I like a lot of things about yoga – its an intro to good music; with each good teacher you study with, you learn a lot about them personally; it’s not just about specific technique or poses. I also like Shavasana – not too many exercise routines let you nap at the end of them. You don’t see nap pods in CrossFit gyms.
The ideal direction is using something like Khan Academy for every student to work at their own pace, to master concepts before moving on, and then the teacher using Khan Academy as a tool so that you can have a room of 20 or 30 kids all working on different things, but you can still kind of administrate that chaos.
Personally, I had a great education. My mum was a trained teacher, a Montessori teacher, and I know that I could not have written ‘Eragon’ if I had gone into a public school system because I would have just been too busy attending classes and doing homework – I wouldn’t have had the time to write.
I’d have to say I’m most proud of my mentoring camp that I do in Dallas every year for one hundred boys from single-parent homes. I was raised by a mother who was a Sunday school teacher and a father who worked hard. Together they taught me to give back.
I remember my fourth grade teacher reading ‘Charlotte’s Web’ and ‘Stuart Little’ to us – both, of course, by E. B. White. His stories were genuinely funny, thought provoking and full of irony and charm. He didn’t condescend to his readers, which was why I liked his books, and why I wasn’t a big reader of other children’s’ books.
I was 20 years old, working as a roofer and a telemarketer and driving a taxi, just barely getting by. A friend of a friend suggested I try acting. I was like, ‘Why? What am I going to do? Community theater?’ But I took a class, and the teacher thought that I had potential, so I moved to Vancouver and started auditioning.
Writing became an obsessive compulsive habit but I had almost no money so I thought about being an urban firefighter and having lots of free time in which to write or becoming an English teacher and thinking about books and writers on a daily basis. That swayed me.
Teacher compensation isn’t the only factor in cultivating great teaching. Other important priorities include changing how we measure student performance, providing more flexibility to teacher-preparation programs, and improving how we train and support principals.
Disobedience is essentially a prideful power struggle against someone in authority over us. It can be a parent, a priesthood leader, a teacher, or ultimately God. A proud person hates the fact that someone is above him. He thinks this lowers his position.
Society needs both parents and nonparents, both the work party and the home party. While raising children is the most important work most people will do, not everyone is cut out for parenthood. And, as many a childless teacher has proved, raising kids is not the only important contribution a person can make to their future.
I decided at age 9, but I was reinforced at age 13 when a teacher told me I had talent. I can’t say she really motivated me because I already knew. I knew I had talent. I went to the Jewish community theater and got in plays there. Then I went for the movies.’
In the case of my book, I don’t think it’s really the coming-out gay novel that everyone really needed, even though it was received as such. The boy is too creepy, he betrays his teacher, the only adult man with whom he’s enjoyed a sexual experience, etc.
I think it goes back to my high school days. In computer class, the first assignment was to write a program to print the first 100 Fibonacci numbers. Instead, I wrote a program that would steal passwords of students. My teacher gave me an A.
My school friends thought I was outgoing and bubbly, but that masked a lot of insecurities, and maybe that’s the reason I chose drama – to build a bit of self-confidence. I had a great teacher, and I won a few speech and drama competitions and just fell in love with it.
Actually, acting turned out to be the perfect job for me, because I had a lot of different interests. I thought about being a priest at one point. I thought about being a teacher. I thought about being a lawyer. But I think acting is probably the best job for me.
I spent 19 years as a local government official; I spent two years in the Iowa Senate; my daughter is a public school teacher. We’re all counting on IPERS. The public servants are counting on the system they were promised when entering public service.
I chose to be a maths teacher because I thought the marking would be easy. You’d just tick and cross, whereas if you’re an English teacher, you’ve got to read essays. Then they said I had to analyse the methodology. It takes an eternity, it’s insane!
In the fourth grade, my history teacher gave us a project: Why was the auto industry located in Detroit, Michigan? I didn’t know I was going to be an economist, but I knew I was going to do something that was involved in answering questions like that one because I thought that was a fascinating question.
When I was nine, the teacher asked us to write a piece about our village fete. He read mine in class. I was encouraged and continued. I even wanted to write my memoirs at the age of ten. At twelve I wrote poetry, mostly about friendship – ‘Ode to Friendship.’ Then my class wanted to make a film, and one little boy suggested that I write the script.
I had a history teacher who taught us a lot about the Cold War. You had these examples of countries where the government had tried to manage the economy really intensely, and it ended up being bad for the citizens there. I found myself beginning to lean more right on economic issues.
My mornings start with mom coming into my bedroom and waking me up, or trying to wake me up, and then I go back to sleep. Then my mom wakes me up again and yells at me. Then she’ll get me to wake up, and I’ll get dressed and go to school. We go to school, and my teacher tells me that I didn’t do the homework well enough. And that’s that.
I love films that make me react emotionally and physically when you walk out of the cinema. Two of my favorite films however have got to be ‘The Tree Of Life’ and ‘The Piano Teacher,’ which also stars one of my favourite actresses Isabelle Huppert.
I read ‘the Hobbit’ at the age when you’re supposed to read it. I didn’t read ‘The Lord Of The Rings.’ My father, who was an English teacher, advised me that once I had read ‘the Hobbit,’ that would be enough. I could then move on to Dostoyevsky.
I think there are so many ways to become interested in music. I believe signs of sustained interest gives a sense of the right time. Music, if thought of as a language, would perhaps indicate that as early as possible is not so bad. I do believe that a really nurturing first teacher that makes the child love something is crucial.
There is no employing class, no working class, no farming class. You may pigeonhole a man or woman as a farmer or a worker or a professional man or an employer or even a banker. But the son of the farmer will be a doctor or a worker or even a banker, and his daughter a teacher. The son of a worker will be an employer – or maybe president.
