Lorraine Blount

I attribute my success to my mother, who instilled a strong value for education in me from an early age. Growing up in the school system, I was naturally drawn to learning environments and began mentoring and tutoring long before it became formal or paid work. Those early experiences shaped my commitment to supporting students and laid the foundation for my lifelong career in education.

Teachers will always be needed regardless of how the world moves. Someone told me when I was very young that teachers will always be needed. I guess you could go back as far as my grandmother teaching me how to do things and then watching her share things with other people. That may not seem important, but it is. It's a way of teaching through watching, listening, and hands-on experience. You're always going to need teachers, whether you call them teachers or not, to show you how to do things and to learn and progress and share it with somebody else. That's what Einstein did. That's how we've learned from other people who have come before us. And then we build on that and share it with somebody else, and they build on that.

Always keep learning, take one class at a time if you need to, just don't stop learning. Stay in school. Even if you take one course at a time, if you have to work and you take a course at night, fine, but stay in school. Keep learning, whether in school or at a conference or whatever, but keep learning. And if you don't like that major that they tell you you have to have right as a freshman, you can change it. I did, and I'm not sorry I did. It's okay to change your mind. But keep learning, no matter what you do. It's okay to make a mistake. It's okay to change your mind. Remember, you have a choice. If you're not sure what you want to do, you've got to try different things. And if you don't like it, then try something else. College is not for everybody. Some people are hands-on people, and those are the ones who have created computer programs before everyone went to school for computer science. Go to school later if you want. Continue on. Keep learning.

AI and the different emerging technologies. Everything is so rapidly changing, especially with AI and technology. You can't just sit there and say, oh, I've got a job, I don't have to learn anymore. No. You're going to have to keep learning to keep up with the rest of everybody else that's coming out and have been taught different methods. Things are changing, technology is changing things, whether it's in a store, in a sales position, or whether it's in a chemistry lab or a regular classroom. I didn't know what a smart board was when I started either. And now, teachers have not only smart boards, but computers and you're expected to put in videos and develop things to catch their attention. But I'm a book person. Pick up a book. Let the kids learn how to read for enjoyment. It's a lifetime experience that you can do.

To always keep learning. Education is a path to both knowledge and improvement. I realized early on that education was a path to a lot of knowledge and improvement, in myself as well as others. We never stop learning. Never. There's always something new that we can learn. And that's my attitude towards sharing things with people. We need to go back to person-to-person sharing and learning, that's how we learn. You need some personal contact to really learn, somewhere, with someone, because it makes a difference, especially with young people. I believe we all have choices in life, and it's okay to make a mistake. It's okay to change your mind. Remember, you have a choice. And I think we need to look at the positive side of things and help people improve, because there's always another way to do something.