quotations about teaching
Life is amazing: and the teacher had better prepare himself to be a medium for that amazement.
EDWARD BLISHEN
Donkey Work
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"
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
Q: How many teachers did you have? A: Myself.
BABA HARI DASS
The Yellow Book
No man can instruct more than half-a-dozen students at once. The whole problem of education is one of its cost in money.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams
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
To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music, Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without his teacher.
ELBERT HUBBARD
A Thousand & One Epigrams
Don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend too much of a year preparing him to fill out a few bubbles on a standardized test; we know that's not true.
BARACK OBAMA
National Education Association Speech, 2007
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
It is always the teacher who must learn the most ... or else nothing real has happened in the exchange.
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
The Years of Rice and Salt
A good teacher does not draw out; he gives out, and what he gives out is love.
A. S. NEILL
The Problem Teacher
The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn
When teachers themselves are taught to learn.
BERTOLT BRECHT
Life of Galileo
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
Deciding to teach is an indication you are interested in joining an engaging, worthwhile, and yet challenging profession. It is important to recognize that schools are a microcosm of society. Just as society has changed (i.e., technological advancements) and become more diverse, so too have schools, and they may be quite different from what you recall as a student.
GLADIS KERSAINT & DENISSE R. THOMPSON
"Advice on Making a Mid-Career Change to Teaching", Education Week, June 13, 2017
A teacher who loves learning earns the right and the ability to help others learn.
RUTH BEECHICK
An Easy Start in Arithmetic
You know what's adorable about inspirational teacher movies? The way they grade papers. When Robin Williams sits down in front of a stack of papers in Dead Poets Society, they're all neatly arranged and he's staring intently at one, pen poised, ready to help guide one of those good-looking boys down the road to self-discovery before jotting down a score in his leather-bound grade book. Look, maybe I'm just doing it wrong. But my grade book is a dog-eared old Squibbs--which I had to buy myself, since the school doesn't give those out anymore--that is so overflowing with student work it's about to attain consciousness and try to take over the world.
CAPTAIN AWESOME
"6 Ways in Which Teaching Is Nothing Like the Movies", We Are Teachers, December 4, 2015
We love the precepts for the teacher's sake.
GEORGE FARQUHAR
The Constant Couple
Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.
JOHN COTTON DANA
New York Times Book Review, March 5, 1967
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Motto for the astronomy building of Junior College, Pasadena, California