E.r. Dodds Quotes & Sayings

Honestly, I had no idea how to respond. My senior year of college I'd taken a seminar titled Public Education: Situations and Strategies. I thought about emailing my professor, maybe suggest some new topics and help him get current. Maybe he'd invite me back as a guest lecturer. He'd probably expect some strategies along with the situations though, so I guess that wouldn't work, but whatever. — Tucker Elliot

The last two days I've been on long bus rides, driven through the countryside on the back of a motorbike, and crossed rivers on wooden boats, traversing currents into a different century. It's late and dark, but I'm so close now. My uncle died five kilometers from here. — Tucker Elliot

The men and women who made up DoDDS Korea during the time I was there were an eclectic group to say the least, but as a group we were among the most talented, diverse, intelligent, fun, crazy, thoughtful, caring, and dedicated people in the world. We did important work, and we did it well. Better than that, we did it exceptionally well. We were experts in our fields, and we made each other better still because we depended on each other in ways that people who've never lived overseas could ever imagine. — Tucker Elliot

It's an old adage that the way to be safe is never to be secure ... Each one of us requires the spur of insecurity to force us to do our best. — Harold W. Dodds

All my life my dad felt this need to protect his kids from a war he fought, a war I believed could never reach out and touch us, could never hurt us - and yet he fed us lies with his answers, shielding us from the truth about what he did there, about what he saw, about who he was before the war, and about what he became because of it. He lied to protect us from his memories, from his nightmares. Standing with my dad at The Wall, I knew the truth - no one could know so many names engraved in granite if he 'never was in danger. — Tucker Elliot

My father was a jazz listener, and I think, at least before I was 5, I was not so into that. Although there were records that emphasized percussion that I liked, like Baby Dodds. — Wallace Shawn

We had a word with him about diving and since then the lad's come on leaps and bounds. — Billy Dodds

I found a tiny starfish
In a tide pool by the sand.
I found a tiny starfish
And I put him in my hand.

An itty-bitty starfish
No bigger than my thumb,
A wet and golden starfish
Belonging to no one.

I thought that I would take him
From the tidepool by the sea,
And bring him home to give you
A loving gift from me.

But as I held my starfish,
His skin began to dry.
Without his special seaside home,
My gift for you would die.

I found a tiny starfish
In a tide pool by the sea.
I hope whoever finds him next
Will leave him there, like me!

And the gift I've saved for you?
The best that I can give:
I found a tiny starfish,
And for you, I let him live. — Dayle Ann Dodds

The look of a smug teacher is priceless. — Tucker Elliot

Always Sami. I was tethered to her somehow. To that scared little girl I'd found on the staircase nearly a year earlier; to the past, when teaching was simpler and I could care about everyday problems, when being relentless meant running two extra laps, not waiting for an MP to search the undercarriage of a bus for bombs before letting students approach it. — Tucker Elliot

If I can be perfectly blunt, his humanities teacher was an ass. — Tucker Elliot

I asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was. — Rick Riordan

O you
can't tell someone just how lonely he is — Jeramy Dodds

We could never go back to how things were on the day before 9/11, but maybe I could go back to who I was. — Tucker Elliot

On the TV and in the newspapers all we hear and read is 'live your life or the terrorists win' and it sounds great, I'm all for that, except my kids won't ask for a bathroom pass because the faculty facilities are on the first floor of the building and the MPs patrolling the second floor won't go downstairs on their shift - so I've got middle school kids afraid to take a piss because there might be a soldier in the stall next to them carrying a loaded M- 16 - but hell yes, I'm all for 'live your life' and screw the terrorists, and screw all the countries who harbor and support them. I'm on board with that, except I've got these kids who stay home now, because they're scared riding a bus with soldiers carrying guns, knowing that one soldier isn't enough, so there's a military truck full of soldiers with even bigger guns following the bus 'just in case. — Tucker Elliot

We all lose people. We all have to live in the aftermath. It's how we move forward that counts, but sometimes we are tethered to something in our past that won't let us move forward. — Tucker Elliot

The service members who defend our way of life ask very little in return, but they deserve teachers who will be as relentless in teaching their children as the military is in protecting our interests at home and abroad. — Tucker Elliot

...9/11 was immediately understood not only as a tragedy for the United States and the city of New York but also as a global outrage, which took the lives of so many citizens from across the world. The headline emphasized the manner in which questions of identity were geographically and emotionally connected - the local (New York, Pennsylvania and Washington), the national (United States), and the global. Shortly afterwards, however, the event became reinscribed in overwhelmingly national terms - 'Attack on America'. Tragically, as former Vice President Al Gore has said, the United States has squandered that global goodwill and solidarity by its largely unilateral engagement in Iraq and other activities which have been judged by others to be inimical to international law, such as extraordinary rendition, detention camps, and the doctrine of pre-emption. We are certainly not all Americans now. — Klaus Dodds

It was too late to pray, though. The sky was clear. The helicopters were gone. Too late for so many things. My fists hit the floor. My head hit the floor. My heart broke, hardened, and I lost my faith. That's when the killing thoughts came. When it felt right to punish everyone who let this happen. I could start with Angel's dad - but where would it stop? — Tucker Elliot

Teaching isn't rocket science. It's about being engaged, listening, paying attention. Despite conventional wisdom, you don't need to talk a lot to teach well. You do need to care, though. Not so much about what people think of you or whether or not they like you, but about the kids and doing what's best for them. — Tucker Elliot

It'd be easy to blame everything on 9/11 or the wars that came after. It's really about the choices we made. By necessity we adapt to the realities of the world we live in, but if we forget that how we live shapes and influences the world around us, then we've already lost. — Tucker Elliot

For your own security it's imperative you blend in with the native population. — Tucker Elliot

This is my worst fear. It's not keeping my students safe from terrorists, it's knowing what to do when the Chaplain comes to take Johnny out of class because not letting the terrorists win means sometimes the good guys are going to die. And those good guys have kids, and they're sitting in my classroom. — Tucker Elliot

As calls rang out the world over for new treaties and organizations to be established with the intent of preventing future wars, America and her allies took a more realistic approach to the problem - we maintained allied military bases across Europe and Asia and we stationed troops in these foreign territories on a permanent basis. We weren't invaders or conquerors and for sure we had no intention of being an empire. We were liberators. That's all. But having fought and sacrificed so much and for so long, the pragmatic thing to do was to follow this simple philosophy: it's great to have dialogue, it just works a lot better when you have a strong military strategically placed and ready to act around the globe. — Tucker Elliot

It felt like we were reliving the first day of the school year, when students and teachers do the get-to-know-you dance - teachers tell students something about who they are, students pretend to care, and then vice-versa. — Tucker Elliot

The meeting began well, meaning it had the potential for being short. — Tucker Elliot

In the same way that banks succeeded at privatizing the profits and socializing the losses as they led the global economy to the brink of collapse, we are in danger of doing the same with the environment. Humanity has taken a huge leap in the last decades and become a planetary-scale force - we need to behave as a global civilization if we are not to face catastrophic consequences. — Felix Dodds

I stood with my mom in the cemetery. She felt terrible pain. My grandmother is with God. My mom has to continue living. It's not so easy, moving forward. — Tucker Elliot

it may sound strange, but I think atheists are the most religious people in the world. — Colin Dodds

In my life I've been very lucky to travel around the world and see students and teachers in nearly two dozen countries - but the most awe-inspiring experience I've ever had was two years after 9/11 when I had the chance to attend a conference in Manhattan and personally meet many of the heroic teachers who persevered under conditions that in our worst nightmares we could never have imagined. In my opinion there's not been nearly enough written about those teachers, and I hope that changes soon. — Tucker Elliot