Almost 40% of all young adults are living with their parents. This is a 75-year high in America. Forty percent of young adults are living with their parents. I see stuff like this, and I think it's a good thing I didn't become a parent, because if that were happening to me, you wouldn't want to be my kid.
Teenagers these days are out of control. They eat like pigs, they are disrespectful of adults, they interrupt and contradict their parents, and they terrorize their teachers.
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.'
My parents thought it was really important that I grow up with the high school experience, because if I was going to continue acting, there was always going to be time to do that.
"Little Brother" sounds an optimistic warning. It extrapolates from current events to remind us of the ever-growing threats to liberty. But it also notes that liberty ultimately resides in our individual attitudes and
actions. In our increasingly authoritarian world, I especially hope that teenagers and young adults will read it - and then persuade their peers, parents and teachers to follow suit.
I grew up in a town where there were no adults over forty who weren't somebody's parents. It was, unfortunately, the kind of town that's a "great places to raise kids" - that's basically code for "there are no adults here who are not parents." I had a few teachers who were kind of weirdo drama teachers and were hugely influential.
I wasn't bullied by the mean girls in high school. I'm just bullied by adults and teenagers all over the world.
Everyone has those times when you feel like you don't fit in. Everyone struggles to a certain extent with being cool and popular, but I never really let it affect me. I played sports and did theater, and school was really important to me. I had fun in high school.
I'd love to see more middle and high school teachers who are not teaching English develop classroom libraries. Our message to kids should be that reading is for everyone.
My parents were both high-school music teachers.
If you're afraid to talk to the other adults in your school it is definitely throughout history the hallmark of a failing school. When I was writing about the teachers' strike in New York City in 1968, the middle school where events triggered that strike was a place where teachers were known to hide in their classrooms.
I spent most of my time with adults because although my parents were older when they had me, they're really like teenagers. I sort of became the third musketeer.
I had the benefit of going to a really good high school on Long Island. I went to Shoreham-Wading River High School, which kind of started as an experimental public school back in the 60s and 70s. It had a bunch of teachers there with a unique teaching philosophy.
I was always drawn to teachers who made class interesting. In high school, I enjoyed my American and English literature classes because my teachers, Jeanne Dorsey and Dani Barton, created an environment where interaction was important.
I know from my own personal experience. I was bullied in middle school and high school and went through my fair share of hard times thereafter. Also, one of my really good friends committed suicide when I was in high school.
One of the challenges of commencement speeches is that you have this older, wiser person who is accomplished talking to young, not-yet-so-wise, not-yet-accomplished adults or, in high school or middle school, even younger.