TEACHING QUOTES
quotations about teaching
Year after year students tumble along like the waters of a river. They flow away, and only the teacher is left behind, like some deeply buried rock at the bottom of the current.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
For the life of me I cannot fathom why we expect so much from teachers and provide them so little in return. In 1940, the average pay of a male teacher was actually 3.6 percent more than what other college-educated men earned. Today it is 60 percent lower. Women teachers now earn 16 percent less than other college-educated women. This bewilders me.... There was no Plato without Socrates, and no John Coltrane without Miles Davis.
BILL MOYERS
speech at the fiftieth anniversary of the Council of Great City Schools, "America 101", October 27, 2006
The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see.
ALEXANDRA K. TREFOR
attributed, Making Classrooms Better
Remember the part in Dangerous Minds when Michelle Pfeiffer talks about doing the SSTs before the CRCT to boost the CCRPI in accordance with the SIP? No? In fact, do you ever hear her use an acronym? She's too busy getting those gang kids off drugs and stuff to worry about government regulations. Real teaching, on the other hand, is like speaking in code.
CAPTAIN AWESOME
"6 Ways in Which Teaching Is Nothing Like the Movies", We Are Teachers, December 4, 2015
A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn, is hammering on cold iron.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
The problems in teaching are many. Teachers face some students who do not want to learn what they want to teach, some who already know it, or think they do, and some who are poorly prepared to study what is taught. They must figure out how to teach each student, while working with a class of students who are all different from one another. They must respond to the many authorities who tell them what to teach. They have a limited amount of time to teach what needs to be taught, and they are interrupted often. The litany is so familiar. Why is the work teachers must do to address these problems so difficult for others to appreciate?
MAGDALENE LAMPERT
Teaching Problems and the Problems of Teaching
We never completely escape the teachers of our childhood nor any of the patterns that formed us.
FRANK HERBERT
Heretics of Dune
As teachers, we often hesitate to talk about how hard teaching really is, especially with people who are new to the job or who are considering going into the field. Because, as difficult as the job may be, it is also unimaginably rewarding sometimes, and good days can feel almost magical.
GINA BELLI
"8 Reasons Teaching Is More Difficult Than You Think (Not One Is About the Kids)", PayScale, October 23, 2016
Teaching is often thought of as something that comes rather naturally to people who know their subject. In general, it is thought that it is a simple process that produces simple outcomes, but ... it takes place in a complicated social institution, which is filled with diverse people. It is a fluid interplay of events. One cannot just know the subject and teach it, because the subjects themselves are ever changing.
M. H. SIDDIQUI
Excellence of Teaching
If you have forgotten how to be a child you cannot teach children.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Teaching is unlikely to change until teachers, and all educators, recognize that it can be studied and improved.
JAMES W. STIGLER & JAMES HIEBERT
The Teaching Gap
Teaching is arousing and using the pupil's mind to form in it a desired conception of thought.
JOHN MILTON GREGORY
The Seven Laws of Teaching
The key to fixing education is better teaching, and the key to better teaching is figuring out who can teach and who can't.
JONATHAN ALTER
Newsweek, June 15, 2009
Some of the world's best educators are grandparents.
DR. CHARLIE W. SHEDD
attributed, Just Grandparents
One repays a teacher badly if one remains always only a student.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
There is no better way to learn than to teach.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
When they make a movie about my life and teaching career, Reese Witherspoon and I are going to sit down and have a talk before filming begins. "Look, Reese," I'll say. "You gotta lose some of that eye shadow. Better yet, move it down an inch or two and give yourself some dark circles under your eyes. Also, quit being so damn perky." She'll look offended for a minute, but I'll explain, "You've been up most of the night redoing your lesson plans because they changed the format again, and now they want literally 20 pages of lesson plans a week. Also, you're supposed to plan a field trip, but there's no money so you have to write a grant for it and also ask your mom to pay for half. And by the way, you got a call in the middle of the night from one of your students. He's OK; he just had a question about the homework. At one in the morning.
CAPTAIN AWESOME
"6 Ways in Which Teaching Is Nothing Like the Movies", We Are Teachers, December 4, 2015
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
WILLIAM ARTHUR WARD
Thoughts of a Christian Optimist
The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
ANATOLE FRANCE
The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
To make oneself interesting artificially, that is, interesting to those who have no interest in us, is indeed a very difficult task; and to arrest the attention hour after hour, and year after year, not of one, but of a multitude of persons who have nothing in common with us, not even years, is indeed a superhuman undertaking. Yet this is the task of the teacher, or, as he would say, his "art": to make this assembly of children whom he has reduced to immobility by discipline follow him with their minds, understand what he says, and learn; an internal action, which he cannot govern, as he governs the position of their bodies, but which he must win by making himself interesting, and by maintaining this interest.
MARIA MONTESSORI
Spontaneous Activity in Education