I wish I had been the one who thought of the saying “No such thing as a bad student, only a bad teacher.”  It was actually Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid who fed me that nugget of wisdom, but I never forgot it.  While I was in school, I barely understood it.  It was only upon entering high school that I began to comprehend how many different ways there were for people to be “smart” and “dumb.”  Realizing the fluidity of these labels allowed me to better grasp the flaws in the notion that any student could be “good” or “bad.”  Every student has something to offer every teacher, I decided.  It is the teacher’s responsibility to find the value in each pupil.  Judgements and labels are a good teacher’s enemies.