“Also, I am not sure what you are teaching in your classroom, but Seb came home the other week talking about a healthy eating pyramid. I had to explain to him that pyramids are made of stone and therefore not edible, so I would appreciate your not filling his head with these fanciful notions.”
“... Let me start with the top mistakes that teachers make. Some of these mistakes are forced on teachers by a badly designed education system, and some are ones that teachers make no matter what they are teaching or which system they are teaching in. Some of these are less than obvious, so let s consider them one-by-one. 1. Assuming that there is some kind of learning, other than learning by doing. 2. Believing that a teacher s job is assessment. 3. Thinking there is something that everyone must know in order to proceed. 4. Thinking that students are not worried about the purpose of what they are being taught. 5. Thinking that studying can replace repeated practice as a key learning technique. 6. Thinking that because students have chosen to take your course, they have an interest in learning what you plan to teach them. 7. Correcting a student who is doing something wrong by telling them what to do instead. 8. Thinking that a student remembers what you just taught him.”
“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.”
“An effective educator who can embrace the ever-changing teaching and learning environment, maintain resilience and strength under this pressure, dynamically participate in the development of new practices, and continue to foster a love of learning stands a greater chance of captivating students and appealing to their needs.”
“A classroom is like a Greenhouse where the teacher must provide essential amenities like knowledge and life-skill with patience and empathy, control temperatures and provide adequate ventilation to release unwanted energies for everyone and everything to bloom.”
“There is no doubt that great teaching and great teachers have a significant impact on students and their long-term association with school and with learning.”
“The purpose of teaching is learning and learning is changed behavior.”
“You can never stop being a teacher. It is the core responsibility of a leader.”
“Life is a learned skill, but instead of teaching it, our culture force-fills developing minds with long division and capital cities—until, at the end of the mandatory period of bondage that’s hyperbolically called school, we’re sent into the world knowing little about it. And so, left on our own to figure out the most important parts of life, we make mistakes for years until, by the time we’ve learned enough from our stumbling to be effective human beings, it’s time for us to die.”
“My students still don t know what they will never be. Their hope is so bright I can almost see it. I used to value the truth of whether this student or that one would achieve the desired thing. I don t value that truth anymore as much as I value their untested hope. I don t care that one in two hundred of them will ever become what they feel they must become. I care only that I am able to witness their faith in what s coming next. I no longer believe in anything other than the middle, but my students still believe in beginnings. Ask them, and they will tell you that everything is about to start in just a moment, just one more moment.”
“Though the legs of a football coach are never so active on the field of play during playing time, his mind is the best or worse player on the pitch!”
“Though the legs of a football coach are never so active on the field of play during playing time, his mind is the best or worst player on the pitch!”
“Teachers see coldness in the world and light fires in the minds of their students, hoping for a warm summer. Sadly, some cannot bear the flame, some turn away from the heat, and some twist the fire to burn.”
“You can t teach in a vacuum. A good teacher relates the material to real life. You understand that, don t you?”
“Nobody ever told them they had a right to an opinion.”
“Though I’ve never met a teacher who was not happy in retirement, I rarely meet one who thinks that their teaching life was not a grand way to spend a human life. The unhappy ones are the young ones, those who must teach in public schools when the whole nation seems at war with the very essence of teaching.”
“A nation of unhappy teachers makes for a sadder and more endangered America.”