Let’s face it: education relies on numerous outlets to cultivate student learning within the classroom. It's not just about finding motivated teachers, integrating the latest technology, or forming an ideal curriculum (although these things help). It’s about generating interest, linking purpose with instruction, and preparing students for the real world.

I think that it is safe to assume that the majority of individuals posting on this blog are familiar with the pitfalls of standardized testing, the overcrowding of schools, and low expectations that continue to plague schools around the country and further widen the achievement gap. These are huge problems. However, in order for high school students within the United States to compete with those of other countries, they must feel that they are working towards something significant.

Students repeatedly question, “Why do I have to know this?” It’s a worthy inquiry. You may be thinking, well, "learning facilitates discussion, which promotes higher-level thinking, which ultimately leads to the formation of a productive and respected member of society." Alternatively, you may respond with, “Learning helps you to understand concepts that will be on the exam, which you need pass to in order to receive an honorable grade in the class, to build an impressive transcript, which grants you access to academia to earn a degree, which can be used to secure a rewarding job to support a family.” Now, which is more appropriate?

I contend that neither are acceptable answers. Why? Because both prepare students to head down a road that is commonly traveled. It’s not creative or innovative - it’s common, it’s been done before. Now, there’s nothing wrong with this, however students in China and India aspire to do something that has never been accomplished – they often pursue paths that have never been explored. So, what is my point? American classrooms need to cultivate creativity to build imaginations and to explore new ideas for applications of the modern world.

It’s the teacher who answers the “Why do I have to know this?” question with, “So that you can do anything you want – so that you can nuture your thoughts, form ideas, and express whatever makes you who you are.” This is a teacher of the 21st century.
Votes: +1

Hi, Every teacher, does your comp[laint give you any help? Face the fact of the modern society. no one will care about your complain. Do our best and do what we can. That is enough. No one force you to stay in education longer. If work with that emotion in heart, better leave than stay.We do our best but we are not perfect. There is always sometning we can do to change the situation and in someway we may change a young student, that is a contribution.

Working with a happy feeling even we work in a hard situation. Happiness will keep us happy. And believe it, what we do do have a better effect on students. Votes: +0

I love teaching. I have been at the same elementary school for 25 years. Yes, times have changed: not enough money, lack of respect by kids, parents, community, and other teachers, however, police, ministers, doctors, lawyers, and other occupations also notice a lack of respect in their areas. I believe that we must reach the children in our classrooms and develop that love of learning that I developed years ago. Many of my former students would make great teachers, but other intersts and new technology are pulling them to other professions. Parents are busy and often mean well, but do not follow through with teacher suggestions. All I can do is to take one day at a time and one class at a time. I have the summer to recharge my spirit and find even more interesting projects and a variety of ways to teach a math or science concept. Our county offers teacher courses that are always positive and full of new ideas. I'm planning now for another year that will hopefully make a difference in some child's life. Votes: +1

In the last year I have taken a new role in my district as the instructional tech coordinator, and I've missed the classroom ever since. I left the classroom thinking that I could have an opportunity to grow and learn for myself and to share that knowledge with others as I learned, but what I miss the most is the interaction with kids. They are optimism and energy. Their future is unfolding by the moment, and when they learn from me, my efforts are rewarded. Yes, testing takes too much time. Yes, people could sometimes have unreasonable expectations. Yes, I had to be a mom to lots of students. Despite all these obstacles I still believe teaching can be a rewarding career. Votes: +0

I have been teaching for twenty (20) years at the same school in the same neighborhood. Teaching is a calling. If you did not know, then you are in the wrong profession. The rewards are not the salary or the vacation time but the smile on your students' faces when they get the difficult concept, win the award, or simply finding his/her niche.

Teaching is not for everyone. However, it is for those who know they must leave the world a better place than they found it. Votes: +1

> How are we going to teach in a world community dependent on the computer when we are still using the single adult standing in front of desks with a chalkboard and passing out paper and workbooks?

> The world needs community thinkers, people who can sort out problems with alternative solutions. The traditional classroom does not prepare them for the reality of helping each other in a real economy.

> How can they understand what “enough stuff” is when their parents but them 20 Webkinz and take them out of school for weeks of vacation.

> For that matter, why are our school days still so short, especially when most students have two working adults in their homes and stay at school for afterschool care?

> And, since almost none of us “farm” in the 20th Century model of rural children needed at home for crops, why do we still have 10 weeks of nothing in the summer? When you think about farming, the harvest seasons are Septmber/October. It’s a calendar system that needs reform big time.

> There is so much information in the world that we need to teach children how to access the information and then how to use it to apply to their lives in a positive manner so that the world at large benefits, not just the wealthy.

> Almost no children are encouraged in the visual arts fields when comapanies are searching the world for designers in many fields: Sports and leisure clothing, footwear, decor and styles of design in home decorating,etc.

> How can we stop separating the generations from each other with the concept of “contemporary” music. We label generations of people with an “era” of sound. AS entertainment, we encourage a consumerist audience of young people who are magnetized by advertising that draws them together in imitation of each other and allow them to build a narrow mindset where “It’s Just Me Here.”

> The children in the industrialized nations cannot grasp the debilitating reality of hunger and the cripling effects of education conducted in one parochial language. The United States, even though it creates an expected standard of basic cultural venues as the individual schools indoctrinate the students with national symbols, stories, and lore, aims to unify the work force into a defense mode against supposed infiltration of “foreign” ideas when, ironically, the whole basis of the United States of America is that many make the fabric of society with blended families and blended cultures from immigrating populations.

Let’s begin thinking about world education so that there are more people who can have the chance to be employed, healthy, and pursuing fulfillment within their community for the greater good.
Votes: +1

I have been teaching for fifteen years now, and for those fifteen years I have observed how "spoiled children" playing at parenting are ruining our country's future (their children.) Everyone believes their child is a genious, so when Susie or Johnny comes home with a "B" or, heaven forbid, a failing grade, Mom or dad calls the school raising cain because the teacher is an ediot. Well, the principal does not want to look bad with the board, so the teacher is threatend so that the grade is changed.
I firmly believe that if a student earns a 34 s/he should receive it. I have made the statement time and again that one can bring a child to school, but you cannot make him/her learn. If the child does not feel like participating today, tomorrow, or whenever s/he won't, then we have discipline problems. Again, this is the ediot teacher's fault.
When parents stand up and perform the actual job of being a parent; instilling responsibility, manners, a knowledge of right from wrong, and respect for themselves as well as their parents, then we will be able to lure young teachers back into the classrooms. Votes: +0

I agree with Kristeta's assertion: teaching is not merely a job, it is a VOCATION! It's a calling, and it is noble and humbling at the same time. If one is in it for the money, the prestige, or to be a control freak, they had better reconsider teaching as a career!

Chris made the comment that if so many teachers are at odds with NCLB, why is it still in authorization? I think it is because teachers need to become more politically active, if not focused.

"School Politics" can be a negative thing; but taken beyond the smaller educational community, being active politically on behalf of education and the children effected, is surely most important to the future of modern education.

We need to go beyond complaining, striking, or giving up to sell realestate--things that the media and public have come to expect of teachers-- and become more broad in our perspective. We need a real "paradygm shift" to happen in the U.S.

Votes: +0

I've been a Music specialist, composer, teacher, performer for 11 years now. Although i am more of a performer, it's funny that i am now a full time Music teacher teaching from Special Needs students to EArly years, Middle School and High School. The endless and undying work load teachers have are incomparable. Sometimes, you will think that it might not be worth the effort. But all the time, my students will prove me that it is a hundred percent worth the effort. I have students coming from different areas of the world, Canada, Nigeria, India, Philippines, Australia, England, Spain etc. and some of them can't even read a song.. and i thought for a while, this is going to be really tough, but after a few months, I am so surprised that they somehow survived but of course, it all means very very hard work. I can't enjoy my 2 twenty minute breaks as well as i am having students in the class so they can make up for the missed lessons and believe me, I am the only Music teacher in the school,,,well Im sure, its probably a normal experience? I am not having any kids yet as i am newly married and i might have a change of thought .. im not sure but one thing is sure in my mind and heart ...some might agree and some might not..but

The job of any teacher is not a job ...
it is a VOCATION.

Presidents were once students..and they were honed by teachers.

We need to involve the parents with regards to the education of the students, they should back us up by doing a full time monitoring as well..(no matter how busy they are with their work) and that they should not just depend on the school alone..
Votes: +0

Where does one start? I believe the only addition I can make in this discussion is a comparison that came to mind as I watched an old movie. In the movie, the actor was making an analogy to an unfair situation when he stated "You tell us all the rules to the game, then give us a fixed deck of cards, then complain when we cannot perform" (Markowitz, 1995). One could argue that this is a valid statement for teaching as well. I do not however, feel the appropriate response to the problem is to complain, the appropriate response is action. Educators and their extended families encompass a large portion of the voting population; but somehow, from local to national our unions are continually unable to address our needs as classroom teachers? If educators don't believe in NCLB, how is it still in authorization? How is California’s union allowing the Governor to cut 10% from the educational budget, just a few years after he failed to return money he borrowed from our budget? The answer to the problems in education lie in another question, how would the UAW or Teamsters handle such a situation?

Supposedly our Unions are better educated and better informed; yet, we are nowhere as successful in handling our industry issues... Just food for thought.

Works Cited
Markowitz, R. (Director). (1995). The Tuskeege Airmen [Motion Picture].

Votes: +0

Education programs need to find how we can develope education to meet the needs of society for today and the future of our globe. Teacher educators should be required to teach somwhere in K-12 before teaching at the college level. An advanced degree is not a substitute for experience. All teachers should be certified teachers - including home school and parochial school. Parents must be taught how to support education through their children and their teachers. The funding of teachers pay must be addressed and improved to keep excellent teachers. If not, they will seek employment in another field that will better meet their needs of daily living. Votes: +0

I am a new teacher (first year), in Arizona. I went back to college in 2002, climbed and scraped my way up the required college technology and math courses, while working full time and raising a daughter on my own.

I transferred to a long-distance adult degree program, took all the required education courses, SEI (Structured English Immersion), and finally my Professional Exams. I was a student teacher at the elementary school at which I had been teachers' aide for two years.

When summer came, I applied in earnest to no less than 12 schools locally. I was under the false belief that teachers were in such short supply, that I should have no problem getting into a school of my choice. Seven interviews and rejections later, I was hired, within 2 weeks of the first day of school, at an inner-city, largely hispanic (ELL) elementary, which had just missed the "Failing" tag mandated by NCLB.

I was grateful for the position, of course, but immediately got an education into what teaching in "the real world" is all about. Not that I hadn't already experienced some of this as an aide, and in my 40 yeaqrs of life on the planet. Still, it was a rude awakening:

The paperwork. The jaded teachers. The politics. The poverty and illiteracy of the parents, not just the students! "Professional Development" steeped in data-viewing and admonishments about "best practice", that apparently most of us teachers are never quite up to snuff! The lack of true collaboration, because the teaching teams can barely find time to meet.

It didn't happen right away. I think I finally had my first good cry in a fellow teacher's presence about two months into the school year. She told me to get used to it.She cried almost everyday her first year!

Somehow, I've survived. I was fortunate enough to have a mentor, provided by my district. At first, I was suspicious of her role. She has ended up being a great "sounding board", colleague, and friend. Luckily, I get to work with her another year! (I am "probationary" until 2009).

Despite all of the negatives, I've found reasons to be optimistic. The principal at my school is a fairly accessible guy, plain-speaking and honest. The kids are a bit unruly, but given the structure and understanding they need, they will usually respond well. I could have had a much worse group. For the first 2 hours of the day, I have a "mixed" class (teachers in my grade level switch groups by reading level, and to accomodate ELLs). Most of the teachers are hard-working, and have the children's welfare and learning in mind at all times.

As for me, I believe I have come a long way, at pretty great odds. Our district is awash in controversy and debt problems. I, along with all of the "new hires", were up for district-wide lay-offs. The district was planning to close about 3 schools, but after great public outcry, have since voted it down. I ended up keeping my job for next year, but there is always that uncertainty hanging over me.

Did I choose a good time to get into education? Is the problem just local, district-related, or can it be found all over the country? Are charter schools really the "wave of the future", as some people think? For anyone getting into education now, I'd offer this advice:

Get ready to have more questions than answers.
Be ready to learn, adapt and integrate new ideas. Be strong, be humble, but celebrate your accomplishments. Learn from mistakes. Don't let the politics get you down. Never become complacent. Stick to your principles, but be ready to be flexible. Try not to throw in the towel. The kids need us.

Peace! Votes: +0

To Whom it may concern:
The answer to who is next sits in our classrooms. Quite simply the next generation of
teachers are amongst our students. For example one of the best substitute teachers in our school district was a student of mine 7 years ago. The role of teacher/Mentor is a powerful influence for many students lives. I constantly encourage my students to do their best with the hope I will hear great things about them in the future.
Ted Devian
Norte Vista High School
Riverside, CA Votes: +0

Adult respect usually is attached to the level of professional qualifications or physical skills needed to perform a job. Professionals who form organizations to set and maintain standards of performance are an important part of this equation. If teachers desire more respect, perhaps we ought to mimic the professions that are generally admired. There are incompetent doctors and rocket scientists,for example, but that does not denigrate the general admiration for the professions of which they are members. Votes: +0

Sir Ken Robinson ( from Ted Talks - transcript)
(see video here: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66)


Good morning. How are you? It's been great, hasn't it? I've been blown away by the whole thing. In fact, I'm leaving.

There have been three themes, haven't there, running through the conference, which are relevant to what I want to talk about.

One is the extraordinary evidence of human creativity in all of the presentations that we've had and in all of the people here. Just the variety of it and the range of it.

The second is, that it's put us in a place where we have no idea what's going to happen, in terms of the future, no idea how this may play out.

I have an interest in education -- actually, what I find is, everybody has an interest in education; don't you? I find this very interesting. If you're at a dinner party, and you say you work in education -- actually, you're not often at dinner parties, frankly, if you work in education, you're not asked. And you're never asked back, curiously. That's strange to me. But if you are, and you say to somebody, you know, they say, "What do you do," and you say you work in education, you can see the blood run from their face. They're like, "Oh my god," you know, "why me? My one night out all week." But if you ask people about their education, they pin you to the wall. Because it's one of those things that goes deep with people, am I right?, like religion, and money, and other things.

I have a big interest in education, and I think we all do, we have a huge vested interest in it, partly because it's education that's meant to take us into this future that we can't grasp.

If you think of it, children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. Nobody has a clue, despite all the expertise that's been on parade for the past four days, what the world will look like in five years' time. And yet we're meant to be educating them for it.
So the unpredictability, I think, is extraordinary.

And the third part of this is that we've all agreed nonetheless on the really extraordinary capacity that children have, their capacities for innovation. I mean, Sirena last night was a marvel, wasn't she, just seeing what she could do. And she's exceptional, but I think she's not, so to speak, exceptional in the whole of childhood. What you have there is a person of extraordinary dedication who found a talent.

And my contention is, all kids have tremendous talents and we squander them, pretty ruthlessly.

So I want to talk about education and I want to talk about creativity. My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status. [applause] Thank you.

That was it, by the way, thank you very much. Soooo, 15 minutes left. Well, I was born ...

I heard a great story recently, I love telling it, of a little girl who was in a drawing lesson, she was 6 and she was at the back, drawing, and the teacher said this little girl hardly paid attention, and in this drawing lesson she did. The teacher was fascinated and she went over to her and she said, "What are you drawing?" and the girl said, "I'm drawing a picture of God." And the teacher said, "But nobody knows what God looks like." And the girl said, "They will in a minute."

When my son was 4 in England -- actually he was 4 everywhere, to be honest; if we're being strict about it, wherever he went, he was 4 that year -- he was in the nativity play. Do you remember the story? No, it was big, it was a big story. Mel Gibson did the sequel, you may have seen it, "Nativity II." But James got the part of Joseph, which we were thrilled about. We considered this to be one of the lead parts. We had the place crammed full of agents in T-shirts: "James Robinson IS Joseph!" He didn't have to speak, but you know the bit where the three kings come in. They come in bearing gifts, and they bring gold, frankincense and myrhh. This really happened -- we were sitting there and we think they just went out of sequence, we talked to the little boy afterward and we said, "You OK with that" and he said "Yeah, why, was that wrong?" -- they just switched, I think that was it. Anyway, the three boys came in, little 4-year-olds with tea towels on their heads, and they put these boxes down, and the first boy said, "I bring you gold." The second boy said, "I bring you myrhh." And the third boy said, "Frank sent this."

What these things have in common is that kids will take a chance. If they don't know, they'll have a go. Am I right? They're not frightened of being wrong.

Now, I don't mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. What we do know is, if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original. If you're not prepared to be wrong. And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong.

And we run our companies like this, by the way, we stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make.

And the result is, we are educating people out of their creative capacities.

Picasso once said this, he said that all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. I believe this passionately, that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather we get educated out of it. So why is this?

I lived in Stratford-on-Avon until about five years ago, in fact we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles, so you can imagine what a seamless transition this was. Actually we lived in a place called Snitterfield, just outside Stratford, which is where Shakespeare's father was born. Were you struck by a new thought? I was. You don't think of Shakespeare having a father, do you? Do you? Because you don't think of Shakespeare being a child, do you? Shakespeare being 7? I never thought of it. I mean, he was 7 at some point; he was in somebody's English class, wasn't he? How annoying would that be? "Must try harder."

Being sent to bed by his dad, you know, to Shakespeare, "Go to bed, now," to William Shakespeare, "and put the pencil down. And stop speaking like that. It's confusing everybody."

Anyway, we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles, and I just want to say a word about the transition, actually. My son didn't want to come. I've got two kids, he's 21 now, my daughter's 16; he didn't want to come to Los Angeles. He loved it, but he had a girlfriend in England. This was the love of his life, Sarah. He'd known her for a month. Mind you, they'd had their fourth anniversary, because it's a long time when you're 16. Anyway, he was really upset on the plane, and he said, "I'll never find another girl like Sarah." And we were rather pleased about that, frankly, because she was the main reason we were leaving the country.

But something strikes you when you move to America and when you travel around the world: every education system on earth has the same heirarchy of subjects. Every one, doesn't matter where you go, you'd think it would be otherwise but it isn't. At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and the bottom are the arts. Everywhere on earth.

And in pretty much every system too, there's a hierarchy within the arts. Art and music are nomally given a higher status in schools than drama and dance. There isn't an education system on the planet that teaches dance every day to children the way we teach them mathematics. Why? Why not? I think this is rather important. I think maths is very important but so is dance. Children dance all the time if they're allowed to, we all do. We all have bodies, don't we? Did I miss a meeting?

Truthfully what happens is, as children grow up we start to educate them progressively from the waist up. And then we focus on their heads. And slightly to one side.

If you were to visit education as an alien and say what's it for, public education, I think you'd have to conclude, if you look at the output, who really succeeds by this, who does everything they should, who gets all the brownie points, who are the winners, I think you'd have to conclude the whole purpose of public education throughout the world is to produce university professors. Isn't it. They're the people who come out the top. And I used to be one, so there. And I like university professors, but you know, we shouldn't hold them up as the high-water mark of all human achievement. They're just a form of life, another form of life. but they're rather curious and I say this out of affection for them, there's something curious about them, not all of them but typically, they live in their heads, they live up there, and slightly to one side. They're disembodied. They look upon their bodies as a form of transport for their heads, don't they? It's a way of getting their head to meetings.

If you want real evidence of out-of-body experiences, by the way, get yourself along to a residential conference of senior academics, and pop into the discotheque on the final night, and there you will see it, grown men and women writhing uncontrollably, off the beat, waiting until it ends so they can go home and write a paper about it.

Now our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability. And there's a reason. The whole system was invented round the world there were no public systems of education really before the 19th century. They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism.

So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas: Number one, that the most useful subjects for work are at the top. So you were probably steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid, things you liked, on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that. Is that right? Don't do music, you're not going to be a musician; don't do art, you're not going to be an artist. Benign advice -- now, profoundly mistaken. The whole world is engulfed in a revolution.

And the second is, academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence because the universities designed the system in their image. If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn't valued, or was actually stigmatized. And I think we can't afford to go on that way.

In the next 30 years. according to Unesco, more people worldwide will be graduating through education than since the beginning of history. [12:27] More people, and it's the combination of all the things we've talked about -- technology and its transformation effect on work, and demography and the huge explosion in population.

Suddenly degrees aren't worth anything. Isn't that true? When I was a student, if you had a degree, you had a job. If you didn't have a job it's because you didn't want one. And I didn't want one, frankly.

But now kids with degrees are often heading home to carry on playing video games, because you need an MA where the previous job required a BA, and now you need a PhD for the other. It's a process of academic inflation. And it indicates the whole structure of education is shifting beneath our feet. We need to radically rethink our view of intelligence.

We know three things about intelligence: One, it's diverse, we think about the world in all the ways we experience it. We think visually, we think in sound, we think kinesthetically. We think in abstract terms, we think in movement. Secondly, intelligence is dynamic. If you look at the interactions of a human brain, as we heard yesterday from a number of presentations, intelligence is wonderfully interactive. The brain isn't divided into compartments. In fact, creativity, which I define as the process of having original ideas that have value, more often than not comes about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things. The brain is intentionally -- by the way, there's a shaft of nerves that joins the two halves of the brain called the corpus collosum, and it's thicker in women. Following on from Helen yesterday, I think this is probably why women are better at multitasking, because you are, aren't you, there's a raft of research, but I know it from my personal life.

If my wife is cooking a meal at home, which is not often, thankfully, but you know, she's doing (oh, she's good at some things) but if she's cooking, you know, she's dealing with people on the phone, she's talking to the kids, she's painting the ceiling, she's doing open-heart surgery over here; if I'm cooking, the door is shut, the kids are out, the phone's on the hook, if she comes in I get annoyed, I say "Terry, please, I'm trying to fry an egg in here, give me a break." (You know that old philosophical thing, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, did it happen, remember that old chestnut, I saw a great T-shirt recently that said, "If a man speaks his mind in a forest, and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?")

And the third thing about intelligence is, it's distinct. I'm doing a new book at the moment called Epiphany which is based on a series of interviews with people about how they discovered their talent. I'm fascinated by how people got to be there. It's really prompted by a conversation I had with a wonderful woman who maybe most people have never heard of, she's called Gillian Lynne, have you heard of her? Some have. She's a choreographer and everybody knows her work. She did Cats, and Phantom of the Opera, she's wonderful. I used to be on the board of the Royal Ballet, in England, as you can see, and Gillian and I had lunch one day and I said Gillian, how'd you get to be a dancer? And she said it was interesting, when she was at school, she was really hopeless. And the school, in the 30s, wrote her parents and said, "We think Gillian has a learning disorder." She couldn't concentrate, she was fidgeting. I think now they'd say she had ADHD. Wouldn't you? But this was the 1930s and ADHD hadn't been invented at this point. It wasn't an available condition. People weren't aware they could have that.

Anyway she went to see this specialist, in this oak-paneled room, and she was there with her mother and she was led and sat on a chair at the end, and she sat on her hands for 20 minutes while this doctor talked to her mother about all the problems Gillian was having at school. And at the end of it -- because she was disturbing people, her homework was always late, and so on, little kid of 8 -- in the end, the doctor went and sat next to Gillian and said, "Gillian I've listened to all these things that your mother's told me, and I need to speak to her privately." He said, "Wait here, we'll be back, we won't be very long," and they went and left her.

But as they went out the room, he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk, and when they got out the room, he said to her mother, "Just stand and watch her." And the minute they left the room, she said, she was on her feet, moving to the music. And they watched for a few minutes and he turned to her mother and said, "Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn't sick; she's a dancer. Take her to a dance school."

I said, "What happened?"

She said, "She did. I can't tell you how wonderful it was. We walked in this room and it was full of people like me, people who couldn't sit still. People who had to move to think." Who had to move to think. They did ballet, they did tap, they did jazz, they did modern, they did contemporary. She was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet School, she became a soloist, she had a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet, she eventually graduated from the Royal Ballet School and founded her own company, the Gillian Lynne Dance Company, and met Andrew Lloyd Weber.

She's been responsible for some of the most successful musical theater productions in history, she's given pleasure to millions, and she's a multimillionaire.

Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.

Now, I think -- [applause] What I think it comes to is this: Al Gore spoke the other night about ecology and the revolution that was triggered by Rachel Carson. I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth, for a particular commodity, and for the future, it won't serve us.

We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we're educating our children. There was a wonderful quote by Jonas Salk, who said, "If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish." And he's right.

Votes: +0

The more I read this comments, the more familiar they seem to be. Same situations than in Mexico; a undervalued career, parents delegating responsibilities, apathy and disrespectful attitudes, teachers under government and society pressions and unrealistic expectations, etc.
And all of us, teachers, trying to hold only on our love for teaching and personal beliefs.
Well, we become on that we believe in,so, give ourselves a big dosis of courage, in order to continue trying... Votes: +0

I am first year teacher, who has received her certification via Alternative Certification in Texas, and am lucky enough to have a support system in place both at my school and through the company that I received my certification. I have passed both the content and the PPR exams for the state of Texas. I realized very quickly that at my school (TITLE I) that we are soo much more than just a teacher, I have students who are in horrible conditions at home (no running water, electricity, etc., or have been abused by step parents, etc.), who are reaching out the only way they know how to do, which is usually by inappropriate behavior, for help, comfort, and support. Yes, the paperwork is daunting, and yes teaching to the TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) Test is more if a mess, than actual math, but the rewards of seeing these junior high students, overcome the odds and TRY to succeed, outweighs all the bad students (and I have several). Our school is divided up into "Pods" of core content teachers, that all the students have, and we spot trends in students faster with us meeting on a weekly basis (yes it is before school or after school, outside the regular time), we have 2 first year teachers and in our pod of 150 students we have the largest case load of Special Ed Students (who have been mainstreamed into the classroom -- many without the support they require) and discipline problems in the school, why did they give them ot us??? Because, as new teachers we have been "trained" to understand the problems that they face and help equip them make better choices. The requirements to write a student up and send them to the office are many (there are 9 steps before you are to refer a student to the pricipal), and as a result the students do not see consequences for their actions. Why are teachers leaving in mass numbers? That is why! Votes: +0

I am teacher for 20years this year and i enjoy teaching regardless of its demands and still believe that teachers can make a difference to our society especially those who are committed to the calling. Nowadays teachers, teachers complain of the workload and i agree with them about that, therefore need support from departmental officials and the school management for effective teaching and learning. Learners still need a shoulder to lean even those who show up no respect, it can be dicovered that there are underlying causes for a call for attention.A call to teachers to continue with guiding those learners as there seems a lot is happening in this generation. Therfore support has to be given to educators as well as they have their own problems as humans. Votes: +0

I am from the Philipines.Educational patronage is one of the practices that tainted the school system were I am teaching. Our administrator lead off some colleagues because they failed to pass the Civil Service Examination for Teachers. But her sister who did not make it like the others stayed on & is even assigned as teacher/adviser of our Pilot class. This same administrator keeps threatening teachers of would be punish- ment if memoranda are not followed. But she herself do not report to her station but forced herself to man the principalship in our school on the strength of a municipal resolution requesting the Schools Division Superintendent to retain her in our school- her choice. She has a bank of reasons on her sleeves when teachers who are not tight with her is applying for a promotion. But readily promotes those who bow down to her wishes. Her philosopy "I would rather consider promoting teachers who do not question anything than meritorious ones who questions my decisions. This I beleive is a grave abuse of discretion & power. Votes: +0

The government (state and federal) have put unrealistic expectations on teachers and schools. I agree with all of the posts that say that parents are left out. Education starts at home, or used to. Now teachers and schools are responsible for before/after care, breakfast and lunch, making sure students get shots and visit the dentist, etc, etc. I have been a special education teacher for 12 years, my mother is a teacher (28 years), and my brother is a teacher (5 years). I look at it this way, I went into teaching to teach and help students with their life's dreams (or help them figure them out). I teacher first and foremost, and then worry about what the government wants from me. If they don't like my performance or my students don't meet standards (they usually don't, that's why they are special ed), then they can fire me. I am sure I can find another job that makes more money. But I still like teaching and hopefully NCLB and other policies will blow over and teachers will be able to teach again. Votes: +1