Middle-class families know education begins at birth.
Geoffrey CanadaRead
When kids know that you refuse to let them fail ... they don't give up as easy. So sometimes they don't have it inside, [but] they're like,'You know, I don't want to do this, but I know my mother's going to be mad.'That matters to kids, and it helps get them through.
Interpretation
Support from parents can motivate children to persevere through challenges.
Geoffrey Canada's quote emphasizes the important role of parental support in a child's resilience. When children are aware that their parents believe in them and refuse to let them fail, it instills a sense of determination that can help them overcome difficulties, even when they may want to give up. This reliance on parental expectations can serve as a significant driving force in their persistence towards achieving their goals.
In practice
A teacher could use this quote during a parent-teacher meeting to emphasize the importance of parental involvement in education.
Middle-class families know education begins at birth.
I want to be a children’s hero… Children need heroes because heroes give hope; without hope they have no future.
Why is it that when we had rotary phones, when we were having folks being crippled by polio, that we were teaching the same way then that we're doing right now?
Kids who are poor often have families that have not really been kept informed about... how important it is to read to your child, to reduce stresses in their life, to use positive incentives and words.
I want my kids to graduate from high school. But that's not enough. I also want them to go to college. Why? Because rich people's kids go to college. And if that's good enough for them, it's good enough for my kids. Because you know what? College graduates don't tend to go to jail as frequently as nongraduates.
People don't believe or understand that a community can lose hope. You can have a whole community where hopelessness is the norm, where folks don't have faith that things will get better because history and circumstances have proven over 30, 40, or 50 years that things don't get better.
A good example is the best sermon.
Do not be afraid to ask for help. Nobody gets through college on their own.
I saw no African people in the printed and illustrated Sunday school lessons. I began to suspect at this early age that someone had distorted the image of my people. My long search for the true history of African people the world over began.
We need to align the incentives so that colleges have an incentive to keep down their costs... to graduate students on time with degrees in areas where they're going to be able to get jobs and going to be able to pay back those loans.
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.
Words are alive--when I've found a story that I love, I read it again and again, like playing a favorite song over and over. Reading isn't passive--I enter the story with the characters, breathe their air, feel their frustrations, scream at them to stop when they're about to do something stupid, cry with them, laugh with them. Reading for me, is spending time with a friend. A book is a friend. You can never have too many.
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