TEACHING QUOTES II
quotations about teaching
The good pupils are often brilliant, and they keep you on your toes and take you to the limits of your knowledge. The worst pupils provide a unique insight into the criminal mind.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
interview, The Paris Review, The Paris Review
For rigorous teachers seized my youth,
And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire,
Show'd me the high white star of Truth,
There bade me gaze, and there aspire.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse"
It might sound like a cliché to say that teaching is a stressful job. But behind the cliché lies a grim reality: Overburdened teachers dealing with a variety of issues in the classroom, including unaddressed mental health needs, often resort to punitive measures that alienate kids from school and feed the "school-to-prison" pipeline. This reality is the result of a failure to give teachers the resources and support they need to respond differently.
OCTAVIO MARTINEZ JR.
"Mental health in schools is at a tipping point. Here is what needs to happen", Fort Worth Star Telegram, May 26, 2017
Just when you think the masters of the universe who run the corporate reform movement can't be even more clueless, you catch wind of the newest effort to turn education into a profit-generating endeavor--this time, a hare-brained scheme to evaluate student teachers, by ... and I swear I'm not making this up ... observing them as they pretend to teach ... wait for it ... a fake "classroom" of avatars, in a virtual reality environment. Avatars. Avatars! AVATARS!!!!!!
MITCHEL ROBINSON
"The 'Brave New World' of Teacher Evaluation", Eclecta Blog, May 22, 2017
Men must be taught as if you taught them not,
And things unknown propos'd as things forgot.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Criticism
Teaching is one of the noblest of professions. It requires an adequate preparation and training, patience, devotion, and a deep sense of responsibility. Those who mold the human mind have wrought not for time, but for eternity.
CALVIN COOLIDGE
speech, July 4, 1924
And because founders of colleges do plant, and founders of lectures do water, it followeth well in order to speak of the defect which is in public lectures; namely, in the smallness, and meanness of the salary or reward which in most places is assigned unto them, whether they be lectures of arts, or of professions.
FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
History is philosophy teaching by examples.
THUCYDIDES
The History of the Peloponnesian War
I almost stopped teaching entirely. The worst thing for me is contact with students. I like universities without students. And I especially hate American students. They think you owe them something. They come to you ... Office hours!
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
"Slavoj Zizek: I am not the world's hippest philosopher!", Salon, December 29, 2012
The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-distrust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciple.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
"The Teacher", Orphic Sayings
Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, teachers.
RICHARD BACH
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
As well as providing the greatest challenge, the greatest joy we have within teaching is that we are working with young people.
SIMON SMITH
"Evidence is important, but great teaching is still an art", TES, May 12, 2017
Be versed in ancient lore, and familiarize yourself with the modern; then may you become teachers.
CONFUCIUS
The Wisdom of Confucius
Ideal teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their own.
NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS
attributed, English Leadership Quarterly, 1991
Only crazy people teach in heels. You're on your feet all day. Sometimes you have to chase a kid. It's true that heels sound really impressive on the linoleum when you're walking down the hall, but how are you ever going to sneak up on anybody?
CAPTAIN AWESOME
"6 Ways in Which Teaching Is Nothing Like the Movies", We Are Teachers, December 4, 2015
A teacher who loves learning earns the right and the ability to help others learn.
RUTH BEECHICK
An Easy Start in Arithmetic
Since human beings are highly adaptable it may be possible for an individual with any sort of competence to learn, in the end, according to any teaching strategy. But the experiments show, very clearly indeed, that the rate, quality and durability of learning is crucially dependent upon whether or not the teaching strategy is of a sort that suits the individual.
GORDON PASK
Learning Strategies and Individual Competence
Teaching is a performing art. It's part technique, part experience, part commitment to the mission a teacher takes on -- the growth and development of the kids with whom he or she meets for 185 or so days each year.
GEOFF JOHNSON
"Little advice goes a long way, even for teachers", Times Colonist, May 30, 2017
No man is so learned but he may be taught; neither is any one so illiterate but he may teach.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
JOHN STEINBECK
"...like captured fireflies"