Quotes About Teaching

The creative impulse can be killed, but it cannot be taught...What a teacher can do...in working with children, is to give the flame enough oxygen so that it can burn. As far as I'm concerned, this providing of oxygen is one of the noblest of all vocations.

When I start a new seminar I tell my students that I will undoubtedly contradict myself, and that I will mean both things.

Stories, no matter how simple, can be vehicles of truth; can be, in fact, icons. It's no coincidence that Jesus taught almost entirely by telling stories, simple stories dealing with the stuff of life familiar to the Jews of his day. Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos we see despite all the chaos.

I get glimmers of the bad nineteenth-century teaching which has made Mother remove God from the realm of mystery and beauty and glory, but why do people half my age think that they don't have faith unless their faith is small and comprehensible and like a good old plastic Jesus?

Jesus was not a theologian. He was a God who told stories.

Plato also wrote—and I lettered this in firm italic letters and posted it on my dorm-room door—All learning which is acquired under compulsion has no hold upon the mind.

Stories, no matter how simple, can be vehicles of truth; can be, in fact, icons. It's no coincidence that Jesus taught almost entirely by telling stories, simple stories dealing with the stuff of life familiar to the Jews of his day. Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos we see despite all the chaos.

If I have something I want to say that is too difficult for adults to swallow, then I will write it in a book for children.

Fear and threat also literally shunt energy away from the areas of the brain involved in self-control and abstract reasoning—the exact opposite of what you want when you are trying to teach someone new ways of thinking and acting.

We have become obsessed with what is good about small classrooms and oblivious about what also can be good about large classes. It's a strange thing isn't it, to have an educational philosophy that thinks of the other students in the classroom with your child as competitors for the attention of the teacher and not allies in the adventure of learning.

You master mathematics if you are willing to try. That's what Schoenfeld attempts to teach his students.

In teaching, the implications are even more profound. They suggest that we shouldn't be raising standards. We should be lowering them, because there is no point in raising standards if standards don't track with what we care about. Teaching should be open to anyone with a pulse and a college degree — and teachers should be judged after they have started their jobs, not before.

And everyone knows that it's better to have an expert show you -- and not just tell you -- how to play tennis or golf or a musical instrument. We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instructions.

If the teacher is actually doing something interesting, these kids are quite capable of being engaged. Instead of responding in a 'let me control your behavior' way, the teacher needs to think, 'How can I do something interesting that will prevent you from misbehaving in the first place?

The one thing that all educational researchers agree about is that teacher quality matters far more than the size of the class. A great teacher can teach your child a year and a half's material in one year. A below-average teacher might teach your child half a year's material in one year.

It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success. It's the rich who get the biggest tax breaks. It's the best students who get the best teaching and most attention. And it's the biggest nine-and ten-year-olds who get the most coaching and practice. Success is the result of what sociologists like to call accumulative advantage.

professors accept

Concerning non-violence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.

Don't condemn if you see a person has a dirty glass of water, just show them the clean glass of water that you have. When they inspect it, you won't have to say that yours is better. -said by Elijah Muhammad to Malcolm X

The best lessons learned are from other peoples mistakes.

If you hesitate to learn from others, you will never learn anything new.

A mother's job is not complete till she has taught and imbibed God's Words, and principles into her kids.

Needs there groan a world in anguish just to teach us sympathy?

To the rich, the really poor don't know that the level of comfort you experience exist at all, so you see, they don't need your sympathy, and you should not feel guilty, just teach them how to fish.