quotations about teaching
What I've learned about teaching is to refer back to the root of that word, which is educo, which means "to pull from." Education does not mean jamming information into somebody's head. Rather, it's that ancient idea that all knowledge is within us; to teach is to help somebody pull it out of themselves.
ALAN ARKIN
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Esquire, March 2007
Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
JACQUES BARZUN
Newsweek, December 5, 1955
Teaching is one of the noblest of professions. It requires an adequate preparation and training, patience, devotion, and a deep sense of responsibility. Those who mold the human mind have wrought not for time, but for eternity.
CALVIN COOLIDGE
speech, July 4, 1924
A teacher who loves learning earns the right and the ability to help others learn.
RUTH BEECHICK
An Easy Start in Arithmetic
The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-distrust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciple.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
"The Teacher", Orphic Sayings
It's the student who makes the teacher, not the other way around.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Angel's Game
Only crazy people teach in heels. You're on your feet all day. Sometimes you have to chase a kid. It's true that heels sound really impressive on the linoleum when you're walking down the hall, but how are you ever going to sneak up on anybody?
CAPTAIN AWESOME
"6 Ways in Which Teaching Is Nothing Like the Movies", We Are Teachers, December 4, 2015
O ye! who teach the ingenious youth of nations,
Holland, France, England, Germany or Spain,
I pray ye flog them upon all occasions,
It mends their morals, never mind the pain.
LORD BYRON
Don Juan
Teaching is an art, not a science, principally because it involves human beings, their emotions and their values.
GILBERT HIGHET
The Art of Teaching
Be versed in ancient lore, and familiarize yourself with the modern; then may you become teachers.
CONFUCIUS
The Wisdom of Confucius
You know what's adorable about inspirational teacher movies? The way they grade papers. When Robin Williams sits down in front of a stack of papers in Dead Poets Society, they're all neatly arranged and he's staring intently at one, pen poised, ready to help guide one of those good-looking boys down the road to self-discovery before jotting down a score in his leather-bound grade book. Look, maybe I'm just doing it wrong. But my grade book is a dog-eared old Squibbs--which I had to buy myself, since the school doesn't give those out anymore--that is so overflowing with student work it's about to attain consciousness and try to take over the world.
CAPTAIN AWESOME
"6 Ways in Which Teaching Is Nothing Like the Movies", We Are Teachers, December 4, 2015
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
JOHN STEINBECK
"...like captured fireflies"
Arrogance, pedantry, and dogmatism ... the occupational diseases of those who spend their lives directing the intellects of the young.
HENRY S. CANBY
Alma Mater
Deciding to teach is an indication you are interested in joining an engaging, worthwhile, and yet challenging profession. It is important to recognize that schools are a microcosm of society. Just as society has changed (i.e., technological advancements) and become more diverse, so too have schools, and they may be quite different from what you recall as a student.
GLADIS KERSAINT & DENISSE R. THOMPSON
"Advice on Making a Mid-Career Change to Teaching", Education Week, June 13, 2017
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams
No teaching is complete that does not issue in plain and intelligent expression of the truth taught; but it is the most miserable of mockeries when, in place of leading the child to perfect and put into its own simple speech its own simple conceptions of truth, we impose upon it the ready-made definitions of some learned master or teacher, dressed, for the most part, in words it never heard before.
JOHN MILTON GREGORY
The Seven Laws of Teaching
Don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend too much of a year preparing him to fill out a few bubbles on a standardized test; we know that's not true.
BARACK OBAMA
National Education Association Speech, 2007
A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.
WALTER BAGEHOT
"Hartley Coleridge", Literary Studies
There was really only one way to teach kids how to develop it: You give them something they can't do, they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating the process.
RANDY PAUSCH
The Last Lecture
Any teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be!
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
Electronic Tutors