When I began teaching, my colleagues and I quickly realized that our students didn't have access to the same resources we had growing up. We knew there were supplies and resources that could help our students, but our school district simply couldn't afford them.

Ideally, DonorsChoose.org wouldn't be necessary for basic supplies, but I hope we'll always be a platform for teachers to request resources that would bring the learning experience of their students to the next level.

America's best teachers are always looking for new ways to bring learning to life.

We're thrilled to be a part of PNC's longstanding commitment to early childhood learning. Their generosity will help us expand the DonorsChoose.org platform to serve Head Start classrooms nationwide, ensuring that many more pre-K teachers have resources they need to give their students a solid educational foundation.

Our education system has succeeded so far in teaching generations to do different routine tasks. So when tractors displaced farming labor, we taught the next generation to work in factories. But what we've never really been good at is teaching a huge number of people to do non-routine creative work.

The organization I founded in 1993, Camfed (the Campaign for Female Education), was in large part inspired by the generosity shown to me by a community in a village in Zimbabwe. During my visit to Mola to research girls' exclusion from education, the people of Mola fed me, shaded me, walked and talked with me for hours each day.

To be perfectly honest with you, I was partying a lot in school. I didn't have any good study habits from high school because I just kind of got by on being a jock.

We have to continue to learn. We have to be open. And we have to be ready to release our knowledge in order to come to a higher understanding of reality.