I've focused on making sure we have talented teachers and principals in our schools through proposals like the GREAT Teachers and Principals Act and the Presidential Teachers Corps.
We are having trouble finding teachers to teach STEM. We also need to make sure schools have the resources. Some communities have multiple computers for each student in their schools. Other schools don't have textbooks, let alone computers.
Good education is linked with good teachers. We need to think how we can have good teachers. India has the capability to produce & export as many teachers to the World as it needs. We need to think about how we can create an environment where children want to become good teachers.
We need to make sure we have in every school teachers trained and qualified to make sure every child, including children with different learning styles, succeed.
We need sex education in schools, but we need it at home first. We need parents to learn the names of the teachers who are teaching their children. We need families to question day-care centers, to question other children and their own as to what goes on.
At the moment, I'm afraid that the discipline system doesn't give teachers the support that they need. One thing that I've been struck by is that the number of violent assaults on teachers increased last year. We need to be clear that teachers have the power they need in order to impose discipline.
There's a small movement of teacher-led schools across the country. These are schools that don't have a traditional principal, teachers come together and actually run the school themselves. That's kind of the most radical way, but I think something that's more doable across the board is just creating career ladders for teachers that allow certain teachers after a certain number of years to inhabit new roles. Roles mentoring their peers, helping train novice teachers to be better at their jobs, roles writing the curriculum, leading on lesson planning.
As we try to compete in this global marketplace, we need to rebuild our infrastructure. We need to rebuild our schools. We need to make sure that teachers and first responders and veterans who are coming home from serving our country so proudly have jobs waiting for them.
Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is, you need to talk with children, to teachers, and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early.
And when it comes to developing the high standards we need, it's time to stop working against our teachers and start working with them. Teachers don't go in to education to get rich. They don't go in to education because they don't believe in their children. They want their children to succeed, but we've got to give them the tools. Invest in early childhood education. Invest in our teachers and our children will succeed.
There is no system in the world or any school in the country that is better than its teachers. Teachers are the lifeblood of the success of schools.
Teachers spend most of their daytime hours with children. Teachers at every level, coaches, counselors, cafeteria workers and yes, custodians, spend their hours trying to make children's lives different, if not always better.
All children are born with stars in their eyes, and they are curious. It is important for teachers to be careful not to kill this curiosity. A lot can go wrong. Children can be teased, even by teachers.
Our teachers are responsible for our children's welfare for the six or eight hours they are at school and we need to know without question that their safety will be paramount on the minds of teachers, faculty and volunteers.
What is happening to teachers now across this nation is a disgrace. The attacks on them are a blot on our nation. Teachers and students are not different interest groups. Anyone who demeans teachers demeans education and hurts children.
That is the difference between good teachers and great teachers: good teachers make the best of a pupil's means; great teachers foresee a pupil's ends.