School Quotes - Page 413

I need to eliminate 'like' from my vocabulary. I begin sentences with, 'That's seriously like ' I hear myself talking in this Los Angeles high-school student kind of way, and I hate it.

In high school, I would drive my teachers batty. They would make a statement, and I would say, 'Why is that?' They didn't want to be questioned.

I am old enough to remember when America's K-12 public schools were the best in the world. I am a proud graduate of them, and I credit much of my success to what I learned in Detroit Public Schools and at Michigan State University.

School district policies and practices have not kept pace with student and teacher needs.

Frankly, I'm not sure how far I would get if I attended public school today. It's not just that public schools aren't producing the results we want - it's that we're not giving them what they need to help students achieve at high levels. K-12 education in the United States is deeply antiquated.

You can have great teachers, but if you don't have a good principal, you won't have a good school.

I can imagine no more important contribution to our country's future than a long-term commitment to improving urban K-12 public schools.

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.

Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money.

A democratic form of government, a democratic way of life, presupposes free public education over a long period; it presupposes also an education for personal responsibility that too often is neglected.

I do not want church groups controlling the schools of our country. They must remain free.

Basically, my mother is a piano teacher, and she actually teaches piano at Yamaha School of Music today. She's a really, really amazing human being and is very patient. She had enough patience for me, as a kid, which I'm very thankful for. She made sure that music was a part of my general education as well.

I've always liked language and been a big reader. I always loved books as objects. My favorite time of year as a child was September when we'd go buy all kinds of notebooks and pens and markers for school. I think I wanted to be a writer just so I'd be able to fill up all those pages.

To be honest, I wasn't crazy about the kind of poetry I found in high school English books. I didn't get really excited about poetry until I discovered Lorca in college. If it wasn't for surrealism, I'm not sure I'd have become so involved in poetry. I was attracted by the extravagant imagery and elements of fantasy. This was in the '70s and it seemed to fit the psychedelic mood of the times. I found it liberating.

I can't wait to be a mum for a bit. I'm always a mum, of course, but I want to be domesticated and be in my house and do the school runs and all that.

I couldn't really be a part of high school, because I have a terrible time doing things that I don't want to do. I'm not good at it. It's not even like, I'm a rebel. I'm just bad at it, you know?

I like being a rapper and cursing and getting paid. But at some point I feel like I'm going to be an old angry ass man, who is going to run the school board or city council.

It's pretty popular today to say that everybody should learn to fail and that failure's a good thing. Intellectually, it's an obvious thing. But in fact, it gets conflated with another meaning of failure, so when we grow up as kids, failing in school was a really bad thing.

It seemed from the media that we were being told that all Haitians had AIDS. At the time, I had just come from Haiti. I was twelve years old, and the building I was living in had primarily Haitians. A lot of people got fired from their jobs. At school, sometimes in gym class, we'd be separated because teachers were worried about what would happen if we bled. So there was really this intense discrimination.

I know all the problems of the schools. They're rigid, they're bureaucratic, they've got a lot of problems. But it's such an important institution, and holds such promise.

For people who aren't familiar with my background, I didn't graduate high school. My career high salary was about $200,000. My last position was about $122,000. For a guy without a high school diploma, that's pretty good.

I remember as a kid having the offer of a scholarship, that it was going to be like going to Mars, and deciding to stay in my public school.

I think it's true that that's something that poetry can go to school on fiction. I think poetry can go to fiction to learn.

But, that was the beginning, though I didn't start writing until I was in high school and when I was in high school I really began to write poetry with great energy and enthusiasm.

In high school I was leafing through an anthology that our teachers had given up and I found a poem, I go, "That's so strange. This poem looks so much like my grandfather's poem."