Classroom Challenges Quotes

Polls that have been taken by kindergarten, first- and second-grade teachers indicate that 30 percent of the kids have been deprived in some way so that they are physically unable to keep up with the class.

These days, teachers have it rough. Kids can be hyperactive, disobedient, and obnoxious. It must feel like being locked in a room of drunk midgets.

I was very disruptive. I was horrible. I didn't learn like all the other kids. I had to sometimes take my tests out in the hallways because I couldn't focus. But, my teachers would come see me in the plays and were like 'I don't understand how you can focus and be in the moment in a play and you go into math class and you can't focus.'

I can only think that the book is read because it deals with the difficulties of schooling, which do not change. Please note: the difficulties, not the problems. Problems are solved or disappear with the revolving times. Difficulities remain. It will always be difficult to teach well, to learn accurately; to read, write, and count readily and competently; to acquire a sense of history and start one's education or anothers.

School, for me, was a really, genuinely hard thing. It was hard because l am an artist. You can't send an artist to a place where we learn at a mad slow pace sitting in a class.

I know what it's like to be so distracted by your surroundings and in the moment that it's seemingly impossible to not get caught up in 'em. I know what it's like to feel so much smaller than the activities of your environment that you can't see how not to succumb to 'em. I know what it's like to not be able to focus in class due to real life hunger pangs. I know what it's like to be disruptive just to pass the time and take your mind off what's lacking at home. I know what it's like to be laughed at by your teacher when you tell them what you hope to be in life.

Every day, I see my students work hard to overcome obstacles just to be in the classroom.

I have attention deficit disorder, so sitting in a classroom is not the best thing for me.

I was trouble - and always in trouble. Aged eight I still couldn't read. In fact, I was dyslexic and short-sighted. Despite sitting at the front of the class, I couldn't read the blackboard. Only after a couple of terms did anyone think to have my eyes tested. Even when I could see, the letters and numbers made no sense at all.

I wasn't great in class and suffered from dyslexia and ADHD; still do. As a result I could never sit in class listening quietly, and my attention would inevitably end up wandering after a short while.

I remember that our deportment in Primary was not always as it should be. I had a lot of energy and found it difficult to sit patiently in a class.

During my eleven years as a New York City public school teacher, I saw firsthand the impact that poverty has on the classroom. In low-income neighborhoods like Sunset Park, where I taught, students as young as five years old enter school affected by the stresses often created by poverty: domestic violence, drug abuse, gang activity.