Rita Pierson Quotes, Sourced From Her TED Talk

Almost every Rita Pierson quote in circulation comes from one place: her 2013 TED Talks Education appearance, “Every Kid Needs a Champion,” recorded a few weeks before she died. That talk runs under eight minutes and it is the source for the lines below. She was a teacher and administrator for forty years, in a family of educators, and the talk is largely stories from that career rather than theory. Where a line is a paraphrase rather than her exact words, it is marked.

The lines about relationships and learning

“Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.” Her response to a colleague who told her that they don’t pay teachers to like the kids. This is the most quoted sentence she said and it is accurate as given.

“One of the things that we never discuss or we rarely discuss is the value and importance of human connection.” Said early in the talk, framing everything that follows.

“Every child deserves a champion: an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be.” The full version of the line the talk is named for. Most posters carry only the first eight words.

The affirmation she taught her students

She had her classes say this out loud, and she recites it in the talk.

“I am somebody. I was somebody when I came. I’ll be a better somebody when I leave. I am powerful, and I am strong. I deserve the education that I get here. I have things to do, people to impress, and places to go.”

Teachers reproduce this on classroom walls more often than any of her other lines. It works because it is written in the first person and meant to be spoken, not read.

On grading and how she gave feedback

One of the best-known passages in the talk is her story about a quiz. A student got two out of twenty right. She wrote “+2” and a smiley face on the paper rather than a minus eighteen, and when the student asked whether it was an F, she told him it was, and asked why he thought she had put a smiley face on it. Her explanation was that he was on a roll: he got two right, and he did not miss them all.

Her point, stated plainly in the talk, was that a minus eighteen sucks all the life out of a kid, while a plus two says “I ain’t all bad.” That passage is usually quoted in fragments, and the fragments lose the story that makes it land. If you are putting it on a slide, use the story rather than the line.

On what teaching costs

“Teaching and learning should bring joy.” Late in the talk, and one of the few lines short enough to survive as a standalone quote.

“We’re educators. We’re born to make a difference.” From her closing.

She also describes apologizing to a class after teaching a lesson badly, telling them that the lesson she had prepared was terrible and that they were going to do it again. The exchange is often summarized as a quote about teachers admitting mistakes; the summary is fair, but the words vary from version to version, so it is safer to describe the moment than to put quotation marks around a reconstruction.

Lines wrongly attributed to her

Two things happen to Rita Pierson’s name online. Generic teacher-motivation lines get pinned to her because she is associated with the sentiment, and her actual lines get compressed until they say something slightly different.

Her name is also frequently misspelled as Rita Pearson, which is worth knowing if you are searching for the original. The TED page and the talk transcript both use Pierson.

If a line attributed to her does not appear in the transcript of “Every Kid Needs a Champion,” treat it as unverified. She gave other talks and workshops over her career, but very little of that material is transcribed and publicly available, so the TED transcript is effectively the whole verifiable record.

Using her words in a classroom or a paper

For a wall or a staff-room door, the champion line and the affirmation are the two that hold up. Both were written to be said aloud, which is why they read better on a poster than most quotes do.

For a paper or a presentation, cite the talk itself: Pierson, R. (2013), “Every Kid Needs a Champion,” TED Talks Education. The formatting for that kind of citation is in how to cite a quote, and if you are working the quote into a sentence rather than dropping it in, how to introduce a quote covers the signal phrases.

For related lists with the same sourcing standard, see inspirational teacher quotes and classroom quotes.

FAQ

What is Rita Pierson’s most famous quote?

“Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like,” followed closely by “Every child deserves a champion.” Both are from the 2013 TED talk.

Who was Rita Pierson?

An American educator who taught and worked as a counselor and administrator for around forty years, in a family of teachers. She died in June 2013, shortly after recording the TED talk she is known for.

What was her TED talk called?

“Every Kid Needs a Champion,” recorded for TED Talks Education in May 2013. It runs a little under eight minutes and a full transcript is available on TED’s site.

Is it Rita Pierson or Rita Pearson?

Pierson. The Pearson spelling is a common error and will send you to the wrong search results.

Where can I find the exact wording of her quotes?

The TED transcript. Any line that does not appear there should not be attributed to her, however widely it circulates under her name.