Jill Biden

Being a teacher is not what I do, it’s who I am.

Because of the flexibility that community colleges afford, many students do not have to choose between an education and fulfilling other responsibilities – they can do both.

Many of my students don’t know that I’m second lady of the United States… because, you know, it’s a community college.

As a community college professor for over twenty years, I’ve seen the determination, resilience and dedication of countless students. Regardless of circumstances, they show up. They work hard. They believe anything is possible.

I’ve seen with my own students, community colleges offer an affordable route to four-year college degrees and good paying jobs.

Community colleges are certainly one of America’s best-kept secrets.

In our culture and in culture sometimes they make you feel a little be weird for being smart… but we are intelligent people and our dreams matter regardless of if you speak with an accent and people think that that makes you not intelligent.

Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.

I mean, look, teachers don’t do their job for the money, obviously, because we pay them ridiculously little amounts for what they put in. Most of them come out of their own pocket for materials and things to help the children and all that.

An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all.

I don’t care what their [Guns N’ Roses] record is. If you need a blood donor and the only person who can give you a transfusion is Hitler, you take the blood.

One of the things that make community colleges so special is they do not pick and choose their students – they work with all students.

That man is best educated who knows the greatest number of things that are so, and who can do the greatest number of things to help and heal the world.

But before any great things are accomplished, a memorable change must be made in the system of Education and knowledge must become so general as to raise the lower ranks of Society nearer to the higher. The Education of a Nation, instead of being confined to a few schools & Universities, for the instruction of the few, must become the National Care and expence, for the information of the Many.

An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I’ve dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three and a half… I never write metropolis for seven cents, because I can get the same money for city. I never write policeman, because I can get the same price for cop…. I never write valetudinarian at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn’t do it for fifteen.

America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.

Education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.

Many of my students don’t know that I’m second lady of the United States… because, you know, it’s a community college.

Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. Our requirements for world leadership, our hopes for economic growth, and the demands of citizenship itself in an era such as this all require the maximum development of every young American’s capacity. The human mind is our fundamental resource.

I have been learning English on the road since I started when I was 15, so it is a slow process but making some progress. Now I think I am much more comfortable with my English. However, it is difficult, still, when I speak about something that is not tennis.

If my future were determined just by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn’t be here. I guarantee you that.