A Quote by Chris Matthews

I tried to talk to the graduates who haven't figured what they're going to do next. The kids who are heading in medical school or law school, they've got pretty much figured where they're headed in life. But there are so many kids out there, that are just going, they're still kids. They've always been promoted from grade to grade.
I don't know if you've been in any inner-city schools, but it's pretty demoralizing. The kids come to class bright-eyed, enthusiastic - entering first grade really looking forward to school. By the fourth grade they're just completely turned off, and by the time they enter high school, they see little relationship between school and employment. It's bad enough you have incompetent teachers and schools that are poorly run, understaffed, and lack material resources. It's even worse when the kids themselves don't feel they have any stake in school.
I grew up going to public school, and they were huge public schools. I went to a school that had 3,200 kids, and I had grade school classes with 40-some kids. Discipline was rigid. Most of the learning was rote. It worked.
I want to make sure kids read by the third grade and are prepared for the fourth grade. As school gets harder and kids get older, the words get bigger... If they don't understand what they are reading, they start to fall back, and their interest in school falls off.
I pretty much figured out in grade school that we weren't the stereotypical American family.
I was a Russian dancer in my elementary school production of 'Fiddler on the Roof' when I was in third grade or fourth grade. I was one of the younger kids accepted into the play, and the plays were pretty impressive, let me say.
I was a Russian dancer in my elementary school production of Fiddler on the Roof when I was in third grade or fourth grade. I was one of the younger kids accepted into the play, and the plays were pretty impressive, let me say.
I grew up with this crazy upbringing of living many places and always being the new kid in town, not like a service brat where you're always going to school with other new kids in town. I was constantly arriving in small towns and going to school with kids who'd been together since they were in kindergarten.
I hadn't learned to read by third grade, which wasn't unusual for some kids. I knew something was wrong because I couldn't see or understand the words the way the other kids did. I wasn't the least bit bothered - until I was sent back to the second-grade classroom for reading help after school.
I stopped going to school in the middle of fourth grade. Everyone grows up with the peer pressure, and kids being mean to each other in school. I think that's such a horrible thing, but I never really dealt with it in a high school way.
I was interested in wildlife conservation, and I chose Georgia because they supposedly had a good forestry school. I figured it might be easier to get good grades there, too, because a lot of Southern kids would come up to school in New Jersey, and they'd always be a little behind, so I figured maybe I wouldn't have to work so hard.
I remember kids in high school and middle school who - I was kind of an insecure mess - I think there were those kids who really stepped out and paid attention to the kids that weren't as popular, and I see those kids as leaders.
I was accepted to multiple fashion schools. But I had two kids when I was a teenager. My kids' mom already had two kids when she was still in high school. So I had to be in the streets early. Instead of going to fashion school, I took the street route.
We're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive. It's pretty dense kids who haven't figured that out by the time they're ten.... Most kids can't afford to go to Harvard and be misinformed.
I never went to high school. I never really finished eighth grade. I was kicked out of seventh grade once and eighth grade twice. Mainly for not showing up and not doing it. Then I went to an alternative high school for part of what would have been ninth grade and part of what would have been 10th grade.
It's hard sometimes when you're in a regular high school, you just feel like the odd kid out. The great thing about going to an art school [is] it's kind of like it's all the odd kids. It's all the kids that don't fit in at their regular schools, because you're into something and excited about something that other kids really aren't into. When you go to art school, everybody's kind of on the same page.
After I got out of law school and worked in a big law firm, I thought, there are so many kids like me, in my neighborhood, that could be here if they had more support from their families, better financial aid. But the gap is so wide once you miss that opportunity. So I was always interested in figuring out, How do you bridge that? I felt, as a lawyer, when I was mentoring and working with kids, that I gained a level of groundedness that I just couldn't get sitting on the forty-seventh floor of a fancy firm.
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