Principal Teacher Quotes

As for myself, I always willingly acknowledge my own self as the principal cause of every good and of every evil which may befall me; therefore, I have always found myself capable of being my own pupil, and ready to love my teacher.

Great teachers have high expectations for their students, but even higher expectations for themselves.

The principal art of the teacher is to awaken the joy in creation and knowledge.

teenagers are never joking. when seeking to prove a point, principals and teachers should remember that teenagers are never, ever sarcasic or ironic. if they say "I wish someone would drop a bomb on this school right now," that means they have arranged for a nuclear arsenal to be emptied onto the school and should be immediately suspended and ridiculed. if they say they were merely coming up with a joking excuse to postpone a bio test, reply that all jokes are funny, and that since dropping a bomb on a school is not funny, it is therefore not a joke.

I daydream about a high school where everybody plays the harmonica: the students, the teachers, the principal, the janitor and the cook in the cafeteria.

In all times and in all places, whatever may be the name that the government takes, whatever has been its origin, or its organization, its essential function is always that of oppressing and exploiting the masses, and of defending the oppressors and exploiters. Its principal characteristic and indispensable instruments are the bailiff and the tax collector, the soldier and the prison. And to these are necessarily added the time-serving priest or teacher, as the case may be, supported and protected by the government, to render the spirit of the people servile and make them docile under the yoke.

Noah was no longer at my side when I turned. He had Kent from algebra pinned against the car. "I should injure you considerably," he said in a low voice "Dude, chill." Kent was completely calm. "Noah," I heard myself say. "Its not worth it." Noah's eyes narrowed, but apon hearing my voice, he released Kent who straightened his shirt and brushed the front of his khakis. "Get fucked, Kent," Noah said as he turned away. The idiot laughed, "Oh, I will." Noah whirled around and I heard the unmistakable impact of knuckles meeting face. Kent was on the concrete, his hands clutching his nose. When he started to get up, Noah said, "I wouldn't. I'm barely above kicking the shit out of you on the ground. Barely." "You broke my nose!" Blood streamed down Kents shirt and a crowd formed a small circle around the three of us. A teacher parted the throng and called out, "Principals office NOW, Shaw." Noah ignored him and walked over to me, inordinately calm. He placed his good hand on the small of my back and my legs threatened to dissolve. The bell rang and I looked at Noah as he leaned in and brushed his lips against my ear. He whispered into my hair, "It was worth it." - The Unbecoming Of Mara Dyer

Get in schools. Do you know what the racial achievement gap is in your school district? Find out, and then ask your school board, principals, and teachers what they are doing to address it.

A chiropractor is a doctor who performs adjustments on the spine," Rickey told the class before bending Gary backward and "adjusting" him, ripping off the false arm and spraying red hair dye all over the classroom. Gary howled in "pain" and collapsed dramatically on the threadbare school carpet, his legs flailing a bit before hitting the floor with a terrible, final-sounding thunk. That was the first time they were sent to the principal's office together. They had to apologize to their teacher and explain to their classmates that doctor visits were unlikely to result in surprise dismemberments.

You've been my teachers, clergy, my fellow students, coworkers, bosses, principals, sometimes you were a former friend or even family I once trusted. You've taken things I told you in utter confidence, & twisted them into lies to be used against me. Without cause, you have told lies against me. You have refused to see me as a human being. You have kicked me when I was up & you have kicked me when I was down. But today, you will kick me no more, I will no longer be your verbal or physical punching bag, Today, I discovered the secret that will never allow you or friends, who will one day turn on you too, to hurt me again. Today as I lay broken & bleeding in that dark place I crawl into when I think I can't take it anymore, I found something extraordinary. My humanity. As my soul screamed in bleeding agony & I wanted to die rather than live one more day in a world where you exist, I realized that my tears & ability to feel pain without lashing out to return that hurt to someone else makes me human.

I did not want to fight. I had to fight. If I didn’t, everyone else would have picked on me. Not only would I have had one bully, but maybe two, three, four or who knows how many. I had to do what I had to do since the principal, assistant principal, and my teachers weren’t doing anything about it.

Fire and fury! These people didn’t appreciate my art, laughed at my clothes, my looks, and made fun of my protruding ears. ‘Floppy,’ they called me. And the teachers and principals let it all happen. They didn’t give a shit. Whatever got them through the day without conflict or controversy worked for the teachers, but where were the parents? They taught their kids to be elitist snobs. These deaths are on you, assholes!

Our schools will not improve if we continue to focus only on reading and mathematics while ignoring the other studies that are essential elements of a good education. Schools that expect nothing more of their students than mastery of basic skills will not produce graduates who are ready for college or the modern workplace. *** Our schools will not improve if we value only what tests measure. The tests we have now provide useful information about students' progress in reading and mathematics, but they cannot measure what matters most in education....What is tested may ultimately be less important that what is untested... *** Our schools will not improve if we continue to close neighborhood schools in the name of reform. Neighborhood schools are often the anchors of their communities, a steady presence that helps to cement the bond of community among neighbors. *** Our schools cannot improve if charter schools siphon away the most motivated students and their families in the poorest communities from the regular public schools. *** Our schools will not improve if we continue to drive away experienced principals and replace them with neophytes who have taken a leadership training course but have little or no experience as teachers. *** Our schools cannot be improved if we ignore the disadvantages associated with poverty that affect children's ability to learn. Children who have grown up in poverty need extra resources, including preschool and medical care.

David sat in the teacher’s lounge. Two other shlemiels sat on the other side, getting coffee. Sports, movies, conversation. He would have to join the group. The new assistant principal was to join them this afternoon. Just say hello. He got up and got coffee. David held the hot coffee and pretended to drink it. Didn’t want to spill on his white shirt. Then a tall slender woman walked in with the main campus principal, Edmond, and she looked around. Now would come the meet and greet. Fresh meat. Edmond turned to him. “This is David Bar David, Doctor Bar David. Math.” The thin woman reached out her hand and David shook it. “My,” she said, “such a warm hand.” “But a cold heart,” he said.

I had begun to see a new map of the world, one that was frightening in its simplicity, suffocating in its implications. We were always playing on the white man's court, Ray had told me, by the white man's rules. If the principal, or the coach, or a teacher, or Kurt, wanted to spit in your face, he could, because he had power and you didn't. If he decided not to, if he treated you like a man or came to your defense, it was because he knew that the words you spoke, the clothes you wore, the books you read, your ambitions and desires, were already his. Whatever he decided to do, it was his decision to make, not yours, and because of that fundamental power he held over you, because it preceded and would outlast his individual motives and inclinations, any distinction between good and bad whites held negligible meaning.

(The principal art of the teacher is to awaken the joy in creation and knowledge.)

The third aspect of change is a systematic development of respectful and inspiring working conditions for teachers and principals in Finnish schools.

the principal’s role is to lead the school’s teachers in a process of learning to improve their teaching, while learning alongside them about what works and what doesn’t.

One of the quickest ways to make friends mad is to tell them what they should or shouldn't have done.

There’s only so much the principals and teachers can do, but they can do their part to make a difference.

While Calvin is in the classroom TEACHER: Yes, Calvin? CALVIN: Miss Wormwood, I'm a fierce advocate of the separation of church and state. CALVIN: Nevertheless, I feel the need for spiritual guidance and comfort as I face the day's struggles. CALVIN: So I was wondering if I could strip down, smear myself withg paste, and set fire to this little effigy of you in a non-denominational sort of way. CALVIN (After being sent to the Principal's office): Boy, what a touchy subject!

Taking inspiration from her own experiences as a wife, mother, principal and teacher, Ellick creates a realistic and thought-provoking modern scenario for readers to ponder, based on a well-documented historic trend.

If we want to build schools where parents and teachers are fighting to get in instead of out, we must make developing positive school cultures a priority for every school and principal that welcomes children each day.

the assistant principal told me how he “loved to read a great novel and discuss the meaning of life.” He smiled, sighed wistfully, and then turned suddenly serious. “But we can’t do that at our school. We have to focus on basic skills and classroom management.

When the school is organized to focus on a small number of shared goals, and when professional learning is targeted to those goals and is a collective enterprise, the evidence is overwhelming that teachers can do dramatically better by way of student achievement.

There is no priest purer than virtue, no prophet greater than faith, no preacher louder than prudence, no principality higher than goodness, and no power larger than love. There is no saint warmer than mercy, no angel swifter than joy, no nurse gentler than compassion, no pleasure sweeter than excitement, and no breeze cooler than peace. There is no student brighter than knowledge, no scholar sharper than intelligence, no teacher wiser than understanding, no disciple cleverer than humility, and no master loftier than wisdom.

Joe was so tired that he had slept through first hour Spanish, second hour history, and most of third hour English. The English teacher, Mrs. Lane, hadn't taken a liking to that. She decided to send Joe to the principal to discuss why he was so sleepy, which Joe hadn't taken a liking to.

Maturity means acknowledging that Romantic love might only constitute a narrow and perhaps rather mean-minded aspect of emotional life, one principally focused on a quest to find love rather than to give it, to be loved rather than to love. Children may end up being the unexpected teachers of people many times their age, to whom they offer—through their exhaustive dependence, egoism, and vulnerability—an advanced education in a wholly new sort of love, one in which reciprocation is never jealously demanded or fractiously regretted and in which the true goal is nothing less than the transcendence of oneself for the sake of another.

Got some more customers for ya," said Camden, taking off his baseball cap to bend the brim, and then putting it back on again. "Wait, she deals drugs too?" asked Brad. I couldn't tell if he was serious or not. Apparently, neither could the student teacher passing by us in the hallway; she whipped her head around to stare suspiciously for a moment before either deciding that we were harmless or deciding to stroll on over to Principal Davis's office in an exceedingly casual manner.

My parents were told by the principal of West Barnstable Elementary School and my teacher that I was a bright boy whose spelling was in the retarded range and whose handwriting was the worst they’d ever seen. I find it embarrassing that I spell so badly. I will do almost anything to avoid being embarrassed, but no effort either on my part or on the part of any teacher has ever dented my utter bafflement when it comes to choosing which letters to put down, how many, and in what order.

Disengagement is the issue underlying the majority of problems I see in families, schools, communities, and organizations and it takes many forms, including the ones we discussed in the “Armory” chapter. We disengage to protect ourselves from vulnerability, shame, and feeling lost and without purpose. We also disengage when we feel like the people who are leading us—our boss, our teachers, our principal, our clergy, our parents, our politicians—aren’t living up to their end of the social contract. Politics

It is not possible to spend any prolonged period visiting public school classrooms without being appalled by the mutilation visible everywhere—mutilation of spontaneity, of joy in learning, or pleasure in creating, or sense of self. . . . Because adults take the schools so much for granted, they fail to appreciate what grim, joyless places most American schools are [they are much the same in most countries], how oppressive and petty are the rules by which they are governed, how intellectually sterile and esthetically barren the atmosphere, what an appalling lack of civility obtains on the part of teachers and principals, what contempt they unconsciously display for students as students.

Getting along with people is a byproduct of constructive communication, and it is a skill that can be taught. Not only can it be taught-it should be taught!

The English teachers loved to pick apart the principal’s frequent, wordy missives; after all, Principal Kendricks had taught geometry before heading into administration.

Let me tell you about spirit.” The teacher comes alive, making eye contact with each of us as he speaks. “No one can command you to have spirit—not principals, governors, presidents, or even kings. There’s no spirit switch in your brain that can be flipped on or off. Spirit isn’t a week you can put on your calendar. It doesn’t come from posters, or streamers, or rallies, or funny hat days. And it definitely doesn’t come from making an ungodly racket with a cheap plastic instrument of torture that was invented purely for disturbing the peace!

Beyond simply rewording the standard into teacher-friendly, student-friendly language, teachers need to tightly align these standards with their curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

In essence, in dealing with their staffs, principals should shift from focusing on one-to-one work with each individual teacher to leading collaborative work that improves quality throughout the faculty.

Things I Used to Get Hit For: Talking back. Being smart. Acting stupid. Not listening. Not answering the first time. Not doing what I’m told. Not doing it the second time I’m told. Running, jumping, yelling, laughing, falling down, skipping stairs, lying in the snow, rolling in the grass, playing in the dirt, walking in mud, not wiping my feet, not taking my shoes off. Sliding down the banister, acting like a wild Indian in the hallway. Making a mess and leaving it. Pissing my pants, just a little. Peeing the bed, hardly at all. Sleeping with a butter knife under my pillow. Shitting the bed because I was sick and it just ran out of me, but still my fault because I’m old enough to know better. Saying shit instead of crap or poop or number two. Not knowing better. Knowing something and doing it wrong anyway. Lying. Not confessing the truth even when I don’t know it. Telling white lies, even little ones, because fibbing isn’t fooling and not the least bit funny. Laughing at anything that’s not funny, especially cripples and retards. Covering up my white lies with more lies, black lies. Not coming the exact second I’m called. Getting out of bed too early, sometimes before the birds, and turning on the TV, which is one reason the picture tube died. Wearing out the cheap plastic hole on the channel selector by turning it so fast it sounds like a machine gun. Playing flip-and-catch with the TV’s volume button then losing it down the hole next to the radiator pipe. Vomiting. Gagging like I’m going to vomit. Saying puke instead of vomit. Throwing up anyplace but in the toilet or in a designated throw-up bucket. Using scissors on my hair. Cutting Kelly’s doll’s hair really short. Pinching Kelly. Punching Kelly even though she kicked me first. Tickling her too hard. Taking food without asking. Eating sugar from the sugar bowl. Not sharing. Not remembering to say please and thank you. Mumbling like an idiot. Using the emergency flashlight to read a comic book in bed because batteries don’t grow on trees. Splashing in puddles, even the puddles I don’t see until it’s too late. Giving my mother’s good rhinestone earrings to the teacher for Valentine’s Day. Splashing in the bathtub and getting the floor wet. Using the good towels. Leaving the good towels on the floor, though sometimes they fall all by themselves. Eating crackers in bed. Staining my shirt, tearing the knee in my pants, ruining my good clothes. Not changing into old clothes that don’t fit the minute I get home. Wasting food. Not eating everything on my plate. Hiding lumpy mashed potatoes and butternut squash and rubbery string beans or any food I don’t like under the vinyl seat cushions Mom bought for the wooden kitchen chairs. Leaving the butter dish out in summer and ruining the tablecloth. Making bubbles in my milk. Using a straw like a pee shooter. Throwing tooth picks at my sister. Wasting toothpicks and glue making junky little things that no one wants. School papers. Notes from the teacher. Report cards. Whispering in church. Sleeping in church. Notes from the assistant principal. Being late for anything. Walking out of Woolworth’s eating a candy bar I didn’t pay for. Riding my bike in the street. Leaving my bike out in the rain. Getting my bike stolen while visiting Grandpa Rudy at the hospital because I didn’t put a lock on it. Not washing my feet. Spitting. Getting a nosebleed in church. Embarrassing my mother in any way, anywhere, anytime, especially in public. Being a jerk. Acting shy. Being impolite. Forgetting what good manners are for. Being alive in all the wrong places with all the wrong people at all the wrong times.

At high school I was never comfortable for a minute. I did not know about Lonnie. Before an exam, she got icy hands and palpitations, but I was close to despair at all times. When I was asked a question in class, any simple little question at all, my voice was apt to come out squeaky, or else hoarse and trembling. When I had to go to the blackboard I was sure—even at a time of the month when this could not be true—that I had blood on my skirt. My hands became slippery with sweat when they were required to work the blackboard compass. I could not hit the ball in volleyball; being called upon to perform an action in front of others made all my reflexes come undone. I hated Business Practice because you had to rule pages for an account book, using a straight pen, and when the teacher looked over my shoulder all the delicate lines wobbled and ran together. I hated Science; we perched on stools under harsh lights behind tables of unfamiliar, fragile equipment, and were taught by the principal of the school, a man with a cold, self-relishing voice—he read the Scriptures every morning—and a great talent for inflicting humiliation. I hated English because the boys played bingo at the back of the room while the teacher, a stout, gentle girl, slightly cross-eyed, read Wordsworth at the front. She threatened them, she begged them, her face red and her voice as unreliable as mine. They offered burlesqued apologies and when she started to read again they took up rapt postures, made swooning faces, crossed their eyes, flung their hands over their hearts. Sometimes she would burst into tears, there was no help for it, she had to run out into the hall. Then the boys made loud mooing noises; our hungry laughter—oh, mine too—pursued her. There was a carnival atmosphere of brutality in the room at such times, scaring weak and suspect people like me.

You're about to learn thirty ways to fast-forward through frustration, turn impatience into empathy, handle hassles with appropriate humor, think on your feet, keep your cool under fire, and continue to care-even if other people don't.

It’s good and just that you practice on teachers and school principals, because one day you are going to have to live in a world of lawmakers and tax collectors, and you should have some sense of how to use your freedom of speech to claim control over your life.

Hazel sometimes had a fantasy daydream at school where the teacher walked into the classroom and yelled, ISN’T EVERYTHING HORRIBLE? DOESN’T THE PAIN OF THE WORLD OUTWEIGH THE JOY BY TRILLIONS? WOULD YOU LIKE TO PUSH ALL OF THE DESKS INTO THE CENTER OF THE ROOM AND BURN THEM IN A GIANT BONFIRE? THEN WE CAN RUN AROUND SCREAMING AND WEEPING AMIDST THE SMOKE IN A TRUTHFUL PARADE OF OUR HUMAN CONDITION. SINCE YOU ARE SMALL STATURED, CHILDREN, IT MIGHT HELP OTHERS TO FEEL THE FULL BRUNT OF YOUR AGITATION IF YOU WAVE STICKS AND SHRUBBERY OVER YOUR HEADS ALL THE WHILE. WE DON’T WANT TO KILL ANYTHING WE DON’T HAVE TO KILL; EVERYTHING LIVING THAT WE’VE EVER SEEN OR KNOWN WILL DIE WITHOUT OUR INTERVENTION, OURSELVES INCLUDED; THIS IS A PSYCHOLOGICAL LEAD BLANKET THAT EVEN OUR MOST PERVASIVE MOMENTS OF COMFORT CANNOT CRAWL OUT FROM UNDER AND ONE UNEXTINGUISHABLE SOURCE OF DESPAIR, SO WE WON’T BE PERFORMING ANY RITUALISTIC SACRIFICES; THAT’S NOT THE DIRECTION WE WILL GO IN JUST YET; HOWEVER, ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL LAWRENCE IS ON THE PROWL FOR A ROAD CARCASS WE MIGHT BE ABLE TO USE AS A REPRESENTATIVE PROP BECAUSE NOWHERE IN OUR AUTUMN-THEMED POSTER BOARD DéCOR IS MORBIDITY OR DECAY SYMBOLIZED. OUR SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS CANNOT AGREE ON HOW BEST TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE BOUNDLESSNESS OF HUMAN CRUELTY. IN OUR SOCIETY SOME OF YOU ARE FAR SAFER AND MORE ADVANTAGED THAN OTHERS; AT HOME SOME OF YOU ARE FAR MORE LOVED; SOME OF YOU WILL FIND THAT CONCEPTS LIKE FAIRNESS AND JUSTICE WILL BE THIN, FLICKERING HOLOGRAMS ON THE PERIPHERY OF YOUR LIVES. OH, LOOK, CHILDREN—I SEE MR. LAWRENCE IN THE DISTANCE DRAGGING A PORTION OF A HIGHWAY-SLAUGHTERED DEER. LET’S GO HELP HIM LUG IT INSIDE AND BE REMINDED THAT WE TOO INHABIT BODIES MADE OF MEAT-WRAPPED BONES; LET’S MEDITATE ON THIS CORPOREAL TERROR. Whenever her mother had asked, Hazel always told her, School is great.

They suspected that children learned best through undirected free play—and that a child’s psyche was sensitive and fragile. During the 1980s and 1990s, American parents and teachers had been bombarded by claims that children’s self-esteem needed to be protected from competition (and reality) in order for them to succeed. Despite a lack of evidence, the self-esteem movement took hold in the United States in a way that it did not in most of the world. So, it was understandable that PTA parents focused their energies on the nonacademic side of their children’s school. They dutifully sold cupcakes at the bake sales and helped coach the soccer teams. They doled out praise and trophies at a rate unmatched in other countries. They were their kids’ boosters, their number-one fans. These were the parents that Kim’s principal in Oklahoma praised as highly involved. And PTA parents certainly contributed to the school’s culture, budget, and sense of community. However, there was not much evidence that PTA parents helped their children become critical thinkers. In most of the countries where parents took the PISA survey, parents who participated in a PTA had teenagers who performed worse in reading. Korean parenting, by contrast, were coaches. Coach parents cared deeply about their children, too. Yet they spent less time attending school events and more time training their children at home: reading to them, quizzing them on their multiplication tables while they were cooking dinner, and pushing them to try harder. They saw education as one of their jobs.

it’s a bitter and frightening moment when we suddenly seem to realize that the principal current within us is determined to carry us away from the person we love. Then every thought that rejects our friend and teacher turns its poisoned barb against our own bosom; then each defensive blow we strike hits our own face.

Parsons (born Marvel Whiteside Parsons on October 2, 1914 – died June 17, 1952) was an American rocket propulsion researcher at the California Institute of Technology. He was one of the principal founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Aerojet Corp. As an enthusiastic occultist and Thelemite he was one of the first Americans to

Jenna walked in between desks and plonked herself down behind hers, noticing AGAIN that the teacher hadn’t graced the class with his zitty presence. She thought Mr. Kennan needed to get fired, which said a lot, because she rarely paid attention to ugly teachers. She’d discussed this with the principal two weeks back when she’d been sent to his office after getting caught sleeping. She’d told him that if he employed more hot teachers like Mr. Daniels then maybe she wouldn’t pass out from boredom. The principal gave her a week’s detention because of that comment, saying that she needed to take things more seriously. But she WAS being serious. Jenna Hamilton from Graffiti Heaven (Chapter 28).

[At first, Calvin's at school, in his classroom.] CALVIN'S TEACHER: "We'll see what the principal has to say about your attention span, young man." A THOUGHT BUBBLE FANTASY FROM CALVIN's MIND (With visuals to match.) "The valiant Spaceman Spiff has been captured." A THOUGHT BUBBLE FANTASY FROM CALVIN's MIND (With visuals to match, coming from a space alien.) "The aliens doubtlessly want the secret formula to the Atomic Napalm Neutralizer!" ANOTHER THOUGHT BUBBLE FANTASY FROM CALVIN's MIND "Moments from the torture chamber, Spiff springs into ACTION." CALVIN, HIS TEACHER, AND THE PRINCIPAL. (The school principal is looking at Calvin, who seems intent on something...) THE PRINCIPAL: "Why is he eating his hall pass?

I’m fully aware of the intense political pressures bearing down on education. The policies through which these pressures exert themselves must be challenged and changed. Part of my appeal (as it were) is to policymakers themselves to embrace the need for radical change. But revolutions don’t wait for legislation. They emerge from what people do at the ground level. Education doesn’t happen in the committee rooms of the legislatures or in the rhetoric of politicians. It’s what goes on between learners and teachers in actual schools. If you’re a teacher, for your students you are the system. If you’re a school principal, for your community you are the system. If you’re a policymaker, for the schools you control you are the system.

What I had come to understand was that the root cause of poor performance in schools is not 'bad schools' or 'bad teachers' but poverty. Closing schools and firing their teachers and principals does not help students. If anything, it introduces damaging instability into their lives. The privatizers hail disruption and call it 'creative,' but it is neither creative nor beneficial.

We keep marching, our feet trampling over Principal Wilson’s threats and our teachers’ warnings. We are marching because those words deserve to be run over. Steamrolled. Flattened to dust. We are marching in our Converse and our candy-colored flip-flops and our kitten heels, too. Our legs are moving, our arms are swinging, our mouths are set in lines so straight and sharp you could cut yourself on them. Maybe we hope you do.

Nora Ephron is a screenwriter whose scripts for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle have all been nominated for Academy Awards. Ephron started her career as a journalist for the New York Post and Esquire. She became a journalist because of her high school journalism teacher. Ephron still remembers the first day of her journalism class. Although the students had no journalism experience, they walked into their first class with a sense of what a journalist does: A journalists gets the facts and reports them. To get the facts, you track down the five Ws—who, what, where, when, and why. As students sat in front of their manual typewriters, Ephron’s teacher announced the first assignment. They would write the lead of a newspaper story. The teacher reeled off the facts: “Kenneth L. Peters, the principal of Beverly Hills High School, announced today that the entire high school faculty will travel to Sacramento next Thursday for a colloquium in new teaching methods. Among the speakers will be anthropologist Margaret Mead, college president Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins, and California governor Edmund ‘Pat’ Brown.” The budding journalists sat at their typewriters and pecked away at the first lead of their careers. According to Ephron, she and most of the other students produced leads that reordered the facts and condensed them into a single sentence: “Governor Pat Brown, Margaret Mead, and Robert Maynard Hutchins will address the Beverly Hills High School faculty Thursday in Sacramento. . .blah, blah, blah.” The teacher collected the leads and scanned them rapidly. Then he laid them aside and paused for a moment. Finally, he said, “The lead to the story is ‘There will be no school next Thursday.’” “It was a breathtaking moment,” Ephron recalls. “In that instant I realized that journalism was not just about regurgitating the facts but about figuring out the point. It wasn’t enough to know the who, what, when, and where; you had to understand what it meant. And why it mattered.” For the rest of the year, she says, every assignment had a secret—a hidden point that the students had to figure out in order to produce a good story.

Thanks for getting me out of there,” I murmur, lacing my fingers around my knees, and looking up at him on his step. “Yeah. You looked a little green. “ “I don’t handle crowds too well. I’ve always been that way, I guess.” “You might get in trouble,” he warns, staring at me in that strange, hungry way that unravels me. He strokes his bottom lip with a finger. For a flash of a second, his eyes look strange. Different. All glowing irises and thin dark pupils. Almost drake-like. I blink to clear my vision. His eyes are normal again. Just my imagination in overdrive. I’m probably projecting missing home and Az—everything--onto him. “Pep rallies are mandatory,” he continues. “A lot of people saw you leave. Teachers included.” “They saw you leave, too,” I point out. He leans to the side, propping an elbow on one of the steps behind him. “I’m not worried about that. I’ve been in trouble before.” He smiles a crooked grin and holds up crossed fingers. “The principal and I are like this. The guy loves me. Really.” Laughter spills from me, rusty and hoarse. His grin makes me feel good. Free. Like I’m not running from anything. Like I could stay here in this world, if only I have him. The thought unsettles me. Sinks heavily in my chest. Because I can’t have him. Not really. All he can ever be for me is a temporary fix. “But you’re worried I’ll get in trouble?” I try not to show how much this pleases me. I’ve managed to ignore him for days now and here I sit. Lapping up his attention like a neglected puppy. My voice takes on an edge. “Why do you care? I’ve ignored you for days.” His smile fades. He looks serious, mockingly so. “Yeah. You got to stop that.” I swallow back a laugh. “I can’t.” “Why?” There’s no humor in his eyes now, no mockery. “You like me. You want to be with me.” “I never said—” “You didn’t have to.” I inhale sharply. “Don’t do this.” He looks at me so fiercely, so intently. Angry again. “I don’t have friends. Do you see me hang with anyone besides my jerk cousins? That’s for a reason. I keep people away on purpose,” he growls. “But then you came along . . .” I frown and shake my head. His expression softens then , pulls at some part of me. His gaze travels my face, warming the core of me. “Whoever you are, Jacinda, you’re someone I have to let in.

I thought Marie could handle whatever came along. I thought of her as someone who did whatever she wanted to. That's what she would have said. She skipped school a lot, and when she did come, no one seemed to care what she did. The principals and teachers at school had already given up on Marie. They hardly even saw her, except as some kind of blemish. She could have stood on her head wearing a burlap bag, and nobody would have noticed all that much. They thought she was stupid. She wasn't stupid.

The Portland school board's policy equated integration and racial assimilation. This policy, Rist explains, is a "means of socializing nonwhite students to act, speak, and believe very much like white students." It leaves dominant group values intact, does no damage to notions of white superiority, and helps to gain the support of those whites who view it as a means of helping "nonwhite peoples to become fully human by instilling in them `white' ways of thinking and feeling." In keeping with the assimilationist tone of the program, the principal assigned one or two black children to each classroom, and scheduled only a few special teacher-training sessions, which were poorly handled. The principal's desire was to treat the black students just like the whites. This approach was undermined by his failure to recognize and address fears and misconceptions of teachers about the black children's academic ability and behavior problems, the adequacy of their home backgrounds, and their moral turpitude.

Can you see why Teresa DeBrito was so worried about Shepaug Valley? She is the principal of a middle school, teaching children at precisely the age when they begin to make the difficult transition to adolescence. They are awkward and self-conscious and anxious about seeming too smart. Getting them to engage, to move beyond simple question-and-answer sessions with their teacher, she said, can be “like pulling teeth.” She wanted lots of interesting and diverse voices in her classrooms, and the kind of excitement

It’s our bad luck to have teachers in this world, but since we’re stuck with them, the best we can do is hope to get a brand-new one instead of a mean old fart. New teachers don’t know the rules, so you can get away with things the old-timers would squash you for. That was my theory. So I was feeling pretty excited to start fifth grade, since I was getting a rookie teacher—a guy named Mr. Terupt. Right away, I put him to the test. If the bathroom pass is free, all you have to do is take it and go. This year, the bathrooms were right across the hall. It’s always been an easy way to get out of doing work. I can be really sneaky like that. I take the pass all the time and the teachers never notice. And like I said, Mr. Terupt was a rookie, so I knew he wasn’t going to catch me. Once you’re in the bathroom, it’s mess-around time. All the other teachers on our floor were women, so you didn’t have to worry about them barging in on you. Grab the bars to the stalls and swing. Try to touch your feet to the ceiling. Swing hard. If someone’s in the stall, it’s really funny to swing and kick his door in, especially if he’s a younger kid. If you scare him bad enough, he might pee on himself a little. That’s funny. Or if your buddy’s using the urinal, you can push him from behind and flush it at the same time. Then he might get a little wet. That’s pretty funny, too. Some kids like to plug the toilets with big wads of toilet paper, but I don’t suggest you try doing that. You can get in big trouble. My older brother told me his friend got caught and he had to scrub the toilets with a toothbrush. He said the principal made him brush his teeth with that toothbrush afterward, too. Mrs. Williams is pretty tough, but I don’t think she’d give out that kind of punishment. I don’t want to find out, either. When I came back into the classroom after my fourth or fifth trip, Mr. Terupt looked at me and said, “Boy, Peter, I’m gonna have to call you Mr. Peebody, or better yet, Peter the Pee-er. You do more peein’ than a dog walking by a mile of fire hydrants.

Clemens was a passenger, Clemens Briels, and when teachers at the school did a little further checking, they learned that he was a renowned Dutch artist. In fact, Briels was one of the official artists for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. The drawing he crafted on the school blackboard was a version of his piece A Jump for Joy. one of the paintings he created especially for the Olympic Games and which was on display in Salt Lake City. The principal had the blackboard removed from the wall, framed, and covered with Plexiglas. It now hangs in the school’s library.

And just as no adult is able to observe all those rules, it is also difficult for a child to observe all the rules. As the saying goes, if you brush someone, there is always dust. Children live from day to day committing innumerable petty offenses that correspond to adult breaches of the law or adult immorality. For not following the counsels or weekly instructions of the principal for not doing what the teacher said or what the student council had decided for not carrying the entreaties of parents or elders or for not observing what society considered to be acceptable behaviour-for these kinds of offenses, I became the object of the most rigid application of the regulations.

Words pack power and these definitions are laden with values, often wildly idiosyncratic ones. Here’s an example, namely the ways I think about the word “competition”: (a) “competition”—your lab team races the Cambridge group to a discovery (exhilarating but embarrassing to admit to); (b) “competition”—playing pickup soccer (fine, as long as the best player shifts sides if the score becomes lopsided); (c) “competition”—your child’s teacher announces a prize for the best outlining-your-fingers Thanksgiving turkey drawing (silly and perhaps a red flag—if it keeps happening, maybe complain to the principal); (d) “competition”—whose deity is more worth killing for? (try to avoid).

We had really stretched to buy our house in a neighborhood with “good schools.” As I started to ask around and dig a little deeper, I learned that to get into the preschool I drove past every day I was going to have to camp out overnight and hope to secure a coveted spot. And the moms in the neighborhood told me if I wanted to make sure my child got the good teachers in elementary school I would need to start volunteering now for the fundraising committee so I would have influence with the principal. There were tips and tricks about getting into the right playgroups and music classes. Everything was whispered and shared secret club–style because there were only so many spots and everyone was vying for them.

Jobs also attacked America’s education system, saying that it was hopelessly antiquated and crippled by union work rules. Until the teachers’unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform. Teachers should be treated as professionals, he said, not as industrial assembly- line workers. Principals should be able to hire and fire them based on how good they were. Schools should be staying open until at least 6 p.m. and be in session eleven months of the year. It was absurd, he added, that American classrooms were still based on teachers standing at a board and using textbooks. All books, learning materials, and assessments should be digital and interactive, tailored to each student and providing feedback in real time.

After relating these things concerning John, he makes mention of our Saviour in the same work, in the following words: And there lived at that time Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it be proper to call him a man. For he was a doer of wonderful works, and a teacher of such men as receive the truth in gladness. And he attached to himself many of the Jews, and many also of the Greeks. He was the Christ. 8. When Pilate, on the accusation of our principal men, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him in the beginning did not cease loving him. For he appeared unto them again alive on the third day, the divine prophets having told these and countless other wonderful things concerning him. Moreover, the race of Christians, named after him, continues down to the present day.

Whenever you lose control, someone else always finds it.” These were the words of my high school English teacher Mr. Sologar on our first day of class. They didn’t have anything to do with literature or grammar, but I guess he wanted to kick off the class with a life lesson. It was a good one. If we acted up at home, he explained, control of our lives would swiftly transfer to our parents in the form of lost privileges or being grounded. The same was true at school. If we abused our freedom in the classroom or in the hallways—and we did!—we’d find ourselves in the principal’s office or confined to detention. If we got really crazy and decided to break the law, the legal system would step in to curtail our freedom. “No, control is never truly lost,” he repeated in his thick Indian accent. “If you fail to control yourself, others will control you.

We’re going on strike,” I announced. “And we’re not coming back inside until Joey Harrington is suspended. I don’t know what else because I’m too angry to think!” Mr. Feinman stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Huh.” He looked at the other students. “Is that what you all want?” “Man!” Clyde exclaimed, shaking his head. “I’ve got some demands, all right.” “Are we going to get in trouble for missing class?” asked Samantha Klinger, one of the gamers who kept pink streaks in her hair. Mr. Feinman shrugged. “I’d say yes. The real question is what if you win?” “We need an anti-bully committee,” said Bryce Smith, a theater kid with thick glasses. “Made up of students and teachers so bullies have to answer to someone other than the principal. So there’s no favorites.” The class murmured an agreement. The students behind me seconded the motion. “So go,” Mr. Feinman said. “Go and fight for your education, then.

Only from their authors themselves can we receive philoso phical thoughts ; therefore whoever feels himself drawn to philosophy must himself seek out its immortal teachers in the still sanctuary of their works. The principal chapters of any one of these true philosophers will afford a thousand times more insight into their doctrines than the heavy and distorted accounts of them that everyday men produce, who are still for the most part deeply en tangled in the fashionable philosophy of the time, or in the sentiments of their own minds. But it is astonish ing how decidedly the public seizes by preference on these expositions at second-hand. It seems really as if elective affinities were at work here, by virtue of which the common nature is drawn to its like, and therefore will rather hear what a great man has said from one of its own kind. Perhaps this rests on the same principle as that of mutual instruction, according to which children learn best from children.

Members who listen to the voice of the Church need not be on guard against being misled. They have no such assurance for what they hear from alternate voices. Local Church leaders also have a responsibility to review the content of what is taught in classes or presented in worship services, as well as the spiritual qualifications of those they use as teachers or speakers. Leaders must do all they can to avoid expressed or implied Church endorsement for teachings that are not orthodox or for teachers who will use their Church position or prominence to promote something other than gospel truth. . . . In any case, volunteers do not speak for the Church. As long as Church leaders feel they should not participate in an event where the Church or its doctrines are discussed, the overall presentation will be incomplete and unbalanced. In such circumstances, no one should think that the Church’s silence constitutes an admission of facts asserted in that setting. . . . I have seen some persons attempt to understand or undertake to criticize the gospel or the Church by the method of reason alone, unaccompanied by the use or recognition of revelation. When reason is adopted as the only—or even the principal—method of judging the gospel, the outcome is predetermined. One cannot find God or understand his doctrines and ordinances by closing the door on the means He has prescribed for receiving the truths of his gospel. That is why gospel truths have been corrupted and gospel ordinances have been lost when left to the interpretation and sponsorship of scholars who lack the authority and reject the revelations of God. . . . In our day we are experiencing an explosion of knowledge about the world and its people. But the people of the world are not experiencing a comparable expansion of knowledge about God and his plan for his children. On that subject, what the world needs is not more scholarship and technology but more righteousness and revelation.

STATEMENT AT YOUTH MARCH FOR INTEGRATED SCHOOLS As June approaches, with its graduation ceremonies and speeches, a thought suggests itself. You will hear much about careers, security, and prosperity. I will leave the discussion of such matters to your deans, your principals, and your valedictorians. But I do have a graduation thought to pass along to you. Whatever career you may choose for yourself—doctor, lawyer, teacher—let me propose an avocation to be pursued along with it. Become a dedicated fighter for civil rights. Make it a central part of your life. It will make you a better doctor, a better lawyer, a better teacher. It will enrich your spirit as nothing else possibly can. It will give you that rare sense of nobility that can only spring from love and selflessly helping your fellow man. Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights. You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in. April 18, 1959, Washington, D.C.

want to get every kid in this country reading and loving it. No child left illiterate. Right now, there’s nowhere else—not TV, not the movies, not the internet—where kids can meet as many different kinds of people and begin to understand them and maybe learn to accept who they are as they can in books. In fact, there’s nothing kids can do in middle school or high school that’s more important than becoming a good reader. If our kids, your kids, don’t learn to read well, their choices in life will be seriously diminished. That’s just a fact. It’s science. If kids don’t know how to read, one day there’s a good chance they’ll get stuck in some job that they hate. And it’s not like they’re going to be in that job for a couple of months. That job is going to become their life. That’s if they can even get a job. So let’s get them reading. Teachers, principals, school boards, give our kids books that are relevant and inspiring and, God forbid, sometimes make them laugh. Kids should read as if their lives depend on it…because they do.

How do you build peaks? You create a positive moment with elements of elevation, insight, pride, and/ or connection. We’ll explore those final three elements later, but for now, let’s focus on elevation. To elevate a moment, do three things: First, boost sensory appeal. Second, raise the stakes. Third, break the script. (Breaking the script means to violate expectations about an experience—the next chapter is devoted to the concept.) Moments of elevation need not have all three elements but most have at least two. Boosting sensory appeal is about “turning up the volume” on reality. Things look better or taste better or sound better or feel better than they usually do. Weddings have flowers and food and music and dancing. (And they need not be superexpensive—see the footnote for more.IV) The Popsicle Hotline offers sweet treats delivered on silver trays by white-gloved waiters. The Trial of Human Nature is conducted in a real courtroom. It’s amazing how many times people actually wear different clothes to peak events: graduation robes and wedding dresses and home-team colors. At Hillsdale High, the lawyers wore suits and the witnesses came in costume. A peak means something special is happening; it should look different. To raise the stakes is to add an element of productive pressure: a competition, a game, a performance, a deadline, a public commitment. Consider the pregame jitters at a basketball game, or the sweaty-hands thrill of taking the stage at Signing Day, or the pressure of the oral defense at Hillsdale High’s Senior Exhibition. Remember how the teacher Susan Bedford said that, in designing the Trial, she and Greg Jouriles were deliberately trying to “up the ante” for their students. They made their students conduct the Trial in front of a jury that included the principal and varsity quarterback. That’s pressure. One simple diagnostic to gauge whether you’ve transcended the ordinary is if people feel the need to pull out their cameras. If they take pictures, it must be a special occasion. (Not counting the selfie addict, who thinks his face is a special occasion.) Our instinct to capture a moment says: I want to remember this. That’s a moment of elevation.

Believing that your qualities are carved in stone—the fixed mindset—creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character—well, then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn’t do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics. Some of us are trained in this mindset from an early age. Even as a child, I was focused on being smart, but the fixed mindset was really stamped in by Mrs. Wilson, my sixth-grade teacher. Unlike Alfred Binet, she believed that people’s IQ scores told the whole story of who they were. We were seated around the room in IQ order, and only the highest-IQ students could be trusted to carry the flag, clap the erasers, or take a note to the principal. Aside from the daily stomachaches she provoked with her judgmental stance, she was creating a mindset in which everyone in the class had one consuming goal—look smart, don’t look dumb. Who cared about or enjoyed learning when our whole being was at stake every time she gave us a test or called on us in class?

While I was walking up the stairs, though, all of a sudden I thought I was going to puke again. Only, I didn’t. I sat down for a second, and then I felt better. But while I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody’d written “Fuck you” on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they’d wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them—all cockeyed, naturally—what it meant, and how they’d all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever’d written it. I figured it was some perverty bum that’d sneaked in the school late at night to take a leak or something and then wrote it on the wall. I kept picturing myself catching him at it, and how I’d smash his head on the stone steps till he was good and goddam dead and bloody. But I knew, too, I wouldn’t have the guts to do it. I knew that. That made me even more depressed. I hardly even had the guts to rub it off the wall with my hand, if you want to know the truth. I was afraid some teacher would catch me rubbing it off and would think I’d written it. But I rubbed it out anyway, finally. Then I went on up to the principal’s office.

In 2008, an Australian company commissioned a study to find out exactly how much people fear public speaking. The survey of more than one thousand people found that 23 percent feared public speaking more than death itself! As Jerry Seinfeld once said, most people attending a funeral would rather be in the casket than delivering the eulogy! I can relate to those people because I feared speaking in front of a class or group of people more than anything else when I was a kid. In fact, I dropped speech in high school because when I signed up for it I thought it was a grammar class for an English credit. When I found out it actually required giving an oral presentation, I didn’t want any part of it! After hearing the overview of the class on the first day, I got out of my seat and walked toward the door; the teacher asked me where I was going. We had a brief meeting in the hall, in which she informed me that nobody ever dropped her class. After a meeting with the principal, I dropped the class, but on the condition that I might be called upon in the near future to use my hunting and fishing skills. I thought the principal was joking--until I was called upon later that year during duck season to pick ducks during recess! I looked at it as a fair trade.

Melinda Pratt rides city bus number twelve to her cello lesson, wearing her mother's jean jacket and only one sock. Hallo, world, says Minna. Minna often addresses the world, sometimes silently, sometimes out loud. Bus number twelve is her favorite place for watching, inside and out. The bus passes cars and bicycles and people walking dogs. It passes store windows, and every so often Minna sees her face reflection, two dark eyes in a face as pale as a winter dawn. There are fourteen people on the bus today. Minna stands up to count them. She likes to count people, telephone poles, hats, umbrellas, and, lately, earrings. One girl, sitting directly in front of Minna, has seven earrings, five in one ear. She has wisps of dyed green hair that lie like forsythia buds against her neck. There are, Minna knows, a king, a past president of the United States, and a beauty queen on the bus. Minna can tell by looking. The king yawns and scratches his ear with his little finger. Scratches, not picks. The beauty queen sleeps, her mouth open, her hair the color of tomatoes not yet ripe. The past preside of the United States reads Teen Love and Body Builder's Annual. Next to Minna, leaning against the seat, is her cello in its zippered canvas case. Next to her cello is her younger brother, McGrew, who is humming. McGrew always hums. Sometimes he hums sentences, though most often it comes out like singing. McGrew's teachers do not enjoy McGrew answering questions in hums or song. Neither does the school principal, Mr. Ripley. McGrew spends lots of time sitting on the bench outside Mr. Ripley's office, humming. Today McGrew is humming the newspaper. First the headlines, then the sports section, then the comics. McGrew only laughs at the headlines. Minna smiles at her brother. He is small and stocky and compact like a suitcase. Minna loves him. McGrew always tells the truth, even when he shouldn't. He is kind. And he lends Minna money from the coffee jar he keeps beneath his mattress. Minna looks out the bus window and thinks about her life. Her one life. She likes artichokes and blue fingernail polish and Mozart played too fast. She loves baseball, and the month of March because no one else much likes March, and every shade of brown she has ever seen. But this is only one life. Someday, she knows, she will have another life. A better one. McGrew knows this, too. McGrew is ten years old. He knows nearly everything. He knows, for instance, that his older sister, Minna Pratt, age eleven, is sitting patiently next to her cello waiting to be a woman.

As Mollie said to Dailey in the 1890s: "I am told that there are five other Mollie Fanchers, who together, make the whole of the one Mollie Fancher, known to the world; who they are and what they are I cannot tell or explain, I can only conjecture." Dailey described five distinct Mollies, each with a different name, each of whom he met (as did Aunt Susan and a family friend, George Sargent). According to Susan Crosby, the first additional personality appeared some three years after the after the nine-year trance, or around 1878. The dominant Mollie, the one who functioned most of the time and was known to everyone as Mollie Fancher, was designated Sunbeam (the names were devised by Sargent, as he met each of the personalities). The four other personalities came out only at night, after eleven, when Mollie would have her usual spasm and trance. The first to appear was always Idol, who shared Sunbeam's memories of childhood and adolescence but had no memory of the horsecar accident. Idol was very jealous of Sunbeam's accomplishments, and would sometimes unravel her embroidery or hide her work. Idol and Sunbeam wrote with different handwriting, and at times penned letters to each other. The next personality Sargent named Rosebud: "It was the sweetest little child's face," he described, "the voice and accent that of a little child." Rosebud said she was seven years old, and had Mollie's memories of early childhood: her first teacher's name, the streets on which she had lived, children's songs. She wrote with a child's handwriting, upper- and lowercase letters mixed. When Dailey questioned Rosebud about her mother, she answered that she was sick and had gone away, and that she did not know when she would be coming back. As to where she lived, she answered "Fulton Street," where the Fanchers had lived before moving to Gates Avenue. Pearl, the fourth personality, was evidently in her late teens. Sargent described her as very spiritual, sweet in expression, cultured and agreeable: "She remembers Professor West [principal of Brooklyn Heights Seminary], and her school days and friends up to about the sixteenth year in the life of Mollie Fancher. She pronounces her words with an accent peculiar to young ladies of about 1865." Ruby, the last Mollie, was vivacious, humorous, bright, witty. "She does everything with a dash," said Sargent. "What mystifies me about 'Ruby,' and distinguishes her from the others, is that she does not, in her conversations with me, go much into the life of Mollie Fancher. She has the air of knowing a good deal more than she tells.

Even male children of affluent white families think that history as taught in high school is “too neat and rosy.” 6 African American, Native American, and Latino students view history with a special dislike. They also learn history especially poorly. Students of color do only slightly worse than white students in mathematics. If you’ll pardon my grammar, nonwhite students do more worse in English and most worse in history.7 Something intriguing is going on here: surely history is not more difficult for minorities than trigonometry or Faulkner. Students don’t even know they are alienated, only that they “don’t like social studies” or “aren’t any good at history.” In college, most students of color give history departments a wide berth. Many history teachers perceive the low morale in their classrooms. If they have a lot of time, light domestic responsibilities, sufficient resources, and a flexible principal, some teachers respond by abandoning the overstuffed textbooks and reinventing their American history courses. All too many teachers grow disheartened and settle for less. At least dimly aware that their students are not requiting their own love of history, these teachers withdraw some of their energy from their courses. Gradually they end up going through the motions, staying ahead of their students in the textbooks, covering only material that will appear on the next test. College teachers in most disciplines are happy when their students have had significant exposure to the subject before college. Not teachers in history. History professors in college routinely put down high school history courses. A colleague of mine calls his survey of American history “Iconoclasm I and II,” because he sees his job as disabusing his charges of what they learned in high school to make room for more accurate information. In no other field does this happen. Mathematics professors, for instance, know that non-Euclidean geometry is rarely taught in high school, but they don’t assume that Euclidean geometry was mistaught. Professors of English literature don’t presume that Romeo and Juliet was misunderstood in high school. Indeed, history is the only field in which the more courses students take, the stupider they become. Perhaps I do not need to convince you that American history is important. More than any other topic, it is about us. Whether one deems our present society wondrous or awful or both, history reveals how we arrived at this point. Understanding our past is central to our ability to understand ourselves and the world around us. We need to know our history, and according to sociologist C. Wright Mills, we know we do.8

The cane is just not going to cut it. I shared with some of my colleagues that these brothers live in neighborhoods where they are getting whapped with a piece of stick all night, stabbed with knives, and pegged with screwdrivers that have been sharpened down, and they are leaking blood. When you come to a fella without even interviewing him, without sitting him down to find out why you did what you did, your only interest is caning him, because you are burned out and frustrated yourself. You say to him, ‘Bend over, you are getting six.’ And the boy grits his teeth, skin up his face, takes those six cuts, and he is gone. But have you really been effective? Caning him is no big deal, because he’s probably ducking bullets at night. He has a lot more things on his mind than that. On the other hand, we can further send our delinquent students into damnation by telling them they are no body and all we want to do is punish, punish, punish. Here at R.M. Bailey, we have been trying a lot of different things. But at the end of the day, nothing that we do is better than the voice itself. Nothing is better than talking to the child, listening, developing trust, developing a friendship. Feel free to come to me anytime if something is bothering you, because I was your age once before. Charles chuck Mackey, former vice principal and coach of the R. M. Bailey Pacers school.

We speak of the things which you see with your own eyes, which We both bemoan. Depravity exults; science is impudent; liberty, dissolute. The holiness of the sacred is despised; the majesty of divine worship is not only disapproved by evil men, but defiled and held up to ridicule. Hence sound doctrine is perverted and errors of all kinds spread boldly. The laws of the sacred, the rights, institutions, and discipline — none are safe from the audacity of those speaking evil. Our Roman See is harassed violently and the bonds of unity are daily loosened and severed. The divine authority of the Church is opposed and her rights shorn off. She is subjected to human reason and with the greatest injustice exposed to the hatred of the people and reduced to vile servitude. The obedience due bishops is denied and their rights are trampled underfoot. Furthermore, academies and schools resound with new, monstrous opinions, which openly attack the Catholic faith; this horrible and nefarious war is openly and even publicly waged. Thus, by institutions and by the example of teachers, the minds of the youth are corrupted and a tremendous blow is dealt to religion and the perversion of morals is spread. So the restraints of religion are thrown off, by which alone kingdoms stand. We see the destruction of public order, the fall of principalities, and the overturning of all legitimate power approaching. Indeed this great mass of calamities had its inception in the heretical societies and sects in which all that is sacrilegious, infamous, and blasphemous has gathered as bilge water in a ship’s hold, a congealed mass of all filth.

The modern educational system provides numerous other examples of reality bowing down to written records. When measuring the width of my desk, the yardstick I am using matters little. My desk remains the same width regardless of whether I say it is 200 centimetres or 78.74 inches. However, when bureaucracies measure people, the yardsticks they choose make all the difference. When schools began assessing people according to precise marks, the lives of millions of students and teachers changed dramatically. Marks are a relatively new invention. Hunter-gatherers were never marked for their achievements, and even thousands of years after the Agricultural Revolution, few educational establishments used precise marks. A medieval apprentice cobbler did not receive at the end of the year a piece of paper saying he has got an A on shoelaces but a C minus on buckles. An undergraduate in Shakespeare’s day left Oxford with one of only two possible results – with a degree, or without one. Nobody thought of giving one student a final mark of 74 and another student 88.6 Credit 1.24 24. A European map of Africa from the mid-nineteenth century. The Europeans knew very little about the African interior, which did not prevent them from dividing the continent and drawing its borders. Only the mass educational systems of the industrial age began using precise marks on a regular basis. Since both factories and government ministries became accustomed to thinking in the language of numbers, schools followed suit. They started to gauge the worth of each student according to his or her average mark, whereas the worth of each teacher and principal was judged according to the school’s overall average. Once bureaucrats adopted this yardstick, reality was transformed. Originally, schools were supposed to focus on enlightening and educating students, and marks were merely a means of measuring success. But naturally enough, schools soon began focusing on getting high marks. As every child, teacher and inspector knows, the skills required to get high marks in an exam are not the same as a true understanding of literature, biology or mathematics. Every child, teacher and inspector also knows that when forced to choose between the two, most schools will go for the marks.

A school bus is many things. A school bus is a substitute for a limousine. More class. A school bus is a classroom with a substitute teacher. A school bus is the students' version of a teachers' lounge. A school bus is the principal's desk. A school bus is the nurse's cot. A school bus is an office with all the phones ringing. A school bus is a command center. A school bus is a pillow fort that rolls. A school bus is a tank reshaped- hot dogs and baloney are the same meat. A school bus is a science lab- hot dogs and baloney are the same meat. A school bus is a safe zone. A school bus is a war zone. A school bus is a concert hall. A school bus is a food court. A school bus is a court of law, all judges, all jury. A school bus is a magic show full of disappearing acts. Saw someone in half. Pick a card, any card. Pass it on to the person next to you. He like you. She like you. K-i-s-s-i . . . s-s-i-p-p-i is only funny on a school bus. A school bus is a stage. A school bus is a stage play. A school bus is a spelling bee. A speaking bee. A get your hand out of my face bee. A your breath smell like sour turnips bee. A you don't even know what a turnip bee is. A maybe not, but I know what a turn up is and your breath smell all the way turnt up bee. A school bus is a bumblebee, buzzing around with a bunch of stingers on the inside of it. Windows for wings that flutter up and down like the windows inside Chinese restaurants and post offices in neighborhoods where school bus is a book of stamps. Passing mail through windows. Notes in the form of candy wrappers telling the street something sweet came by. Notes in the form of sneaky middle fingers. Notes in the form of fingers pointing at the world zooming by. A school bus is a paintbrush painting the world a blurry brushstroke. A school bus is also wet paint. Good for adding an extra coat, but it will dirty you if you lean against it, if you get too comfortable. A school bus is a reclining chair. In the kitchen. Nothing cool about it but makes perfect sense. A school bus is a dirty fridge. A school bus is cheese. A school bus is a ketchup packet with a tiny hole in it. Left on the seat. A plastic fork-knife-spoon. A paper tube around a straw. That straw will puncture the lid on things, make the world drink something with some fizz and fight. Something delightful and uncomfortable. Something that will stain. And cause gas. A school bus is a fast food joint with extra value and no food. Order taken. Take a number. Send a text to the person sitting next to you. There is so much trouble to get into. Have you ever thought about opening the back door? My mother not home till five thirty. I can't. I got dance practice at four. A school bus is a talent show. I got dance practice right now. On this bus. A school bus is a microphone. A beat machine. A recording booth. A school bus is a horn section. A rhythm section. An orchestra pit. A balcony to shot paper ball three-pointers from. A school bus is a basketball court. A football stadium. A soccer field. Sometimes a boxing ring. A school bus is a movie set. Actors, directors, producers, script. Scenes. Settings. Motivations. Action! Cut. Your fake tears look real. These are real tears. But I thought we were making a comedy. A school bus is a misunderstanding. A school bus is a masterpiece that everyone pretends to understand. A school bus is the mountain range behind Mona Lisa. The Sphinx's nose. An unknown wonder of the world. An unknown wonder to Canton Post, who heard bus riders talk about their journeys to and from school. But to Canton, a school bus is also a cannonball. A thing that almost destroyed him. Almost made him motherless.

I wanted to shove her away, thinking of my job, of headlines, of how this kind of comfort was outside the behavioral guidelines of my contract. She began to sob more softly while holding me tightly, and I let her. I let her have control of me for that moment. I let her break behavioral guidelines as more important ones had been broken on her. And then we stopped being student and teacher—just a couple people at a loss when the powerful and unexpected had been suddenly thrust upon us. The principal and three students turned the corner and stopped short. I knew it might be years before I cleared my name, but far longer for her to reclaim her life.

Menno Simon, who lived through these times (1492-1559) and was well qualified to speak, being one of the principal teachers among those who practiced the baptism of believers, wrote: “No one can truly charge me with agreeing with the Münster teaching; on the contrary, for seventeen years, until the present day, I have opposed and striven against it, privately and publicly, by voice and pen. Those who, like the Münster people, refuse the cross of Christ, despise the Lord’s Word, and practice earthly lusts under the pretence of right doing, we never will acknowledge as our brethren and sisters.” “Do our accusers mean to say that because we are outwardly baptized with the same kind of baptism as they, that therefore we must be reckoned as being of the same body and fellowship; then we answer: If outward baptism can do so much, then they themselves may consider what sort of fellowship theirs is, since it is clear and evident that adulterers and murderers and such like have received the same baptism as they!

In 1992, he took over as the Scientific Advisor to the Minister of Defence and secretary, Department of Research and Development, and continued till he was seventy. The country’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, was conferred on him in 1997. A year later, in 1998, he led the team that conducted India’s second nuclear tests in Pokhran. Five nuclear tests were conducted consecutively and India became a nuclear power. In 1999, he was appointed principal scientific advisor to the government of India with the rank of a Cabinet minister. By 2001, he was enjoying a teacher’s life at Anna University in Chennai. Meant to lecture a class of sixty, most of his lectures ended up in an overflowing hall with about 200 students instead. In 2002, he was elected the eleventh President of India.

Thousands of husbands disappeared in those weeks. Sons as young as twelve. Brothers. Friends. What better way to remake society, my mother thought, than to eliminate the teachers and principals, the students, the lawyers and doctors—truly, anybody who had an opinion and a voice? Beyond the river, execution grounds, field after field irrigated with blood, waited to be discovered. Buildings would crush the bones.

For reasons we've explored, children struggling to read aren't going to be helped by the one-size-fits-all approach that is typical in so many schools. Rather, we need teachers who are trained to use a toolbox of principals that they can apply to different types of children.

means seeing how changes such as these fit into the big picture, too. Are all staff members and, indeed, students engaged in developing the vision and mission of the school? Do leaders constantly explain how specific changes or team tasks fit into this larger vision? Can teachers and students articulate that connection as well? When asked what kind of school they are involved with, will you get the same sort of answer from teachers, students, bus drivers, janitors, parents, and administrative assistants, as well as the principal?

Everyone knew the real reason discipline numbers looked good: Mrs. Rawlins was the assistant principal in charge of discipline, and she rarely enforced any actual consequences. This not only kept suspension numbers low, it also meant few teachers bothered to fill out referral forms in the first place—and these were the two ways the district calculated discipline numbers. It was, of course, these same two tendencies that caused actual student behavior at the school to skid downhill, but this was no time to make changes to the one set of numbers that felt assured.

My teachers and principal from Tanglin Secondary School were so proud of me (I was their first and only student who received the Colombo Plan scholarship), they bought me a small camera for me to take photos of life in UK. I should have taken pictures of Redhill instead. I should have taken a picture of Susi, the kueh kueh woman who always gave me free ondeh ondeh. I didn't know her name but I called her Susi because every afternoon at 3 p.m., like clockwork, she would walk through our corridor with a basket on her head, crying 'Bun Susi! Kueh chang babi!

The very next morning It was Valentine’s Day! They grabbed all their cards and went on their way. The classroom was decked out in red, pink, and white, with balloons and streamers, so festive and bright. Someone dropped by with a giant bouquet addressed to the teacher, who blushed right away. The card was signed “From a secret admirer,” but everyone knew it was Mr. O’Meyer! They played pin the heart and won goofy toys, and girls ran away from kissy-face boys. The art teacher came and painted kids’ faces. She put hearts on cheeks and sillier places! At last it was time to deliver the cards. Look! One for Lisa, Jim, and Bernard. They opened them up, read them and smiled, and laughed at the cards that were totally wild. Then they ate goodies, sweet cherries, and grapes, and drank punch with ice cubes in little heart shapes. And just when they thought the party was done, a knock on the door came at quarter past one. When what to their wondering eyes should appear, but the principal himself dressed in full Cupid gear! His arrows--how golden! His bow--curved and tight! The wig that he wore was a comical sight. He spoke not a word and was gone in a minute, leaving a present behind. Now what could be in it? They read Cupid’s note as he leapt down the hall: “Happy Valentine’s Day-- to one and to all!

Yeah,” said Max, “he’s right. We know that when our principals come in the room or the outsiders show up to observe, sometimes the teachers start doing things they never do! It’s like ‘who are you and what did you do with our teacher?

School in itself is a microcosm of society. These kids bring a lot of baggage with them, and as teachers with 30 plus kids in your classroom you have to take the time to get to know them, and not just see them as people you have to teach. And if they want to learn they will learn, and if they don’t want too then too bad. But you have to see them as your surrogate children. Charles Chuck Mackey, former vice principal and coach of R. M. Bailey Pacers…

now that many schools receive funding based on test results, teachers teach for those outcomes, not for curiosity or critical thinking, nor for learning nonspecific principals or values. Such training to focus on fact memorization lowers the intellectual level of the teachers themselves, not just their bored students. 

When a school is successful, it is hard to know which factor was most important or if it was a combination of factors.Even the principal and teachers may not know for sure. A reporter from the local newspaper will arrive and decide that it must be the principal or a particular program but the reporter will very likely be wrong. Success, whether defined as high test scores or graduation rates or student satisfaction, cannot be bottled and dispensed at will. This may explain why there are so few examples of low-performing schools that have been "turned around" into high -performing schools. And it may explain why schools are not very good at replicating the success of model schools, whether the models are charters or regular public schools.

He pounded his fist on the table. “If this helps Nina, then everyone in the school will honor and respect that.” Some at the table doubted the music teacher would cooperate. “It’s not her decision,” the principal responded. “This is a school decision. We support every student at the level they need to be supported to be successful.” That was a principal who “got It,

Nor is it wise to entrust our schools to inexperienced teachers, principals, and superintendents. Education is too important to relinquish to the vagaries of the market and the good intentions of amateurs. American education has a long history of infatuation with fads and ill-considered ideas. The current obsession with making our schools work like a business may be the worst of them, for it is threatening to destroy public education. Who will stand up to the tycoons and politicians and tell them so?

Earlier this year, a self-identified White, monolingual English-speaking teacher explained to me that, among other signs of her stupidity, Dr Baez’s English language skills are ‘horrible, and from what I hear, her Spanish isn’t that good either’...If Dr Baez, the bilingual school principal with multiple university degrees, including a doctorate in education, was subjected to such discriminatory thinking, then what could this mean for students, who were positioned in highly subordinate institutional positions?

it is in every teacher’s and principal’s best interests as future retirees to make certain that traditionally underserved students are underserved no longer. Establishing a student-centered learning culture in every school is one promising means to successfully address this issue.

Establishing a student-centered learning culture means creating the conditions and ethos that best support every learner’s ability to master a high-challenge, standards-based curriculum. Through a variety of means—including developing high teacher expectations for each student, creating a safe and orderly learning environment, providing academic press along with meaningful academic and social supports, affording supportive peer norms, and fostering helpful and respectful relationships—teachers and principals can re-boot their school’s culture in ways that advance the likelihood of every child’s academic success.

The school culture creates press when it sets expectations that every student can master a high-standards curriculum. Principals create press when they expect teachers to teach the curriculum and to help each student reach the required mastery levels. Teachers can create press by expecting each student to learn the class’s objectives, by providing intellectually challenging and engaging work, by familiarizing students with the specific standards and criteria for work quality and quantity, and by the types and frequency of assignments and assessments they expect students to complete as evidence for accountability. Press also comes when school counselors include many demanding courses in students’ educational

I want the building to be welcoming, but I don’t want to pretend nothing happened. I want us to move on, but I don’t want us to forget. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to do all that. When I was training to be a principal, the biggest threat we could imagine was an earthquake. They certainly hadn’t started the duck-and-run drills in the L.A. schools for drive-by shootings. Nor had they ever envisioned that schools would become war zones for rival gangs and street disputes. Now we have teachers and students dying in the halls. Small towns, big towns, black, white, upper class, lower class—it doesn’t seem to matter. And the human in me wants to rail against that, wants to live in denial, while the principal in me knows I can’t do that. I have an obligation to my students. If this is the world we live in, then this is the world I must prepare them for. But how do I do that? I’m not sure I’m prepared for this world. I know Miss Avalon wasn’t.

.​Explanation 2.​A Message from the Principal 3.​Poetry 4.​Doctor Pickle 5.​A Story with a Disappointing Ending 6.​Pet Day 7.​A Bad Word 8.​Santa Claus 9.​Something Different about Mrs. Jewls 10.​Mr. Gorf 11.​Voices 12.​Nose 13.​The New Teacher 14.​A Light Bulb, a Pencil Sharpener, a Coffeepot, and a Sack of Potatoes 15.​An Elephant in Wayside School 16.​Mr. Poop 17.​Why the Children Decided They Had to Get Rid of Mrs. Drazil 18.​The Blue Notebook 19.​Time Out 20.​Elevators 21.​Open Wide 22.​Jane Smith 23.​Ears 24.​Glum and Blah 25.​Guilty 26.​Never Laugh at a Shoelace 27.​Way-High-Up Ball 28.​Flowers for a Very Special Person 29.​Stupid 30.​The Little Stranger