I had a brilliant drama teacher while I was at Roland Park: Ann Mainolfi. But the school was mostly rich in academics. It wasn't like I was prepping myself for a life in acting. There, you prepped yourself to have a stable future. The school's piece ...
I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at an English prep school. So the way to get round it was to become the school joker, which I did quite effectively - I was always fooling around to make ...
The religious neutrality in our schools is, I would argue, one of our strengths. Teachers cannot inhibit or deride religion. But this does not mean that we've taken God out of public schools. I'm reminded of the book of Esther in the Bible. God is no...
I did 'Degrassi' for five years in Toronto, and I made the decision to quit the show to go to theatre school, which a lot of people thought I was really crazy to do, but it was one of those major decisions in my life that I haven't regretted - hopefu...
I'd had an early stint in acting school, and there was something satisfying about becoming a character, about being inside another mind that you had to create out of yourself. As I moved toward a life in writing, I found many of the things I'd learne...
Emotional 'literacy' implies an expanded responsibility for schools in helping to socialize children. This daunting task requires two major changes: that teachers go beyond their traditional mission and that people in the community become more involv...
Growing up poor, I didn't even have a lunch to take to school. Lunch was 26 cents, and we didn't even know what 26 cents looked like. I didn't love school because I wanted to disguise that I was poorer than everybody else.
I went to a mixed school and I can't remember being bullied at school, ever. I was quite large, in those days. Usually, if you're going to be a bully, you'll pick on someone who is small. I didn't bully anybody, and I don't remember being bullied.
I had tried to go to college, and I didn't really fit in. I went to a real narrow-minded school where people gave me a lot of trouble, and I was hounded off the campus - I just looked different and acted different, so I left school.
Around 80% of Liberians are unemployed and only half of all children go to primary school. Just one in 20 go on to secondary school. Young children are on the streets instead of in the classrooms. We are not giving them the opportunity to learn and t...
I acted at school but got very bad parts - things that they'd made up in Shakespeare plays like 'Guard 17' - so I wrote plays and gave myself parts, then I wrote sketches, then I did stand-up. Even in the school nativity I was the emu in the manger.
Play is under attack in our nation's schools - and shrinking recess periods are only part of the problem. Homework is increasing. Cities are building new schools without playgrounds. Safety concerns are prompting bans of tag, soccer, and even running...
I enjoyed acting at school and went to an acting workshop for kids in Nottingham. It was twice a week after school and free to go to - ITV subsidised it. Every now and again, a casting director would turn up. 'Peak Practice' became a rite of passage ...
Technologically we can deliver the ability of parents to be able to log into a school intranet, be able to see what homework has been set or look at lesson planning, whether the child is attending, see what the timetable is like, all of that is possi...
If you make the decision to send your kid to public school don't even look at private schools. Just shut the door. Just turn off the TV. And then you don't even have to worry about preschool. You have to worry about what's good for your kid, but you ...
Every time we moved on, I joined a different class in a different school with different girls until, aged 13, my father had taken the decision to pull me out of school altogether. Everything I needed, he reasoned, could be found within the rich langu...
At one point, my house was a school for autistic children. I opened up my doors to about 30 kids and their families at the time. I was turning into Mary Poppins because I had to do something for these kids who have nowhere to go. So my house was the ...
Now almost every artist outside of New York is connected with some school or some museum school, and even in New York the majority are. That's an interesting fact when you take the idea of making money, making a living selling paintings. Only a dozen...
If you really believe that you're making a difference and that you can leave a legacy of better schools and jobs and safer streets, why would you not spend the money? The objective is to improve the schools, bring down crime, build affordable housing...
My school was pretty much all African Americans, but it was still a little tough to be in because I didn't have a lot of money. And when I came back to my neighborhood, it was tough to fit in there, too, because I was wearing Catholic school clothes,...
During my eleven years as a New York City public school teacher, I saw firsthand the impact that poverty has on the classroom. In low-income neighborhoods like Sunset Park, where I taught, students as young as five years old enter school affected by ...
