Too often we act - ask our schools to be truant officers, our teachers to be truant officers, because we're giving them children who have, you know, they're not ready to learn. And if they're not ready to learn by the third grade, they know they're b...
My mother would organize huge parties for my elementary school classmates. To prepare, she would go back to the bakery in her old neighborhood of Inwood and get special shamrock cookies. Hawaiian Punch was served and we had shamrock napkins. It was a...
When I graduated from high school, I made the decision to pursue my dance training in London, England. I was so scared at first, not knowing if this little girl from small town Canada could possibly make it with these highly trained London dancers.
Where I went to school, Eton College, we had to wear dark trousers, a tailcoat, and a stiff, starched collar every day, and that was fine with me: Part of the reason I wanted to go there was because I've always loved dressing up.
I was a girly-girl until I moved to New York. Then I got really into the androgynous look of the early-'90s club scene. I had really short hair and started blurring the line a bit. But for me, grade school was about Benetton, Esprit, and Guess jeans.
I took the obligatory economics classes in school, but I've long been a fan of the Milton Friedman philosophy and its libertarian bent: One must be free to do what one wants to do, as long as you don't harm another. This is the seminal treatise on fr...
Mark Wahlberg, when I was in high school, people were like, 'You look like Marky Mark!' Then as I got older, they were like, 'You look like Donnie Wahlberg.' Now they're like, 'You look like Donnie Wahlberg's cousin from Massachusetts.'
I've been caught in parachute pants. And on my high school yearbook, they used the wrong picture. They were supposed to use the picture of me with a nice suit on. They used me with my collar flipped up, in a fuchsia and white striped shirt. I blame P...
I grew up on a farm and my grandfather quit school when he was 12, but when it came to common sense and animals, he was the smartest person I've ever met, before or since. He taught me that to touch an animal is an earned privilege. It's not a right.
Today, I marvel at the vegan foods in the supermarket, at the cruelty-free clothing choices in stores, and at the fantastic alternatives to dissection in schools, the modern ways to test medicines without killing rabbits and beagles, the many forms o...
Growing up as a young black girl in Potomac, Maryland was easy. I had a Rainbow Coalition of friends of all ethnicities, and we would carelessly skip around our elementary school like the powerless version of Captain Planet's Planeteers.
I had an instinctive feeling that the people who have little or no school training should have something coming into their homes weekly which dealt with their problems in a simple, helpful way... so I wrote in a plain, common-sense way on the things ...
I kind of quit surfing when I got out of high school, but then a few years ago I started to take it up again. I'm not an expert by any means, but it's so wonderful to get out in the ocean and get a different perspective on things.
I got picked on a lot. I was a complete geek in school. I had braces. I didn't have the hot girlfriend. I wasn't ever sought after. I was a stocky, awkward kid who got laughed off the tennis court when I tried that.
When I was at drama school in the U.K., I was there for two and a half years, and we did one week of television and film. It's right before you leave. It's like, 'We've taught you Chekhov and Shakespeare; you are likely to be in a washing-up soap-liq...
For more than 40 years, I have advocated the creation of a 'round the clock' community. This would mean, at the least, housing, schools and shops of various kinds alongside the commercial buildings. That kind of community had appeared in lower Manhat...
Being a teenager, I would think they were real strict, and I would get upset, but I'm glad they were like that. They didn't let us do whatever we wanted. We weren't allowed to date until we were, like, juniors in high school.
When I was in high school I got involved in the fringe theater scene in Chicago, and I met some openly gay people. I could see that it got better, that they were happy and loved and supported. I saw with my own eyes that it got better.
I started writing this feature comedy in New York - a Chris Farley vehicle. The script was decent. When I got to LA, I met some new friends in film school and had them read my script and give me notes.
When I got into high school, I got really into basketball. I had this itch that I wanted to just move. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew that if basketball became a scholarship or something, it would be a means to that. It turned out I co...
I once gave a talk at a girls' school and, once I'd finished, 29 out of the 30 girls wanted to be film directors. I think that's where we need to get girls interested in making films. We need to give them the idea that they can, that it's one of the ...
