Prior to delivering his speech, Zuckerberg recalled his only eighth grade memory: Mr. Walsh, his eighth-grade teacher, had an uncanny resemblance to a pirate.

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In 1990, he was named Pennsylvania's Teacher of the Year for his role as an eighth-grade English teacher and took on leadership positions in education committees.

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Because he was an ad-sales guy and not a journalist or wordsmith, Garrett tracked down someone whose verbal skills and temperament he trusted: his eighth-grade journalism teacher.

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"We assume that anytime he catches it on the block, it's two points, " said NYU-Poly coach Nolan Adams, a former Skyline Conference player and current eighth-grade special-education teacher in Kensington.

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"With technology being what students need to learn in order to participate in a global world and economy, I'm not sure schools can forfeit the time to teach cursive, unfortunately, " said Paige French, an eighth-grade history teacher in Dallas, Texas.

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Last year a Broward math teacher could not understand why his brightest eighth-grade students were scoring merely average on their Stanford standardized tests.

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