Quotes About Engagement

Shouldn't schools be the place where students interact with interesting books? Shouldn't the faculty have an ongoing laser-like commitment to put good books in our students' hands? Shouldn't this be a front-burner issue at all times?

I am not simply teaching the reading; I am teaching the reader.

To become a lifelong reader, one has to do a lot of varied and interesting reading.

Authentic interest is generated when students are given the opportunity to delve deeply into an interesting idea.

Instead, to develop agency, our students would be better served if we created what Judy Wallis, a veteran teacher in Houston, refers to as a "three-text" classroom: a place where students encounter texts we all read, where students encounter texts that some of us read, and where students encounter texts that they read independently. Our students need a blended reading experience, and in Chapter 8 I discuss a model for developing this kind of a classroom. I

When students are taught to approach argument through inquiry, good things happen: they choose topics worthy of arguing, they gain ownership (through choice) of their writing, and their teacher is not stuck in Groundhog Day reading the same argument paper over and over. Key

We are all shaped by what we do.

The single most important key to success is to be a good listener.

To get the attention of a large animal, be it an elephant or a bureaucracy, it helps to know what part of it feels pain. Be very sure, though, that you want its full attention.

If someone doesn't care about himself, you begin to lose interest after a while.

The moments of the class must belong to the student—not the students, but to the very undivided student. You don't teach a class. You teach a student.

The best teaching is often both an intellectual creation and a performing art.

In the past a leader was a boss. Today's leaders must be partners with their people... they no longer can lead solely based on positional power.

There is no communication in this world except between equals.

(On his marathon live shows) You think you can get away, but you can't. I'll follow you home and I'll shout jokes through your letterbox.

there probably isn't a marriage or a relationship or a friendship anywhere today that wasn't jump-started by trivia.

If you're interested, you'll be there.

Reading a book, and taking the time to ruminate and make inferences and engage the imaginational processing, is more cognitively enriching, without a doubt, than the short little bits that you might get if you're into the 30-second digital mode.

As the physicist John Wheeler said, "If you don't kick things around with people, you are out of it. Nobody, I always say, can be anybody without somebody being around.

When people are in their Element, they connect with something fundamental to their sense of identity, purpose, and well-being.

what people contribute to the world around them has everything to do with how they engage with the world within them.

When you're in your Element, your sense of time changes. If you're doing something that you love, an hour can feel like five minutes; if you are doing something that you do not, five minutes can feel like an hour.

expert teachers fulfill four main roles: they engage, enable, expect, and empower. ENGAGE

The key to raising achievement is to recognize that teaching and learning is a relationship.