Amy Ray Quotes

Very effective way to do this with a bunch of second graders, is take a picture of The Lion King for instance, and a teacher might say, 'Do you know that the music for this movie was written by a gay man?' The message is: I'm better at what I do, because I'm gay.

Ensuring all kids have access to an effective, talented teacher needs to be a national priority.

As a former teacher and someone who has devoted her entire career to children and public schools, I understand the pain and frustration of parents who feel their children are not receiving the education they deserve.

We cannot expect systemic success when our teachers are underpaid and under-resourced, or when they split time being caretakers and counselors for our children as well.

By fully committing to our public education system and engaging holistically from cradle to career, we can guarantee that all of our children in Georgia, no matter their needs, have the kinds of teachers and neighbors in their lives that my mother had.

We have a society where every hit maker and TV presenter is gay.

But you are also the biggest threat of all ...You are a gay person I like. Your threat is that you make being gay seem non-threatening. It's almost as if your happiness does not take mine away.

If we use these common standards as the foundation for better schools, we can give all kids a robust curriculum taught by well prepared, well supported teachers who can help prepare them for success in college, life and careers.

That should be the goal, is that every kid in every neighborhood, despite whatever challenges they may face, are getting a great education in our public schools.

In the old-fashioned sitcoms, to be gay was, in itself, funny, and you laughed at the characters rather than with them.

All I can say on the Guilford story - and this comes more from my perspective as a father than an artist - is for parents and administrators to give so little value to the career of a public-school teacher - to allow him to be cast aside without exhausting every avenue to resolve the issue - is an obscenity worse than anything I've ever drawn in my comics.

And when it comes to developing the high standards we need, it's time to stop working against our teachers and start working with them. Teachers don't go in to education to get rich. They don't go in to education because they don't believe in their children. They want their children to succeed, but we've got to give them the tools. Invest in early childhood education. Invest in our teachers and our children will succeed.

I'm very grateful to have my kids in my life; they're my greatest teachers. But to pretend it's always easy is just not really true.

To play a repressed gay man, I had to explore what life was like in an era of sexual repression.

If i wouldn't have done comedy, I would have been a teacher. I was really good when I took an exploratory teaching class in high school, at getting kids' attention, and delivering lesson plans. Though my principal even told me that this was what I was meant to do. And that being a big-mouth comedian was a waste of time.

I think it's important to let kids be kids and be cautious about accelerated sexuality as pressure to mature too quickly. My hackles go up when I see a teacher making kids feel like they are older, special, mature. Let kids be kids.

Many kids think unless they go to one of these great Ivy League schools, which I was lucky enough to go to later, that they won't get the same kind of learning. But I learned just the opposite lesson; that my best teachers were not at Harvard University.

The teachers don't know anything. What are the kids going to learn with a horrible education system?

Half of all kids in public education are below the poverty line. Two-thirds of the achievement gap comes from factors outside of school. Teachers influence about seven to ten percent of what happens in kids' lives. When you think about those statistics, you have to think about how to re-envision education so it's holistic and so we share responsibility.

What is happening to teachers now across this nation is a disgrace. The attacks on them are a blot on our nation. Teachers and students are not different interest groups. Anyone who demeans teachers demeans education and hurts children.

One can feel calm and at ease. Just leave kids alone, please.

I'm a big believer that there's more power in numbers and the more you can expand the stories that are relevant to both communities, the better. For example, a school that's terrible for black kids is terrible for brown kids. We have to figure out ways to navigate the school systems and make sure that we're investing in a public education system that's beneficial for all kids.

Because if I were gay, [and] I'm not gay yet — maybe one day — but if I were gay, I'd like to see movies where homosexuality isn't always a problem.

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.

All drama teachers are very effusive, very emotionally open, very big, and gesticulate a lot, and are very physical. Those people don't work in banks and they don't work for pharmaceutical companies. They teach drama, or they may be theatre directors. That's why I love people who are openly gay in theatre, because they have license to do what they like, and there's a kind of artistic liberal tolerance thing that goes on.