Top 97 Quotes & Sayings by Charles Best

Public school teachers from every corner of America post classroom project requests on DonorsChoose.org. Requests range from pencils for a poetry writing unit to violins for a school recital to microscope slides for a biology class.

Our ideological dilemmas won't ever be solved by machines.

Our brains are designed to solve some of our most complex problems when we're distracted by routine habits.

For my 9th birthday, my only wish was to eat like a farmer boy. I had devoured 'The Little House on the Prairie' book series and wanted to be like Almanzo Wilder, the protagonist of 'Farmer Boy,' one of the later installments in the 'Little House' series.

Whether you're saying 'thank you' to friends, family members, customers, or a hiring manager who interviewed you for a job, the case in favor of gratitude is both altruistic and pragmatic.

We think the ability to rattle off people you are grateful to and thankful to is often sort of a proxy for openness to learning from others.

Within a single school, teachers often encounter differences in poverty levels, parent involvement, and student readiness.

I was a social studies teacher at a high school in the Bronx for five years.

I was lucky enough to go to boarding school for my high school years, and I had all the resources that I possibly could needed - squash courts and every book you ever would have wanted, every art supply.

I think it's the strength of the idea that's made Donors Choose work, not me. I mean, I'm determined, and I work hard, but so does everyone else.

Committed teachers know their students' needs better than anyone in the system. Traditionally, however, teachers have little control over the purchase of student materials.

To take on the jobs of tomorrow, students must become more than good test takers. They need to become makers who design, sketch, build, and prototype. And their classrooms will need more than a chalkboard and a set of textbooks.

I've met with titans of Silicon Valley because they're investing in our national expansion. I've had lunch with Claire Danes because she sees DonorsChoose.org as the best way to help students in public schools. I would never, ever rub shoulders with such people if I had followed the typical career path in investment banking or whatever.

We are so humbled and grateful to Google for their devotion to our teachers and students.

I had really good relationship with my students; it definitely took me a few months before I had my students' respect.

It's hard to enlist the support of people you don't know, but it's critical to growing your career, finding new customers, and building out your team.

I do not live off canned soup.

In the sixth grade, I planned to start my own business making custom fishing lures.

Hardworking, passionate teachers know their students' needs better than anyone else in the school environment. If we can tap into their needs, we can unleash smarter solutions and empower those people on the front lines.

I've been a fan of bass fishing for as long as I can remember.

Teachers are heroes.

My colleagues and I were always having the same conversation in the teachers lunchroom about books we wanted our students to read, a field trip we knew would really bring a subject matter to life... And most of us would go into our own pockets to buy just paper and pencils.

America's best teachers are always looking for new ways to bring learning to life.

At DonorsChoose.org, we believe that classroom teachers often know their students better than anybody else in the system and that their front-line experience gives them a special kind of wisdom.

We reflect on our successes and failures at monthly staff meetings.

Our mission is to help students in need and to democratize philanthropy.

When I began teaching, my colleagues and I quickly realized that our students didn't have access to the same resources we had growing up. We knew there were supplies and resources that could help our students, but our school district simply couldn't afford them.

At DonorsChoose.org, we've seen what technology can do for a classroom. We make it easy for teachers to request the materials they need most for their classrooms and for donors to make a meaningful contribution to education.

I created DonorsChoose by putting pencil to paper - literally - and sketching out each screen of the web site and how it would work. Then I paid a programmer from Poland $1,500 to turn my sketches and common-sense rules into a functioning website.

We believe in the wisdom of the front lines.

Whether you're raising money for a cause, a personal need, or a project, most crowdfunding sites center on you hitting up people you already know. These sites make it easier to tap your social network for funds, but only the most compelling cases inspire support from strangers.

An art project, a hands-on science experiment, or a special field trip can transcend textbooks and flash cards. No one knows this better than those teaching students with autism.

Teachers know how to improve education, but they are a voice that is consistently overlooked or ignored.

Every day, teachers across the country excite their students with new opportunities and experiences.

Why is it that, when we want to think outside the proverbial box, we often put ourselves in one? We gather our team in a conference room, plaster the walls with sticky paper, and wait for the ideas to flow in a stream of marker scribbles. How often has your quest for innovation peaked at renovation - new dressing on old ideas?

We aren't prescribing anything. We're not claiming to be the experts. We aren't advocating for or against any program. We are going to create a platform that says very explicitly what it is that teachers experience in their classrooms.

At DonorsChoose.org, you can give as little as $1 and get the same level of choice, transparency, and feedback that is traditionally reserved for someone who gives millions. We call it citizen philanthropy.

You have to wade through tons of 'no's' to get one 'yes,' and you can't let it go to your head when you get that yes.

If anything, we hope that DonorsChoose.org is going to be a prompt, a nudge in the side of the public school system to improve and to start delivering these materials and experiences that students need and to make it easier for teachers to innovate.

My colleagues and I would spend a lot of our own money on copy paper and pencils, and often we couldn't get the resources that would excite our students about learning.

Teachers know how to improve education.

We will employ almost every strategy and hustle in any possible way to recruit top engineers to our team.

We want to use our site to galvanize people to give but also to take important steps toward real change.

I'd listened to my colleagues in the teachers' lunchroom. I could tell they were passionate, fired-up people who had great ideas for strategies and projects to help kids learn better. They just didn't have the resources. I was frustrated, but I also knew it was a frustration felt by teachers all over the city.

Acknowledging someone is an act of altruism in the first place, so converting that act of altruism into a pizza party or company fleece jacket or a gift card is fine, but it's not in keeping with spirit in which it all began.

We've heard people say that teachers have no business going rogue and trying to select their own books, technology, and classes - and citizens have no business deciding what is worthy. We believe in teachers. We believe in the wisdom of the crowd.

DonorsChoose was conceived at a Bronx public high school where I taught social studies for five years. In the teachers' lunch room, my colleagues and I often lamented a problem that drained learning from students and creativity from teachers: a lack of funding for essential materials and for the activities that bring subject matter to life.

The most incredible businesses are started by entrepreneurs who relentlessly pursue their passion, but passion works best with a thoughtful, ambitious-yet-grounded business plan.

If you just believe in our democracy, and you want an informed electorate, public schools are in your interest, and I think our country is dependent on public schools, whether or not you personally have a kid in the public school system.

If you track your organization's creativity by the number of brainstorms on your calendar, you're missing out. It's more important to capture those unplanned sparks of inspiration that so often come when we're cooking dinner, taking a shower, or commuting to work.

I think there are really are some public schools, incredibly successful public schools, that are inculcating a real educational ethic in their students.

I'm not tech savvy at all.

Arianna Huffington is one of the greatest champions of this idea - that anyone can make a difference.

At DonorsChoose.org, we believe that teachers are unsung heroes.

KIPP schools would be just a shining example of schools where students aren't just given homework and taught imaginative ways, but they're really brought into a culture of education.

Students can't dream big when classrooms lack books, microscopes, and robotics kits - or even paper, pencils, and paste.

We've long believed teachers know best what their students need to succeed, and that includes the creation of healthy, supportive school communities.

Well, just as in the quality of public schools, there is massive disparity and the compensation given to the public school teachers.

Students who learn to collaborate and negotiate - on Capitol Hill, in the board room, in everyday life - will outperform peers who have higher test scores.

To get DonorsChoose.org to scale, we first need to increase the viral appeal of our website.