William Julius Wilson Quotes

I've had more students die than I ever thought possible. My husband urges me to quit Fairfield and teach at some school without gang members who live their lives only to die or end up as drug dealers.

I started out as a high school teacher in inner-city Chicago and realized quite quickly that my students weren't that motivated.

I quickly learned that teaching students was far more complicated than managing adults. Why, you may ask? Here are three simple reasons: Your employees are paid to listen to you, students are not. In business, employees are selected based upon a search and interview process. Teachers do not select their students. In business, an insubordinate employee is fired. An insubordinate student is merely one more challenge for a classroom teacher.

It's hard to get an education when teachers spend 70 percent of their time trying to discipline students.

An educator's most important task, one might say his holy duty, is to see to it that no child is discouraged at school, and that a child who enters school already discouraged regains his self-confidence through his school and his teacher. This goes hand in hand with the vocation of the educator, for education is possible only with children who look hopefully and joyfully upon the future.

I ended up dropping out of high school. I'm a high school dropout, which I'm not proud to say, ... I had some teachers that I still think of fondly and were amazing to me. But I had other teachers who said, 'You know what? This dream of yours is a hobby. When are you going to give it up?' I had teachers who I could tell didn't want to be there. And I just couldn't get inspired by someone who didn't want to be there

Much of the material presented in schools strikes students as alien, if not pointless.

Kids drop out of school mostly because school is boring and not particularly relevant.

We've made a huge effort globally and in the US, in getting kids jobs. This is one piece. The South Bronx and inner-city schools need it more than most. It's our hometown; JPMorgan Chase banks a lot of people here. If you see the school, it works. Kids all getting jobs, they're smiling, they're proud of themselves. That's what we need to do in inner-city schools.

It was like when you're a little kid and you run into your teacher or librarian at the grocery store or Wal-mart and it's just so startling, because it never occurred to you they existed outside of school.

I'd like to do something for inner-city schools and education for young people because it's constantly being cut.

Reversed [Hillary Clinton's] position on charter schools, reversed her position on changing the way our urban education is run, because she has sold out to the teachers union.

Teaching high school in an inner-city school is not an easy task. Every teacher is responsible for 150 teenagers. The amount of work is just mind-boggling. Remember, you're not just doing a job. You have these kids' futures in your hand; you have to inspire them.

During those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire.

If I'd loved my chemistry teacher and my maths teacher, goodness knows what direction my life might have gone in. I remember there was a primary school teacher who really woke me up to the joys of school for about one year when I was ten. He made me interested in things I would otherwise not have been interested in - because he was a brilliant teacher. He was instrumental in making me think learning was quite exciting.

Fifty years ago, teachers said their top discipline problems were talking, chewing gum, making noise, and running in the halls. The current list, by contrast, sounds like a cross between a rap sheet and the seven deadly sins.

The future teachers I try to recruit are those show have refused to let themselves be neutered in this way, either in their private lives or in the lives that they intend to lead in school. When they begin to teach, they come into their classrooms with a sense of affirmation of the goodness and the fullness of existence, with a sense of satisfaction in discovering the unexpected in their students, and with a longing to surprise the world, their kids, even themselves, with their capacity to leave each place they've been ... a better and more joyful place than it was when they entered it.

I was never really bullied at school. I was pretty confident in terms of school work and teachers and I've never shyed away from much but a lot of people have come up to me and said that they were bullied at school and my portrayal of Neville has influenced them a lot in their lives and helped them out.

The teacher will never give up on the student no matter how mixed up he or she might be

The worst letters come from retired high school English teachers. They will literally take a book and pick it to pieces and send me 14 pages of notes.

Christmas can be celebrated in the school room with pine trees, tinsel and reindeers, but there must be no mention of the man whose birthday is being celebrated. One wonders how a teacher would answer if a student asked why it was called Christmas.

Home is the first school for us all, a school with no fixed curriculum, no quality control, no examinations, no teacher training

Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That's my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet.

I actually came to New York when I was 12 and did ballet school for a little while. I was being groomed to be professional, and a lot of the professors and teachers there were drawn to me and thought that I could become a professional ballerina.

I know that I wasn't bred to be an Olympian. I didn't start running until high school, and I just stumbled upon to.