Some of my high school teachers did remind me that I had an excellent imagination when it came to making up excuses.
Over the years, I've worked for and alongside the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association. That's because I am proud of our public school teachers - including my niece who teaches down in Louisiana - just as I am proud of our nation's education system.
My first architectural project I did, I must have been fifteen, was for neighbors across the street, a couple of school teachers, and I designed a house for them. I didn't know anything about Le Corbusier or anything like that, but it ended up being a very cubistic kind of house. I always wanted to be an architect.
In a very weak economy, when you say 'cut government spending,' what you mean is you're laying off school teachers and you're de-funding various programs that put money into the economy. This means you have more unemployed people that then draw unemployment benefits and don't pay taxes.
I respect public employees and school teachers. They deserve a secure retirement.
Both my parents were high school teachers, and they were beloved high school teachers, so I constantly meet people through my dad's life where they'd be like, 'Your dad changed my life. He's the reason I became a lawyer. He's the reason I started writing. He's the only reason I stayed in school.'
I did my English A level in England, and we studied Shakespeare. I had great, great high school teachers, and we parsed the text within an inch of its life.
With a lot of help from my high school teachers, I went to college and became a medical tech at a clinic outside Kansas City.
I've harassed pediatricians and nurses, demanded extra conferences with preschool teachers, contacted speech therapists and occupational therapists over delays other mothers probably wouldn't have noticed, stressed over magnet school applications three years before they're due.
You can learn from everyone, the president or the cleaner. You need teachers in life, but they're not always school teachers or professors. You learn from ordinary people. You learn from travel, from just walking down the street.
