Teaching is like flying a plane. You leave school one day feeling like you're spiraling down toward the trees, expecting that the next day the crash will come. You brace yourself for the impact, only to find that things have leveled out at treetop height, and you climb and enjoy the remainder of the flight.
I went through the immigration thing. But when I got to New York it wasn't so tough for me. I went to school. I went to P.S. 57, then I went to the Lighthouse for the Blind on 59th St. I guess being blind is a great leveler.
I work with the Carl Lewis Foundation focusing on youth from high school down.
I had fallen in love with Cherry as a junior in high school. When I discovered she was going to go to Auburn, I was vacillating between Alabama and Kentucky because of Babe. I eliminated Kentucky because I wanted to be as close to Auburn as I could, and Tuscaloosa is a lot closer than Lexington is.
I went to high school in Lexington, Massachusetts, which in hindsight was very nice.
I grew up on a farm in Lexington, Oklahoma, a rural community south of Norman. My family moved to Enid, Oklahoma, in 1962, when I was a junior in high school. This cast me into a totally different environment. Enid was a company town for Champlin Petroleum, and there was an oil boom going on.
I didn't go to high school, and I didn't go to grade school either. Education, I think, is for refinement and is probably a liability.
Bolton School has a great tradition in the liberal arts.
I went to school at Radnor High School. And I went to a liberal arts college in St. Louis, Missouri, called Lindenwood College.
When I was in middle school, the librarian there was secretary for a couple of groups of professional writers. She introduced me to Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson, and I became very friendly with them over a period of two years. Both of them were very generous with their time, guidance and advice.
When I went to school, I didn't know a lick of English, but it was okay because there were so many immigrants in the area, a lot of the kids didn't speak a lick of English, either. It was normal to have a wicked accent.
My dad had been in the second world war, had electric shock treatment, suffered from anxiety and was abusive to my mum. I kept a lid on my feelings at school but, when I was 18, dropped out of everything and couldn't even be bothered to get out of bed.
I kept a lid on my feelings at school but, when I was 18, dropped out of everything and couldn't even be bothered to get out of bed.
I retired in 2016 as a Lieutenant Commander and immediately went to the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Don't get me wrong: school is good and all, but school is way too slow for me. Like, super slow. So I didn't want to go. I wanted to learn on my own with real life experiences.
The first two pictures I did, I played a young student in prep school. When I did Lifeguard, everyone was saying, You're so Southern California. It was a surprise to me.
From fifth grade on, I worked at our public library. The pay, a pittance, was almost superfluous. All through high school, I looked forward to summer as the time when I could work at the library four or five days a week. I was never a camp counselor, a lifeguard, a scooper of ice cream.
Drama school was a lifeline for me, it saved me. I found it very nurturing - I just clung on.
Students of color who attended integrated schools in the decades immediately following Brown were more likely to graduate high school, go to college, earn higher wages, live healthier lifestyles, and not have a criminal record than their peers in segregated schools.
My old school in Liverpool is now a performing-arts school, and I kind of teach there - I use the word lightly - but I go there and talk to students.
