— unpredictable thoughts

Ditto from me.

text of the speech:

I flew overnight from Van­cou­ver to be with you today. I landed in New York a few hours ago and caught a flight down here because I needed to tell you all in per­son that I think you’re awesome.

I was raised by a teacher. My mother is a pro­fes­sor of early child­hood edu­ca­tion. And from the time I went to kinder­garten through my senior year in high school, I went to pub­lic schools. I wouldn’t trade that edu­ca­tion and expe­ri­ence for anything.

I had incred­i­ble teach­ers. As I look at my life today, the things I value most about myself — my imag­i­na­tion, my love of act­ing, my pas­sion for writ­ing, my love of learn­ing, my curios­ity — all come from how I was par­ented and taught.

And none of these qual­i­ties that I’ve just men­tioned — none of these qual­i­ties that I prize so deeply, that have brought me so much joy, that have brought me so much pro­fes­sional suc­cess — none of these qual­i­ties that make me who I am … can be tested.

I said before that I had incred­i­ble teach­ers. And that’s true. But it’s more than that. My teach­ers were EMPOWERED to teach me. Their time wasn’t taken up with a bunch of test prep — this silly drill and kill non­sense that any seri­ous per­son knows doesn’t pro­mote real learn­ing. No, my teach­ers were free to approach me and every other kid in that class­room like an indi­vid­ual puz­zle. They took so much care in fig­ur­ing out who we were and how to best make the lessons res­onate with each of us. They were empow­ered to unlock our poten­tial. They were allowed to be teachers.

Now don’t get me wrong. I did have a brush with stan­dard­ized tests at one point. I remem­ber because my mom went to the principal’s office and said, ‘My kid ain’t tak­ing that. It’s stu­pid, it won’t tell you any­thing and it’ll just make him ner­vous.’ That was in the ’70s when you could talk like that.

I shud­der to think that these tests are being used today to con­trol where fund­ing goes.

I don’t know where I would be today if my teach­ers’ job secu­rity was based on how I per­formed on some stan­dard­ized test. If their very sur­vival as teach­ers was based on whether I actu­ally fell in love with the process of learn­ing but rather if I could fill in the right bub­ble on a test. If they had to spend most of their time des­per­ately drilling us and less time encour­ag­ing cre­ativ­ity and orig­i­nal ideas; less time know­ing who we were, see­ing our strengths and help­ing us real­ize our talents.

I hon­estly don’t know where I’d be today if that was the type of edu­ca­tion I had. I sure as hell wouldn’t be here. I do know that.

This has been a hor­ri­ble decade for teach­ers. I can’t imag­ine how demor­al­ized you must feel. But I came here today to deliver an impor­tant mes­sage to you: As I get older, I appre­ci­ate more and more the teach­ers that I had grow­ing up. And I’m not alone. There are mil­lions of peo­ple just like me.

So the next time you’re feel­ing down, or exhausted, or unap­pre­ci­ated, or at the end of your rope; the next time you turn on the TV and see your­self called “over­paid;” the next time you encounter some simple-minded, puni­tive pol­icy that’s been dri­ven into your life by some cor­po­rate reformer who has lit­er­ally never taught any­one any­thing. … Please know that there are mil­lions of us behind you. You have an army of reg­u­lar peo­ple stand­ing right behind you, and our appre­ci­a­tion for what you do is so deeply felt. We love you, we thank you and we will always have your back.