Randi Weingarten Quotes

Young people can be disruptive and screw up classes. But even if they are being a pain in the arse it's a cry for help - they don't feel like they are being listened to.

I came into a strong organization, and I hope I strengthened it more and expanded its capacity to deal with some of the challenges that might not have seemed as great 10 years ago, such as H.I.V., AIDS and children affected by war.

Violence is a problem we all want to solve. I want to make sure that kids learn to deal with anger by learning how to talk with people to solve problems. Here in the United States Senate I want to make sure we have safe schools, safe neighborhoods and good things for kids to do after school!

The power to prevent violence is a power that no police force seems to have anywhere in the United States.

We have guidance counselors that have caseloads of 500 to 600 children. We don't have enough to help the children.

People with AIDS, cancer and other illnesses need free nonmedical support services.

As an urban school superintendent, I learned that hiring, training, and investing in professionals to support our children's social and emotional development, meeting academic expectations for students with special needs, and finding more minutes of instruction in the week, not fewer, mattered.

We need mental health counselors in every school that needs one.

We've got to look to our educational programs and focus on doing what we can to stem violence in the schools.

All children should have a chance to speak up for what matters to them, like school violence, and they should be encouraged to take action to end violence against children.

What many teachers observe as violent behavior is often really just playful aggression.

What you get is what you see, which is suspending kids doesn't lead to high attrition rate. That is what the data shows.

I mean, I deal with so many problems on a personal basis with my students and I think to myself, 'Nobody ever trained me to do this.'

If our children are becoming teenagers who are abusive, have mental health issues, and are committing heinous crime, it only means that we have failed them as a society. We have failed to give them a safe, nurturing environment to ensure that they are well-balanced, useful persons in the society.

I got kicked out of all Gwinnett schools 'cause I got in a fight, and I had to go to military school.

In the high school classroom you are a drill sergent, a rabbi, a shoulder to cry on, a disciplinarian, a singer, a low-level scholar, a clerk, a referee, a clown, a counselor, a dress-code enforcer, a conductor, an apologist, a philosopher, a collaborator, a tap dancer, a politician, a therapist, a fool, a traffic cop, a priest, a mother-father-brother-sister-uncle-aunt, a bookeeper, a critic, a psychologist, the last straw.

Trying to stop suiciders -- which we're doing a pretty good job of on occasion -- is difficult to do. And what the Iraqis are going to have to eventually do is convince those who are conducting suiciders who are not inspired by Al Qaeda, for example, to realize there's a peaceful tomorrow.

In junior high in Germany I fought kids all the time. I had such a bad temper, I almost got thrown out of school. A few lickings from my dad got me out of that scene. He wore me out with a paddle.

I can remember being bullied and teased. It was absolutely horrible. I got kicked out of ninth grade for throwing a book at a girl who teased me. It was absolutely terrible.

You have a situation in which the U.S. is fighting three unjust wars and wasting trillions of dollars in public funds, all the while draining money from important social services and public and higher education.

How many times we have picked up in the streets human beings who had been living like animals and were longing to die like angels!

The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility, and evil with activity, as often happens in old-time discipline . . . A room in which all the children move about usefully, intelligently, and voluntarily, without committing any rough or rude act, would seem to me a classroom very well disciplined indeed.

If someone had asked who could stage the best intervention with a crazy woman who had formerly been an undead monster, Sydney Sage would have been my last guess.

All attack is a call for help.

Violence or the threat of violence [must] never be permitted to influence the actions or judgments of the university community. Once it does, the community, almost by definition, ceases to be a university. It is for this reason that from time immemorial expulsion has been the primary instrument of university discipline.