Classroom Learning Quotes & Sayings

In addition to labeling kids who learn differently as problematic, sometimes defective, most schools classify, track, and categorize students from very early ages. As an abundance of research studies confirm, these classifications tend to become self-perpetuating and self-confirming. My interviewees illuminate the ways in which grades, tests, and opportunities to learn are often arbitrary or related to class, race, and gender. In the supposed meritocracy of schooling, these markers and estimations have profound impact, not just structuring how we fit into the learning hierarchy of an individual classroom, but who we are who whom we believe we will become. — Kirsten Olson

As a Christian, I got something the world didn't give me, the world can't take away, so I find joy that can never be reduced to anything. So I come into classroom on fire. I'm on fire for learning. I'm on fire for education, a paideia in the deepest sense of paideia, trying to get young people to shift from the superficial to the substantial, the shift from the bling-bling to letting freedom reign in their minds and hearts and souls. — Cornel West

Third Wave technology will also change how we measure success in the classroom. What good is an annual standardized test, after all, once teachers and parents can get detailed reports with a wide range of metrics, comparing their students on a regular basis to others in their class or school or state? In this way, big data on individual students will do for education what standardized testing never quite could: bring quantitative precision to a qualitative learning process. — Steve Case

Life is a classroom. — Frank Sonnenberg

The least of the work of learning is done in the classroom. — Thomas Merton

But first the student must learn to think creatively, to innovate, and to do the things that will most quickly seek out the enemy's weak spots and undo him. Learning to think in that fashion is fundamental. That is what this course is about: the fundamentals. Once these fundamentals are learned, that is, once the student has begun to think clearly about how best to undo his adversary, once he has been rewarded in the classroom or the field for creative thought, the careful weighing of alternatives and risks followed by boldness in decision-making, he will then be ready to study definitions, control measures and formats. He will grasp their meaning more rapidly, for he will have a context in which to place them. They will be more than mere words and symbols. — William S Lind

An eternal question about children is, how should we educate them? Politicians and educators consider more school days in a year, more science and math, the use of computers and other technology in the classroom, more exams and tests, more certification for teachers, and less money for art. All of these responses come from the place where we want to make the child into the best adult possible, not in the ancient Greek sense of virtuous and wise, but in the sense of one who is an efficient part of the machinery of society. But on all these counts, soul is neglected. — Thomas Moore

Home schooled children frequently combine for many purposes - and they interact well. The growth of the home schooling movement means that more and more children are learning together, just not in a traditional classroom. — Ernest Istook

And learning, for Musk, is simply the process of "downloading data and algorithms into your brain."3 Among his many frustrations with formal classroom learning is the "ridiculously slow download speed" of sitting in a classroom while a teacher explains something, and to this day, most of what he knows he's learned through reading. — Tim Urban

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. — Malcolm Gladwell

There is incredible potential for digital technology in and beyond the classroom, but it is vital to rethink how learning is organised if we are to reap the rewards. — Geoff Mulgan

The world is the true classroom. The most rewarding and important type of learning is through experience, seeing something with our own eyes. — Jack Hanna

Instead of being the 'font of all knowledge,' teachers are required to be effective facilitators of student learning both within and outside the classroom at any time. — Susan Mann

This classmate told me that Plato drove this idea home in his dialogue Euthydemus, in which Socrates puts down the Sophists, claiming that a man learns more by "playing" with ideas in his leisure time that by sitting in a classroom. And Plato's successor, that world champion of pleasure, Epicurus, believed in a simple yet elegant connection between learning and happiness: the entire purpose of education was to attune the mind and sense to the pleasures of life. — Daniel Klein

The fact that they were there as students presumed they did not know what was good or bad. That was his job as instructor ... to tell them what was good or bad. The whole idea of individual creativity and expression in the classroom was really basically opposed to the whole idea of the University. — Robert M. Pirsig

From millions of students, thousands of studies, and hundreds of components that influence student learning, he concludes his work by arguing that learning occurs most effectively when two things happen: (1) each teacher sees his or her classroom through the eyes of his or her students, and (2) each student sees him- or herself as his or her own best teacher (Hattie, 2009, p. 238). — Tony Frontier

I entered the classroom with the conviction that it was crucial for me and every other student to be an active participant, not a passive consumer ... education as the practice of freedom ... education that connects the will to know with the will to become. Learning is a place where paradise can be created. — Bell Hooks

Unexamined wallpaper is classroom practices and institutional policies that are so entrenched in school culture or a teacher's paradigm that their ability to affect student learning is never probed. — Richard Elmore

In the online math class, there was almost no meaningful student/teacher or student/student interaction. To equate this type of online learning with a real-world classroom experience is a major stretch. — Ian Lamont

Productivity is going to be a critical issue. And it's not just about getting more time for professors in the classroom. It involves reexamining the learning experience and restructuring faculty and the use of faculty time. — Roy Romer

The New Groupthink is also practiced in our schools, via an increasingly popular method of instruction called "cooperative" or "small group" learning. In many elementary schools, the traditional rows of seats facing the teacher have been replaced with "pods" of four or more desks pushed together to facilitate countless group learning activities. Even subjects like math and creative writing, which would seem to depend on solo flights of thought, are often taught as group projects. In one fourth-grade classroom I visited, a big sign announced the "Rules for Group Work," including, YOU CAN'T ASK A TEACHER FOR HELP UNLESS EVERYONE IN YOUR GROUP HAS THE SAME QUESTION. — Susan Cain

One barrier ... is the impoverishment of classroom language, the failure to cultivate a common vocabulary about inquiry, explanation, argument and problem solving. — David Perkins

When everyone in the classroom, teacher and students, recognizes that they are responsible for creating a learning community together, learning is at its most meaningful and useful. — Bell Hooks

They go out and visit the kinds of places they are learning about such as the county court system, the grocery store oe the Department of Water and Power. They come back to the classroom and discuss what's going on in the world, and they get wood and tools and construct a scaled-down version of what they have seen. Usually the structure will take up the entire room. If it's a grocery store, then one person will be the manager, another the cashier, or the supplier of produce to the store. They will find out through creative discussion and play what possible problems they can run into operating a grocery store and will work together to solve those problems. — Fiona Whitney

Study after study affirms what I saw in the classroom every day as superintendent of Denver Public Schools: Nothing makes a bigger difference for student learning than great teaching. — Michael Bennet

Life in itself is a big classroom - so learn all the chapters of life well. This chapter of illness is but only one chapter. Learn whatever it has come to teach you and move on in life. — Sanchita Pandey

Notice the difference: A child's disability is the focus in traditional classroom settings, but his abilities are the focus in the homeschool environment. — Sandra K. Cook

frustration has flared up over the Common Core initiative, involving the implementation of national reading and maths standards for primary and secondary school children. The Gates Foundation played a central role in bringing the standards to fruition. Spending over $233 million to back the standards, the foundation dispersed money liberally to both conservative and progressive interest groups. The two major teachers' unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, each received large donations, as did the US Chamber of Commerce. Gates himself suggested that a benefit of the standards is that they open avenues towards increasing digital learning. In 2014, Microsoft announced it was partnering with Pearson to load Pearson's Common Core classroom material onto Microsoft's Surface tablet. Previously, the iPad was the classroom frontrunner; the Pearson partnership helps to make Microsoft more competitive. — Linsey McGoey

Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It would be no more feasible if it were attempted by means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools. Neither new attitudes of teachers toward their pupils nor the proliferation of educational hardware or software (in classroom or bedroom), nor finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue's responsibility until it engulfs his pupils' lifetimes will deliver universal education. The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring. — Ivan Illich

Nothing worth knowing can ever be taught in a classroom. — Chip Kidd

Learning's purest form," Jones replied, "is realized by the individual who continues a quest beyond the classroom, fueled by a passion to discern wisdom. Wisdom - genuine truth - holds the key to refining one's thinking. — Andy Andrews

Don't ever get to the point where you can't be taught because life is a classroom and everyone owns a pen. — Shannon L. Alder

Pedagogy of the Oppressed resonated with progressive educators, already committed to a 'child-centered' rather than a 'teacher-directed' approach to classroom instruction. Freire's rejection of teaching content knowledge seemed to buttress what was already the ed schools' most popular theory of learning, which argued that students should work collaboratively in constructing their own knowledge and that the teacher should be a 'guide on the side,' not a 'sage on the stage.' — Sol Stern

The value of the student's question is supreme. The best initial response to a question is not to answer it, per se, but to validate it, protect it, support it, and make a
space for it. Like a blossom just emerging, a question is vulnerable and delicate. A
direct answer can extinguish a question if you're not careful. But if you nourish the
blossom, it will grow and give fruit in the form of insight as well as more questions.
In short, a question needs to be nurtured more than answered. It should be given
center stage, admired, relished, embraced, and sustained. — Curt Gabrielson

My goal in the classroom was always to make sure they were having so much fun that they didn't realize they were learning. — Rick Riordan

You cannot afford to confine your studies to the classroom. The universe and all of history is your classroom. — Stella Adler

Most Christian teachers would profess to believe that their students are made in the image of God. . .Classroom practices, however, often reveal that students are not treated accordingly. They are not challenged to think through issues and carefully examine the various positions relevant to the issue. Instead they are simply given information as correct answers to be remembered and reproduced on a test or in some other written form. Rather than create an art project that reveals something about the way they view the world, they are given specific instructions for completing each step of the project and criticized, for example, if the trees are not green. While verbally teaching Johnny that he is an important person, a teacher may employ a learning model or classroom discipline system that clearly treats him as on object to be shaped and controlled by a system. . . (p18) — Donovan L. Graham

If life is a classroom then you're still in the learning process part. In the learning process part, if you make a mistake you can just erase it and try again. In a classroom your mistakes deserve course correction and education, not punishment. Here the goal is to teach you how to behave better, not to fail or get rid of you. In a classroom, you can be a work in progress, and that's okay.
In a classroom, you are free to make mistakes in order to learn, because mistakes are part of learning. There are still consequences to every choice, but in a classroom you can't fail, because your value isn't on the line. If life is a classroom, you have the same value no matter how much you struggle, how many mistakes you make or how you perform. If life is a classroom you are safe. — Kimberly Giles

Differentiation is classroom practice that looks eyeball to eyeball with the reality that kids differ, and the most effective teachers do whatever it takes to hook the whole range of kids on learning. — Carol Ann Tomlinson

Art in the classroom not only spurs creativity, it also inspires learning. — Mickey Hart

Don't leave the classroom of pain without gathering wisdom from its instruction. — Tim Hiller

By all means, learn beyond the classroom. In the end, thats all that will matter — Gossy Ukanwoke

Just as novice musicians must spend many hours practicing basic skills like playing scales or mastering difficult passages--and frequently do so in the presence of their teacher, receiving immediate and individualized feedback--so must our students spend many hours practicing the basic intellectual skills of our discipline. — James M. Lang

By its very definition, civic responsibility means taking a healthy role in the life of one's community. That means that classroom lessons should be complemented by work outside the classroom. Service-learning does just that, tying community service to academic learning. — John Glenn

The Responsive Classroom approach creates an ideal environment for learning
every teacher should know about it. — Daniel Goleman

Service-learning is a particularly fertile way of involving young people in community service, because it ties helping others to what they are learning in the classroom. It enables them to apply academic disciplines to practical, everyday problems. In the process, it provides a compelling answer to the adolescent's perennial question, 'Why do I need to learn this stuff? — Colin Powell

Teacher, school administrators and parents will come away from Life-Enriching Education with skills in language, communication, and ways of structuring the learning environment that support the development of autonomy and interdependence in the classroom. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Not everything that happens in an in-person classroom is currently replicated with an online course, and perhaps the experience will never be the quite the same. But there are new opportunities that online learning opens up that would have never been possible without this technology. — Daphne Koller

You know, learning doesn't end in the classroom. — E.C. Myers

the quality of classroom practice that a child encounters has unmatched potential with respect to influencing student learning and achievement. What teachers are doing in classes with students on a daily basis has the greatest potential to influence the academic outcome for students, — Steven Katz

Universities won't survive. The future is outside the traditional campus, outside the traditional classroom. Distance learning is coming on fast. — Peter Drucker

...I always took the rearmost seat in the classroom - it gave me a good view of things. And I must confess, the location taught me more about human nature and justice than could be learned from the professors' lectures. — Rohinton Mistry

Learning takes a lifetime and even the geniuses among us die ignorant. You should always want to learn, to grow, to improve. Otherwise what's the point? You may as well just give up and die. There's always new things to see, people to meet, lessons to learn. Life is both a classroom and a teacher. We'll always be the students, never the professors. — A.J. Compton

From the vantage point of the brain, doing well in school and at work involves one and the same state, the brain's sweet spot for performance. The biology of anxiety casts us out of that zone for excellence. "Banish fear" was a slogan of the late quality-control guru W. Edwards Deming. He saw that fear froze a workplace: workers were reluctant to speak up, to share new ideas, or to coordinate well, let alone to improve the quality of their output. The same slogan applies to the classroom - fear frazzles the mind, disrupting learning. — Daniel Goleman

When I think back on the twenty years I spent in school, what sticks with me isn't any particular subject, learning tool, or classroom. It is the teachers who brought my education to life and drove my interest forward, so that my passion for learning continued, despite the long days, the hard chairs, the difficult problems. These women and men were giants. They were underpaid, and they put up with all sorts of crap, but they made me the person I am today vastly more than the facts they taught. That relationship is what digital education technology cannot ever replicate or replace, and why a great teacher will always provide a more innovative model for the future of education than the most sophisticated device, software, or platform. — David Sax

I don't think college is for everyone. School is awesome, but for me, I was learning a lot more outside the classroom in the real world than I was in school. — Blake Mycoskie

I believe that coaches and athletes should realize that the athletic department field, court or diamond can be made an extension of the classroom, a place where you and your teammates are learning more than just how to prepare to win. The field, the court, and the diamond should be places where athletes are constantly learning about the game in which they participate, about their coaches and teammates, and perhaps most importantly, about themselves. — Phillip Shriver

critical pedagogy illuminates how classroom learning embodies selective values, is entangled with relations of power, entails judgments about what knowledge counts, legitimates specific social relations, defines agency in particular ways, and always presupposes a particular notion of the future. — Henry A. Giroux

That file full of letters meant I met with a Special Needs teacher in the hallway to get something called Individualized Attention, and let me tell you, working in the hallway with a teacher is like being the street person of a school. People pass you by, and they act like they don't see you, but three steps away they've got a whole story in their heads about why you're out there instead of in the nice cozy classroom where you belong, Stupid? Unlucky? Unloved? — Esme Raji Codell

The most effective learning takes place in the classroom, where you can easily raise your hand, engage in spontaneous discussions with classmates and faculty, turn to the person next to you to ask for clarification, or approach the professor after class or during office hours to ask questions or exchange viewpoints in a way that practically guarantees an instant response and is not constrained by typing, software interfaces, or waiting for a response. — Ian Lamont

In the absence of either a widely accepted theory of language learning or a solid empirical base for classroom practice, teachers and learners have always been, and will always be, vulnerable to drastic pendulum swings of fashion, the coming and going of various unconventional and unlamented "Wonder Methods" being an obvious recent example. The sad truth is that after at least 2,000 years, most language teaching takes place on a wing and a prayer - sometimes successfully, but often a relative failure. — Michael H. Long

It is a mistake to tell students that their classroom is a democracy- it cannot and never will be. But children need to learn how to participate in a community and to prepare themselves for democratic citizenship. — Karen Bohlin

Why has it been accepted as gospel for so long that homework is necessary? The answer, I think, lies not in the perceive virtues of homework but rather in the clear deficiencies of what happens in the classroom. Homework becomes necessary because not enough learning happens during the school day ... The broadcast, one-pace-fits-all lecture ... turns out to be a highly inefficient way to teach and learn. — Salman Khan

I learned more sitting under a tree than I did in a classroom. The teacher told me God did not exist; the tree, and everything around it, told me He did. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Who is the learner and what is his or her relationship to knowledge and learning? Is he or she basically good or evil (or both)? Passive or active in learning? Capable of choice, or has life already been determined somehow? Motivated internally or externally? An unmarked slate or having unrealized potential? These questions are answered every day in every classroom, daycare center, or basketball court - answered by the way children are viewed and treated by adults. — Elaine Cooper

What one learns in a classroom is just a very small part of learning process . The real learning starts when one crosses borders and travels miles for the real knowledge. — Vivek Sahni

You will be doing your students a much greater service by reducing the amount of material that you are covering and actually ensuring that students are learning it, rather than making sure that you are ticking off everyone checkpoint in your ideal syllabus. Learning comes from practice, and you have to help and teach your students to practice just as you help and team them the basic knowledge and skills of your discipline. — James M. Lang

What, of course, we want in a university is for people to learn the skills they're going to need outside the classroom. So, having a system that had more emphasis on inquiry and exploration but also on learning and practising specific skills would fit much better with how we know people learn. — Alison Gopnik

Our education system is increasingly embracing a black-and-white way of thinking, in which 'learning' and 'play' are diametrically opposed. 'Learning' is the serious stuff that happens inside a classroom and can be measured via multiple choice questions and a No. 2 pencil. 'Play' is frivolous, fun, and worst of all, optional. — Darell Hammond

I am skeptical that distance education based on asynchronous Internet technologies (i.e., prerecorded video, online forums, and email) is a substitute for live classroom discussion and other on-campus interaction. Distance education students can't raise their hands to ask instructors questions or participate in discussions, and it's difficult or impossible for them to take advantage of faculty office hours. Teaching assistants don't always respond to email, and online class discussion boards can be neglected by students and faculty alike. In this sense, the "process of dialogue" is actually limited by technology. — Ian Lamont

Real learning begins outside the classroom. — Lailah Gifty Akita

What we ought to know we never be taught in the classroom. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Traditional education focuses on teaching, not learning. It incorrectly assumes that for every ounce of teaching there is an ounce of learning by those who are taught. However, most of what we learn before, during, and after attending schools is learned without its being taught to us. A child learns such fundamental things as how to walk, talk, eat, dress, and so on without being taught these things. Adults learn most of what they use at work or at leisure while at work or leisure. Most of what is taught in classroom settings is forgotten, and much or what is remembered is irrelevant. — Russell L. Ackoff

Let the radiance of my enthusiasms envelop the poor courtyard and the bare classroom. Let my heart be a stronger column and my goodwill purer gold than the columns and gold of rich schools. — Gabriela Mistral

Students quickly receive the message that they can only be smart when they are not who they are. This, in many ways, is classroom colonialism; and it can only be addressed through a very different approach to teaching and learning. — Christopher Emdin

A total immersion in life offers the best classroom for learning to love. — Leo Buscaglia