Back in 2008, after we'd won the election, no one really expected me to keep teaching. But I couldn't just walk away... So I did both. For eight years, that was my life's dichotomy. State receptions - and midterms. Dinner with the most powerful man on earth - and study sessions with single moms.

I'm not a politician. I am an English teacher.

Marrying Joe wasn't just about him. It was about Hunter and Beau as well. They had endured the loss of one mother already, and I couldn't risk having them lose another.

Since Beau's death, I'm definitely shattered. I feel like a piece of china that's been glued back together again. The cracks may be imperceptible-but they're there. Look closely, and you can see the glue holding me together, the precarious edges that vein through my heart. I am not the same. I feel it every day.

May God bless our troops.

I have visited classrooms near military bases to learn more about what schools were doing to support their military kids. I met with teachers overseas to learn about the particular needs they face thousands of miles from America. And I listened to my own granddaughter, who dealt with her father's yearlong deployment to Iraq.

I was a Senate spouse for many, many years. I kept my own career. I was teaching and Joe was doing politics. I realized when we were elected vice president that I had a platform and I knew I was not going to waste my platform. It was going to focus women and girls' education.

I had a number of part-time jobs after school in Willow Grove, but I did work for two summers in Ocean City as a waitress at Chris' Seafood Restaurant. I loved it.

I've always believed you've got to steal the joyful moments when you can.

Life is difficult, and if you sit around waiting for fun to show up, you'll find yourself going without it more often than not.

Education doesn't just make us smarter. It makes us whole.

Education is possibility set in motion.

We can be proud of a president that brings families together instead of tearing them apart. A president who believes our best days are ahead of us. That's Joe Biden.

I have always had a great deal of respect and admiration for Eleanor Roosevelt. She was a true humanitarian and champion of Women's Rights and Civil Rights.

I grew up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, with my parents and sisters, but my family would drive every weekend to Hammonton, where both my grandparents lived and where my parents were raised.

We know that education is the key to unlocking human potential.

Every day, women and girls are finding incredible confidence and taking risks. When they change one mind, pretty soon, they have changed one tradition. That changed tradition has changed a village. That one village has changed a country. That new reality means new opportunities for themselves and their daughters.

My students have shown me so many times that it's not always about being the perfect person in the perfect position - it's about showing up when you're needed.

Teaching is not a job. It's a lifestyle. It permeates your whole life.

There's nothing that's more unfair or unjust than people using their power to try to make other people feel small, to tell them who they are or what they are capable of, to say their identity doesn't belong.

Education teaches us compassion and kindness, connection to others.

For me, I grew up on old-school rock 'n' roll.

When you know what men are capable of you marvel neither at their sublimity nor their baseness. There are no limits in either direction apparently.

Why are we so full of restraint? Why do we not give in all directions? Is it fear of losing ourselves? Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves.