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"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life."
-Chinese Proverb
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"Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself."
-Chinese Proverb
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"No other job in the world could possibly dispossess one so completely as this job of teaching. You could stand all day in a laundry, for instance, still in possession of your mind. But this teaching utterly obliterates you. It cuts right into your being: essentially, it takes over your spirit. It drags it out from where it would hide."
-Sylvia Ashton-Warner, Spinster
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Learning is finding out what we 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 and teachers.
-Richard Bach, "Illusions: Reflections of a Reluctant Messiah"
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"When will the public cease to insult the teacher's calling with empty flattery? When will men who would never for a moment encourage their own sons to enter the work of the public schools cease to tell us that education is the greatest and noblest of all human callings?"
-William C. Bagley, Craftmanship in Teaching
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"I am quite sure that in the hereafter she will take me by the hand and lead me to my proper seat."
-Bernard Baruch, [On one of his early teachers], August 29, 1955
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"I am sure it is one's duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one's own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this."
-A. C. Benson, The Upton Letters
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There is no real teacher who in practice does not believe in the existence of the soul, or in a magic that acts on it through speech.
-Allan Bloom
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"Teaching that begins with questions is both a moral and a pedagogical choice. A teacher teaches with questions because she or he believes that it is a better way to teach, and a better way to be a teacher. Yet to succeed at this, the questions must be real questions: questions that puzzle, confuse, and interest."
http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PES-yearbook/97_docs/burbules.html
-Nicholas C. Burbles, essay: "Aporia: Webs, Passages, Getting Lost, and Learning to Go On"
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"Benevolence alone will not make a teacher, nor will learning alone do it. The gift of teaching is a peculiar talent, and implies a need and a craving in the teacher himself."
-John Jay Chapman, Memories and Milestones
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When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.
-Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Mentor and coach others whenever you can. Your teaching will deepen your own learning.
-Lee J. Colan, 107 Ways to Stick to It
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If you're teaching a class, you can think about the elementary things that you know very well. These things are kind of fun and delightful. It doesn't do any harm to think them over again. Is there a better way to present them? The elementary things are easy to think about; if you can't think of a new thought, no harm done; what you thought about it before is good enough for the class. If you do think of something new, you're rather pleased that you have a new way of looking at it.
The questions of the students are often the source of new research. They often ask profound questions that I've thought about at times and then given up on, so to speak, for a while. It wouldn't do me any harm to think about them again and see if I can go any further now. The students may not be able to see the thing I want to answer, or the subtleties I want to think about, but they remind me of a problem by asking questions in the neighborhood of that problem. It's not so easy to remind yourself of these things.
-Richard Feynman, "The Dignified Professor" in "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman" [pg. 166]
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"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
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I am not willing that this discussion should close without mention of the value of a true teacher. Give me a log hut, with only a simple bench, Mark Hopkins on one end and I on the other, and you may have all the buildings, apparatus and libraries without him.
-James Garfield, Address to Williams College alumni, NY, 1871
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I have come to a frightening conclusion. I am the decisive element in the classroom.It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher I possess tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child humanized orde-humanized.
-Haim Ginott, Teacher and child: A book for parents and teachers, New York, NY: Collier.
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"At the core of who we are is the roots of those that have influenced our lives the most and the impact of what they have exposed us to is always there and when the foundation is laid with love and commitment, our lives at some point will reflect that of which we have been taught."
-Aja Graydon
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"If you are happy with the way things are in the schools, and your children are happy and fulfilled, fine. I'm glad you are happy, and that the schools are doing what you want them to for you. But there are lots of people out there who are very unhappy, and it's to those people that I'm offering this other choice, and saying that they don't have to just accept what's imposed on them. It takes a lot of determination, and some hard work, but you can teach your own!"
-John Holt
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The role of the teacher remains the highest calling of a free people. To the teacher, America entrusts her most precious resource, her children; and asks that they be prepared...to face the rigors of individual participation in a democratic society.
-Shirley Hufstedler
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To believe in a child is to believe in the future. Through their aspirations they will save the world. With their combined knowledge the turbulent seas of hate and injustice will be calmed. They will champion the causes of life's underdogs, forging a society without class discrimination. They will supply humanity with music and beauty as it has never known. They will endure. Towards these ends I pledge my life's work. I will supply the children with tools and knowledge to overcome the obstacles. I will pass on the wisdom of my years and temper it with patience. I shall impact in each child the desire to fulfill his or her dream. I shall teach.
-Henry James
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"To teach a man how he may learn to grow independently, and for himself, is perhaps the greatest service that one man can do another."
-Benjamin Jowett
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We think of our efficient teachers with a sense of recognition, but those who touched our humanity we remember with gratitude. Learning is the essential mineral, but warmth is the life-element for the child's soul, no less than for the growing plant.
-Carl Gustav Jung, "The Gifted Child" - Collected Works, Vol 17
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An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
-Carl Gustav Jung
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"Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor."
-Søren Kierkegaard
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No bubble is so iridescent or floats longer than that blown by the successful teacher.
-William Osler, Address, Glasgow, October 4, 1911
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There is no accountability in the public school system - except for coaches. You know what happens to a losing coach. You fire him. A losing teacher can go on losing for 30 years and then go to glory.
-H. Ross Perot
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Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.
-Joseph Pulitzer
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The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called truth.
-Dan Rather
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I believe that the testing of the student's achievements in order to see if he meets some criterion held by the teacher, is directly contrary to the implications of therapy for significant learning.
-Carl R. Rogers
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An educator should think of a child as a garderner thinks of a plant, as something to be made to grow by having the right soil and the right kind amount of water. If your roses fail to bloom, it does not occur to you to whip them, but you should try to find out what has been amiss in your treatment of them... The important thing is what the children do, and not what they do not do. And what they do, if it is to have value, must be a spontaneous expression of their own vital energy.
-Bertrand Russell, "Life Without Fear : New Hopes for a Changing World"
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The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
-William Arthur Ward
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Books about Teaching
