“Balance in life is the key to everything.”
“Which one is really my child? The one I brought forth with my own groans who has no liking for the thing I love most in all the world, or the stranger’s child whom fate placed in my life, the one who is absorbing and treasuring every word I give her, whose eyes are learning every day, whom I would love to teach...”
“The forward momentum of British educations cannot be resisted: a relentless fascist machine that will spit them out the other side as soldiers or sexless governors-general and the like. All he can do is plant some small seed of independent thought in their minds. He is sorry for them and what is coming: every rottenness and corruption.”
“Lieutenant Fielding was a relatively young teacher who taught Latin and Greek History. He was friendlier than most teachers and encouraged his students to come back to his classroom after hours for additional insight. I remember him professing that the Greeks placed great emphasis on the human body, especially that of men. He also explained that students and teachers should develop a very special bond, supposedly for their enhanced mutual benefit. His philosophy was based on Pederasty as it was practiced in Ancient Greece and, for Fielding; it provided an entrance into a form of ritualistic military life, and the religion of Zeus. At the time I had no inkling what he was talking about, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that he was “gay,” a term not used at the time. However, some students didn’t mind his advances and got unusually high grades, until one day he left without notice. Some of those students who received the extra help were either pulled out of school by their parents or asked to leave by the school’s administrators. In 1952 there was little tolerance for the alternate life style that Lieutenant Fielding was promoting!”
“Teaching is not entertainment, but it is unlikely to be successful unless it is interesting.”
“If you get hurt every time someone misunderstands or demonstrates their unwillingness to learn, you ll never build the experience needed to get truly good at teaching and, therefore, will never experience the rewards of doing it well.”
“If the forest were covered with ten times the number of blue markers I had seen on my hike, the probability of my getting lost would certainly be reduced. One could imagine the markers organized in a more symbolic shape—say a real arrow, instead of a cryptic linear marker. And if we wish to go that far, why not just paint the more explicit text, This way, on the rocks in 100-point Helvetica so there s no ambiguity whatsoever? Yet at some point, with the successive addition of more sophisticated elements, the true value of the untainted forest suddenly vanishes.”
“What should you do when a bundle of student evaluations shows up in your mailbox? It had been a pretty good week till you saw that familiar package waiting for you. Honestly, after 25 years of teaching, we still pick and choose when to open that package. If there is something important pending, or even something just plain enjoyable going on, at the time the evaluations arrive, we hold off opening them. We wait for a quiet time, generally near the end of the week, and at the end of the day, to open them. This is not because we expect them to be bad, we just know that if there are two or three negative reviews, it will sting. Like a garlic taste that lingers after lunch well into the afternoon, negative teaching evaluation comments are the strongest and get replayed in our mind for a while.”
“He smiles a little. This is the point of being a teacher. A glimmer of hope where you thought it didn t exist.”
“Teach them ethics and martial arts and. . . I don t know. Bravery. Do you think you can teach someone to be brave?”
“School exams are memory tests, in real-world no one is going to stop you from referring a book to solve a problem.”
“[...] it is rare for a man who teaches to know his subject thoroughly; for if he studies it as he ought, he has in most cases no time left in which to teach it. [...]”
“An obstacle to the learning is to overlook the students mental level of learning by teachers. Good teachers have a power to make difference between the level of individuals rather than comparing with themselves.”
“An HBCU that is not inherently revolutionary in 2016 is irrelevant. An African American Studies class that is not inherently revolutionary in 2016 is irrelevant.”
“If we can recognize what makes us unique and how we can positively impact our students, then we can make teaching much more meaningful and learning much more rewarding—essentially, a transformative experience for our students.”
“For me, education—both teaching and learning—is about building relationships and developing rapport with students, with parents, and with faculty.”
“Let your ego grow enough to teach but not enough to dictate.”