Andy Hargreaves Quotes & Sayings

There is no algorithm for creativity. — Andy Hargreaves

Service to others should be one of the most basic purposes of family life and schooling. — Andy Hargreaves

Too many professional development initiatives are done to teachers - not for, with or by them. — Andy Hargreaves

Students and their families carry more responsibility for student success in the East. — Andy Hargreaves

Implementation of technological change must involve critics as well as advocates. — Andy Hargreaves

Schools cannot shut their gates and leave the outside world on the doorstep. — Andy Hargreaves

We will not achieve high performance in education if we replace teachers with machines or turn teachers into machines. — Andy Hargreaves

We disagree with the assertion that great teachers can be replaced by online alternatives. The futuristic claim that technology will triumph over teachers ignores all the social and relational dimensions of teaching and learning. — Andy Hargreaves

It is those who have the distinction of privilege who set the standards of disgust with failure. — Andy Hargreaves

Schools that cannot tolerate interesting & enthusiastic eccentrics who work better alone than together are devoid of flexibility & spirit — Andy Hargreaves

High performing organizations have cultures of creativity and risk. They encourage workers to innovate and play. — Andy Hargreaves

Schools often get the teachers they deserve! — Andy Hargreaves

It's important to be innovative when times are prosperous. It's essential to be innovative when they are not. — Andy Hargreaves

The quality & morale of teachers is absolutely central to the well being of students and their learning. — Andy Hargreaves

It's time for the US to widen its circle of learning, not to circle its wagons against hostile ideas in education reform. — Andy Hargreaves

Lateral trust among colleagues is as important as vertical trust within the hierarchy. — Andy Hargreaves

Singapore gives 10 percent 'white space' time to all of its teachers to come up with their own innovations outside of the official curriculum. This encourages teachers to turn to their colleagues for inspiration and ideas. — Andy Hargreaves

As we seek to eliminate individualism in teaching, we should not eradicate individuality with it. — Andy Hargreaves

On government & unions: the only thing worse than blind trust is blind mistrust. — Andy Hargreaves

On being: Arrogance is not the prerogative of the gifted. — Andy Hargreaves

The bags that teachers carry home symbolize their guilt about the endless care they have to give. — Andy Hargreaves

A brainscan cannot interpret itself and neither can a data dashboard in education. — Andy Hargreaves

Educational reforms are like ripe fruit. They rarely travel well. — Andy Hargreaves

On assessment: measure what you value instead of valuing only what you can measure. — Andy Hargreaves

Excellence is the asymptotic state that never quite reaches perfection. — Andy Hargreaves

Teachers who don't pull their weight drag down the profession and their colleagues with it. — Andy Hargreaves

What we want for our students we should want for our teachers: learning, challenge, support, and respect. — Andy Hargreaves

It is not the time to put school districts up for auction. Now is the time to galvanize them into action. — Andy Hargreaves

The most important emotion in classrooms is surprise. — Andy Hargreaves

We must never return to the Julie Andrews curriculum where we teach "a few of my favorite things"! — Andy Hargreaves

There is no morality without temptation; otherwise it is just lack of opportunity. — Andy Hargreaves

Teachers are always emotional: by default if they bore us, and by design when they excite us. — Andy Hargreaves

When the purge of teacher individualism is unrestrained, eccentricity, initiative and individuality become the casualties. — Andy Hargreaves

Courageous leadership is not fearless leadership. What makes you a leader is how you deal with your fears. — Andy Hargreaves

Teaching is an emotional practice: it activates, colors & expresses people's feelings. — Andy Hargreaves

A first class system of early childhood education is the hallmark of a caring and civilized society. — Andy Hargreaves

We must use collegiality not to level people down but to bring together their strength and creativity. — Andy Hargreaves

We learn more from people who are different from us than ones who are the same. — Andy Hargreaves

Arrogance is the conjoined twin of ignorance. — Andy Hargreaves

Evaluation schemes that implicate 100% of the staff to detect a small % of incompetents are a waste of time. — Andy Hargreaves

Mentors turn into tormentors if they believe they are always right. — Andy Hargreaves

Teachers create and transform energy. They are the dynamos of educational change. — Andy Hargreaves

High performance leaders capitalize on crises to galvanize the motivation and actions of people in the organization. — Andy Hargreaves

Leadership is the cigarette that's smoked once the change has been consummated. — Andy Hargreaves

On school culture: It's hard to eat something you've had a relationship with. — Andy Hargreaves

Teaching is a passionate profession. — Andy Hargreaves

Blame and betrayal are the emotional enemies of improvement. — Andy Hargreaves

One or two bad teachers is a problem with the teachers. A school with many bad teachers is a problem of leadership. — Andy Hargreaves

On data: We are the drivers, not the driven. — Andy Hargreaves

Time is the enemy of freedom. — Andy Hargreaves

In Finland, within very broad government guidelines, teachers create their own curricula together across schools in every community and district. They don't confine collaboration to their own individual schools and to just implementing other people's ideas. — Andy Hargreaves

Physically, teachers are often alone in their own classrooms with no other adults for company. Psychologically, they never are. — Andy Hargreaves

On learning: if you really want alignment, go to a chiropractor. — Andy Hargreaves

Your most memorable students are in your first classes and your last classes: make your last years the finest of your career. — Andy Hargreaves

We should test prudently; not profligately. — Andy Hargreaves

Pompous asses knows how to put the moan in sanctimonious. — Andy Hargreaves

Sustainable leadership does no harm to and actively improves the surrounding environment. — Andy Hargreaves

The Common Curriculum can easily become the karaoke curriculum, where everyone just follows the bouncing ball of the script. — Andy Hargreaves

Economic necessity should be the mother of educational invention — Andy Hargreaves

Change is easy to propose, hard to implement, and especially hard to sustain. — Andy Hargreaves

We need to establish platforms for teachers to initiate their own changes and make their own judgments on the frontline, to invest more in the change capacities of local districts and communities, and to pursue prudent rather than profligate approaches to testing. — Andy Hargreaves

Improvement is about doing something better; innovation is about doing something new. — Andy Hargreaves

Don't raise the bar and narrow the gap, but narrow the gap to raise the bar. — Andy Hargreaves

The economists who have put the spotlight on teacher quality are the ones who most misunderstand it. — Andy Hargreaves

On teacher education: induction into current mandates must not turn into seduction away from best practice. — Andy Hargreaves

Culture is the possibility and impossibility that bacon and fruit can appear on the same plate. — Andy Hargreaves

Strong professional communities risk and sometimes relish conflict. — Andy Hargreaves

Trust processes as well as people. — Andy Hargreaves

When creativity is the goal, schools must have their own platforms to network and innovate. — Andy Hargreaves

If one foot is in a bucket of steam, and the other is in a bucket of ice, you are not, on average, comfortable. — Andy Hargreaves

Education leaders must have the will at times to release leadership to the teachers the parents and the students. — Andy Hargreaves

The rules of the world are changing. It is time for the rules of teaching and teachers' work to change with them. — Andy Hargreaves

On technology: The teacher is mightier than the mouse. — Andy Hargreaves

Alberta funds almost all its schools and districts to design and evaluate their own innovations. Teachers are the drivers of change, not the driven. — Andy Hargreaves

You cannot switch teachers on and off as if they were PowerPoint presentations. — Andy Hargreaves

Students are often the last to know about change that is occurring in their own school system. — Andy Hargreaves

There is a new science of complexity which says that the link between cause and effect is increasingly difficult to trace; that change (planned or otherwise) unfolds in non-linear ways; that paradoxes and contradictions abound; and that creative solutions arise out of diversity, uncertainty and chaos. — Andy Hargreaves

If we're all on the same page, no one's reading the whole book. — Andy Hargreaves

Without optimism & self-belief among teachers, classrooms become wastelands of boredom & routine and schools deserts of lost opportunity. — Andy Hargreaves

All teachers are already leaders. It's in the nature of teaching. — Andy Hargreaves

Every solution has a problem. — Andy Hargreaves

Walking makes us take problems in our stride. — Andy Hargreaves

Although everyone wants to change the teacher, it's time for the agents of educational reform to change themselves. — Andy Hargreaves

In collaborative cultures, failure and uncertainty are not protected but shared and discussed to gain support. — Andy Hargreaves

Standardized personalization=universal right to meaningful learning. Personalized standardization=flexible access to mandated learning. — Andy Hargreaves

Students become good learners when they are in the classes of teachers who are good learners. — Andy Hargreaves

We need standards with flexibility, not standardization with force if we are to get the best from our teachers. — Andy Hargreaves

Teaching is a never-ending story. The work is never over; the job is never done. — Andy Hargreaves

Adolescence is about digging out the iron inside irony. — Andy Hargreaves

Every learner has special needs. — Andy Hargreaves

Teachers still command great respect in the families and societies of many Asian cultures. — Andy Hargreaves

Capacity building originally meant helping people to help themselves. Now it means required training to deliver imposed policies. — Andy Hargreaves

The teacher has more power than the Minister. — Andy Hargreaves

In healthy individuals, emotions don't distort rationality, they enhance it! — Andy Hargreaves

You cannot understand the teacher or their teaching without understanding the person the teacher is. — Andy Hargreaves

High performance leaders create an inspiring future by connecting with a classic and honorable past. — Andy Hargreaves

Teaching is not the oldest profession. But it is certainly among the loneliest. — Andy Hargreaves

Professional trust is a process, not a state. — Andy Hargreaves

In high performing countries, principals are working with highly qualified teachers who come from the top tiers of the graduation range, who have been rigorously prepared in universities and through supervised practice in schools, and who remain in education for all of their careers. — Andy Hargreaves

Human growth is not like rhubarb. It can be nurtured and encouraged but it cannot be forced. — Andy Hargreaves