Quotes About Teaching

My parents were very spiritual folks. I grew up studying the Bible. My dad's a Christian academy teacher. I grew up with a big spiritual influence. It's a big part of my life.

Many think of memory as rote learning, a linear stuffing of the brain with facts, where understanding is irrelevant. When you teach it properly, with imagination and association, understanding becomes a part of it.

I enjoy popularisation and I think I'm reasonably good at it. I also think it's a duty. It's just so pedagogically stupid to forget how difficult one found these ideas oneself to begin with.

Styles move too fast to be partial to anything. If it's funk, that's enough for me. I don't care how fast or slow it is. I got my grandkids up front rapping and doing the new thing. They're teaching each other, bringing us up to date.

A lot of times, when kids have problems with algebra or trigonometry, it has nothing to do with the subject matter, has nothing to do with their innate intelligence. It's just they that they had some gaps in elementary school that they never got to fill in.

Academic experts may not be good at doing what they are experts in themselves, but they are good at explaining the subject matter to others. They write books, teach courses and offer lessons and give steps others can follow.

On certain, delicate subjects, bringing in outsiders to talk about values is pertinent because pupils listen to them more attentively.

I love to write. I used to be a math teacher. And I like the idea that other people could write about the same subjects, but no one would write it just the way I do. It's very individual: a child could write the same story as somebody else, but it wouldn't come out the same.

Socrates gave a lifetime to the outpouring of his substance in the shape of the greatest benefits bestowed on all who cared to receive them. In other words, he made those who lived in his society better men and sent them on their way rejoicing.

I'd aspired to give people a profound education - to teach them something substantial. But the data was at odds with this idea.

Every schoolteacher will tell you that there is no substitute for engaged parents in the education of a child.

My mother taught us to play baseball, to bake a cake, to play fair - she beat the living daylights out of us sometimes, and she loved us with all her heart; she taught her favorite poets, and there is no child care in the world that will ever be a substitute for what that lady was in our life.

Before Juilliard, I was a schoolteacher for a little bit. I taught in a charter school. I was a substitute teacher for kids ages 3 to 6.

There's no substitute for an in-classroom experience.

When I was not a body guard, I was a substitute teacher during the day, I was bounced clubs at night and yeah, I was working.

I am grateful to Allan Donald for his guidance and subtle nuances that he taught me.

In the book, I write about children in first grade who were taught to read by reading want ads. They learned to write by writing job applications. Imagine what would happen if anyone tried to do that to children in a predominantly white suburban school.

I tell my students that being a writer is like being a member of a medieval guild and that what we are doing is very subversive and very important.

I knew from reading about Sarah Grimke that she'd been given a handmaid to be her personal slave and that her name was Hetty. The only other fact I knew about her was that Sarah taught her to read: They conspired in a very subversive way, by locking the door and screening the keyhole.

I have met people on the subway who have told me the most profound stories, and I am convinced we all have something to teach each other if we just slow down long enough to hear the message.

It is only as we develop others that we permanently succeed.

Every single thing that you learn really just gives you more comfort. It's something I counsel kids all the time: if someone is willing to teach you something for free, take them up on it. Do it. Every single time. All it does is make you more likely to be able to succeed. And it's kind of a nice way to go through life.

What I've found about it is that there are some folks you can talk to until you're blue in the face--they're never going to get it and they're never going to change. But every once in a while, you'll run into someone who is eager to listen, eager to learn, and willing to try new things. Those are the people we need to reach. We have a responsibility as parents, older people, teachers, people in the neighborhood to recognize that.

Share wisdom with those who will receive it.