disability, we aren't always looking at the complete picture.
My mother and my father were teachers. My grandmother and my grandfather were teachers. This is something I really know about. Even when I was a kid, it was a profession my father couldn't stay in, because he couldn't make enough money.
When I see kids who naturally get A's and who naturally score high on tests and the teachers naturally like them because they require the least amount of management - when they come out into the real world, I find they're very poor at getting through obstacles. And life is about solving obstacles.
I didn't only have a perceptual problem, I was also so nervous and so upset. The process just didn't work. I lost enthusiasm for school and I flunked second grade. The teachers said I was lazy.
Feeling pummeled by the outside pounding of tests and standards, a teacher can easily hide and simply turn to the immediacy of the classroom. It is not surprising that many teachers burrow in their rooms with all that they know about their students. There is no place to take the information.
I was born and raised in Rogers Park in Chicago. My father sold furniture, and my mother was a Chicago public school teacher and proud member of the Chicago Teachers Union for decades.
Prison was tough on me. I saw people in prison that made me ashamed I was a human being. Some make Qaddafi and Idi Amin look like Sunday-school teachers.
We need to make sure we have in every school teachers trained and qualified to make sure every child, including children with different learning styles, succeed.
Most of our physical education teachers were just teachers, and they had to do the extra stuff on their own. I remember very vividly that they would hold a cane pole between two of the students down low, and we would all jump over it. And they would raise it and raise it and raise it.
Polls that have been taken by kindergarten, first- and second-grade teachers indicate that 30 percent of the kids have been deprived in some way so that they are physically unable to keep up with the class.
Though monetary compensation may never add up, teachers can rest assured that they are important.
As we try to compete in this global marketplace, we need to rebuild our infrastructure. We need to rebuild our schools. We need to make sure that teachers and first responders and veterans who are coming home from serving our country so proudly have jobs waiting for them.
Teachers shape so much of what a kid's upbringing can be.
I'm from a family of teachers. My father would drown me in the bathtub if my daughter didn't graduate from college. I don't care who she is or what she does. Just get the diploma.
In the Western tradition, the first writers were teachers and historians, vastly traveled, who spiced their reports with fantasies. They were also poets who sang and entertained prince and pauper.
Liberals spend a whole lot of time trying to convince us they love teachers, but dig even skin deep into the matter, and it becomes evident that liberals hate teachers.
Some teachers feel that if they ask for emotional help, they're a failure. But teaching is a team sport.
I really only had one audition in my life, and that was when I was 14 or 15. When I was that young, I listened to what my teachers would say, like wearing a certain kind of leotard that you'll be noticed in.
I'm into books - I love literature, so I toyed with the idea of being an English teacher. I had a fantastic English teacher at school. I think great English teachers make the world go round.
I felt intimidated the entire time I was in school by my teachers and classmates. But I just knew acting was something I wanted to do.
I don't envy my teachers. I used to preach to them.
One of my teachers says the sound you hear in the center of the universe is laughter. I don't know if it's true, but if you do something and 30 years later it still produces laughter, that's a fantasy you can't make up.
The biggest barrier we've seen to student progress is this: School policies and practices often prevent good teachers from doing great work and even dissuade some talented Americans from entering the profession. This needs to change.
I believe with all my heart that the American classroom teachers are one of our greatest and most heroic treasures.
Teachers make a difference in individual students' lives, yet they do not get the respect they deserve.
Both parents were teachers. My father became an assistant principal, and he was responsible for discipline at the school. So I didn't get away with much at home.
I had a friend who had been teaching music for a long time, and he knew a bunch of teachers, so I just put up the money and started a school.
Perhaps it is partly that we need to love books ourselves as parents, grandparents and teachers in order to pass on that passion for stories to our children. It's not about testing and reading schemes, but about loving stories and passing on that passion to our children.
We need quantitative assessments of the success of education. We need certification and qualifications both for teachers and for pupils. It is not a choice between quantity and quality, between access and excellence. Both of these will happen together if people really do believe in the importance of education to change lives.
I have come across both inspiring teachers of history and deplorable ones over the years, so one cannot generalise, except perhaps to observe that the profession seems to encourage anti-militarist sentiments.
Teachers themselves know if there's a colleague who can't keep control or keep the interest of their class, it affects the whole school.
I'm so fair that I didn't go in the sun as a child. When all my friends were on the beach, I was going to ballet. The teachers there didn't like you going in the sun, so I never did.
The poem 'What Teachers Make' is not without its detractors. This one person wrote to me and said: 'Gee, Mr. Mali. You don't possibly have a teacher-God complex, do you?' And that was the first time I'd ever heard of that expression. So, yeah, I'm sure I have a teacher-God complex.
In refugee camps around the world, I met people who were gone. They were still walking around but had lost so much that they were unable to claim any sort of identity. Others I met found who they truly were, and they generally found it through service to others. They became teachers when there was no school, books or pencils.
