TEACHING QUOTES

quotations about teaching

Teaching quote

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

Tags: Kobo Abe


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


A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn, is hammering on cold iron.

HORACE MANN

Thoughts


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


We never completely escape the teachers of our childhood nor any of the patterns that formed us.

FRANK HERBERT

Heretics of Dune

Tags: Frank Herbert


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


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


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


If you have forgotten how to be a child you cannot teach children.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

Tags: Austin O'Malley


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


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

Tags: Jonathan Alter


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

Tags: Friedrich Nietzsche


There is no better way to learn than to teach.

BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE

Moral and Religious Aphorisms

Tags: Benjamin Whichcote


The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

WILLIAM ARTHUR WARD

Thoughts of a Christian Optimist

Tags: William Arthur Ward


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 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

Tags: Anatole France


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