Quotes from Rafe Esquith

Never compare one student's test score to another's. Always measure a child's progress against her past performance. There will always be a better reader, mathematician, or baseball player. Our goal is to help each student become as special as she can be as an individual--not to be more special than the kid sitting next to her.

To quote the exceptional teacher Marva Collins, "I will is more important than IQ." It is wonderful to have a terrific mind, but it's been my experience that having outstanding intelligence is a very small part of the total package that leads to success and happiness. Discipline, hard work, perserverance, and generosity of spirit are, in the final analysis, far more important.

There are so many charlatans in the world of education. They teach for a couple of years, come up with a few clever slogans, build their websites, and hit the lecture circuit. In this fast-food-society, simple solutions to complex problems are embraced far too often. We can do better. I hope that people who read this book realize that true excellence takes sacrifice, mistakes, and enormous amounts of effort. After all, there are no shortcuts.

Most of us have participated in the trust exercise in which one person falls back and is caught by a peer. Even if the catch is made a hundred times in a row, the trust is broken forever if the friend lets you fall the next time as a joke. Even if he swears he is sorry and will never let you fall again, you can never fall back without a seed of doubt.

That's the beauty of art--we strive for perfection but never achieve it. The journey is everything.

Most children, even very bright ones, need constant review and practice to truly own a concept in grammar, math or science. In schools today, on paper it may appear that kids are learning skills, but in reality they are only renting them, soon to forget what they've learned over the weekend or summer vacation.

Would you rather have your child in a room with the best equipment in the world with an average teacher or an empty room with Socrates?

Children are born with varying levels of talent and intelligence, but possessing natural smarts and skills is no guarantee of success. It takes more than that: it takes work on the part of parents and teachers to cultivate these qualities, to instill in children the drive and character necessary to translate their natural gifts into extraordinary results.

I didn't realize that many people, who may be good people, feel that working in schools is just a job and not a holy mission.

if you become angry over little things, the big issues are never even addressed. As

A child who learns that the past has created the present and that the present will shape the future will be willing to explore other times beyond his own limited existence.

I teach my students that while rules are necessary, many of our greatest heroes became heroes by not following the rules. [...] Extraordinary people throughout history have done this, and if we want our children to reach such heights, they need to know the rules but see past a chart on the wall. There will be times when the chart is not there. More important, there will be times when the chart is wrong.

Unfortunately working hard doesn't necessarily make someone an effective teacher.

With better vision, we sacrifice for students for whom that sacrifice will most likely pay off. I'm sorry to say this, but there are times when even superhuman effort will not save a child from his environment or himself. It's not the job of the teacher to save a child's soul; it is the teachers' job to provide an opportunity for the child to save his own soul.

But to paraphrase Henry Drummond in Inherit the Wind, ignorance and mediocrity are forever busy, and the forces of mediocrity aren't content with being mediocre; they'll do everything in their power to prevent even the humblest of teachers and children from accomplishing anything extraordinary. For good work shines a light on the failures of the mediocre, and that is a light which terrifies those who conspire to keep our nation's children, like themselves, ordinary.

I've learned the best reason to take children on the road: children learn and understand how to behave by being exposed to new situations and watching others...As a teacher of children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, I came to understand that my students would work harder for a better life if they saw the life they were working for.

I thought to myself that if I could care so much about teaching that I didn't even realize my hair was burning, I was moving in the right direction. From that moment, I resolved to always teach like my hair was on fire.

It often seems that we live in a bottom line society, where the final score or final grade is all that matters. Exceptional children grow to understand that the journey is everything.

In schools today, on paper it may appear that kids are learning skills but in reality they are only renting them, soon to forget what they've learned over the weekend or summer vacation.

If I push a few of your buttons I'm probably doing my job as a teacher!

Our assessment of reading may begin with standardized test scores, but in the end we must measure a child's reading ability by the amount of laughter exhaled and tears shed as the written word is devoured.

Socrates was the best teacher and they killed him!

We teachers are all boxers. We get hit a lot. I've been knocked down so many times I'm often woozy. But I've learned something in...the classroom: all teachers, even the best ones, get knocked down. The difference between the best ones and the others is that the best ones always get up to answer the bell. May you always get up. It is a child ringing the bell, and he needs your help.

Everything has become too easy for our young people, and we make things worse by lying to them. We don't help them face reality. Teachers and schools lie to children and parents all the time.