I enjoyed school - although I ran away on the first day. I'd reminded the teacher that it was nearly time for 'Watch With Mother' on TV.

Both my grandmothers had upright pianos and I just knew how to play since I was a child. Nobody taught me. I sounded like a grown-up and then I learned how to read music. I played so well by ear I could fool the teacher to believe I could play the notes. She'd make the mistake of playing the song once and I could play it.

I wanted to become a kindergarten teacher like my mother.

I was very inspired by my mother. She was a vocal teacher and sang in a band and my first memories of her were going out with her on the local circuit.

As a former teacher and a mother and grandmother I know firsthand the importance of a quality education.

My mother wanted me to be a teacher. She had this vision of me walking across the quadrangle in an Oxford college wearing my academic gown.

My father's a preacher my mother's a teacher thus I rhyme.

My mother wanted to be a teacher when she was young and my father didn't approve of it so she fought very hard to become one. And she did it. So when I said I wanted to become an actress my mother was very supportive. She always said to me 'There's no such thing as 'can't.'

My grandmother was a teacher my sister was a teacher my daughter was a teacher and is now a superintendent in northern California and my son-in-law is a high school principal. I am surrounded.

Well financially it's a little bit better. But it's better than than when I was a teacher. But I kind of - it's allowed me to buy a house. And I've been able to help my mother with some stuff and my brother. So that's nice.

My younger sister had kids before I did and managed to earn a master's degree while raising them as a single parent. Now she's a brilliant second-grade teacher. I'm in awe of her ability to juggle everything and still be a great mother.

You never know what's going to happen. My mother was an English teacher. If someone had told her that I was going to write a book she would never have believed that. So you can never say never.

Being a mother has been my greatest teacher and also the most self-sacrificing thing I've ever done.

I must have got my detailed obsessive streak from my father who was an English teacher because my mother wasn't like me at all.

My parents were early converts to Christianity in my part of Nigeria. They were not just converts my father was an evangelist a religious teacher. He and my mother traveled for thirty-five years to different parts of Igboland spreading the gospel.

A little girl who finds a puzzle frustrating might ask her busy mother (or teacher) for help. The child gets one message if her mother expresses clear pleasure at the request and quite another if mommy responds with a curt 'Don't bother me - I've got important work to do.'

There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black woman mother dyke teacher etc. - because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.