Quotes from Taylor Mali

Simply put, the best teachers are the ones you work your tail off for because in the end you just don't want them to think any less of you. You want and need their approval.

That's what teaching is, the art of explanation: presenting the right information in the right order in a memorable way.

By the time these students enter the workforce, many of the jobs they will apply for ill be in industries that don't even exist yet. That's a hard future to prepare someone for. Teachers have their sights set on the real goal: not to produce Ivy League graduates, but to encourage the development of naturally curious, confident, flexible, and happy learners who are ready for whatever the future has in store.

Here, let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true: Teachers? Teachers make a difference! Now what about you?

And I want to tell her… [that] changing your mind is one of the best ways of finding out whether or not you still have one.

Suzy smiled and the whole class laughed at me, but when she spoke, I heard a new sound, not the song of an angel, but the words of a woman on a pedestal, coming down.

There is no better outcome of one's education, which the American philosopher William Durant called "a progressive discovery of our ignorance.

A mother or father might be too preoccupied with how one child compares with another to be able to fully appreciate the uniqueness of the individual child.

The memory is a muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it gets.

Teachers have their sights set on the real goal: not to produce Ivy League graduates, but to encourage the development of naturally curious, confident, flexible, and happy learners who are ready for whatever the future has in store.

Simply put, the best teachers are the ones you work your tail off for because in the end you just don't want them to think any less of you. You want and need their approval.

A poem is the perfect place to celebrate imperfection and exult in the ways you fall short of being the person you want to be.

No graduation speaker will ever tell you that the future is anything but uncertain. It never is. But graduations need not only be obsessed with looking ahead; a graduation can be a day on which we turn back and trace our steps to see how we ended up where we are.

You want to know what I make? I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could. I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional Medal of Honor, and I can make a...