Education Teacher Quotes & Sayings

Without any doubt at all, teacher quality is the fundamental differentiator. Not just, incidentally, of education, but I would argue, probably the biggest single differentiator of success for the nations of the 21st Century. — David Puttnam

I knew a teacher that kept a calendar on his desk. He didn't use it for lesson planning though. Instead he was marking time until summer. That's what prisoners do on walls. They mark the days until they go free. But if you're marking time as a teacher, you aren't redeeming the time with your students. A parent drops a child off at the beginning of the year and it's your job to redeem the time and educate that child. It's your responsibility to see that child progress throughout the year. The child should be a better student as a result of being in your classroom. You are responsible - for successes and failures - and you have an obligation to students and parents to redeem every precious minute you're given as an educator. — Tucker Elliot

The best way to fight terrorism is to invest in education. Instead of sending weapons, send teachers. — Malala Yousafzai

Education must begin with the solution of the student-teacher contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students. — Paulo Freire

This is what is intended by education as a help to life; an education from birth that brings about a revolution: a revolution that eliminates every violence, a revolution in which everyone will be attracted towards a common center. Mothers, fathers, statesmen all will be centered upon respecting and aiding this delicate construction which is carried on in psychic mystery following the guide of an inner teacher. This is the new shining hope for humanity. It is not so much a reconstruction, as an aid to the construction carried out by the human soul as it is meant to be, developed in all the immense potentialities with which the new-born child is endowed. — Maria Montessori

Education is unfolding the wings of head and heart together. The job of a teacher is to push the students out of the nest to strengthen their wings. — Amit Ray

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

I've always tried to be aware of what I say in my films, because all of us who make motion pictures are teachers - teachers with very loud voices. — George Lucas

Sometimes you don't have enough money to hire a real science teacher. Sometimes you have an old real science teacher who retires or quits and leaves you without a replacement. And if you don't have a real science teacher, then you pick one of the other teachers and make him the science teacher.
And that's why small-town kids sometimes don't know the truth about petrified wood. — Sherman Alexie

The work of education is divided between the teacher and the environment. — Maria Montessori

The pursuit of learning is not a piece of content that can be taught. It is a value that teachers model. Only teachers who are avid, internally motivated learners can truly teach their students the joy of learning. — Martin Haberman

Teacher, teacher, I declare, I see your purple underwear. — Allan Sherman

To know how to suggest is the art of teaching. — Henri Frederic Amiel

ultimately, the long-term goal is to have a critically informed public vote out of office representatives that are sacrificing children to the corporate bottom line with prepackaged teacher-proof curricula, standardized tests, and accountability schemes. — Pepi Leistyna

In my parents' day and age, it used to be the person who fell short. Now it's the discipline. Reading the classics is too difficult, therefore it's the classics that are to blame. Today the student asserts his incapacity as a privilege. I can't learn it, so there is something wrong with it. And there is something especially wrong with the bad teacher who wants to teach it. There are no more criteria, Mr. Zuckerman, only opinions. — Philip Roth

Actually, all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you education. What you receive is like the outlines in a child's coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself. — Louis L'Amour

Some people thought that if you put pressure on kids, parents, and teachers and schools, the pressure alone would produce results. It appealed to people who think the quick fix for education is to threaten people. It's not a left-right division. — Deborah Meier

A teacher should be sparing of his smile. — William Cowper

We need people who push boundaries rather than retreat inside them. — Tim Fargo

Throughout the course of my life, I have been very fortunate to have had excellent teachers - not just in meditation, but in martial arts, music, scuba diving, and in my academic education. — Frederick Lenz

In 2009, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched a massive project to study 3,000 teachers in seven cities and learn what made them effective. The five metrics that most correlated with student learning were:
1. Students in this class treat the teacher with respect.
2. My classmates behave the way my teacher wants them to.
3. Our class stays busy and doesn't waste time.
4. In this class, we learn a lot almost every day.
5. In this class, we learn to correct our mistakes. — Thomas Kane

Much as a teacher may wince at the thought, he is also an entertainer - for unless he can hold his audience, he cannot really instruct or edify them. — Sydney J. Harris

I was a teacher for a long time. I taught at a community college: voice, theory, humanities. And nowadays, music education is a dying thing. Funding is being cut more and more and more. — Jon Secada

Just as you learn from a teacher, so you can observe and learn from the educator we call nature. — Debasish Mridha

Failure is the best teacher for future success. — Debasish Mridha

One of the skills of a journalist, though, is to find people who can teach him what he needs to know. So instead of taking courses, I've been very lucky in that I found teachers - scientists, especially - who were willing to teach me what I needed to know, whether it was about genetically modified crops or how photosynthesis works, and so on. I just find my teachers and don't have to pay for my education. — Michael Pollan

The overemphasis on standardized tests forces teachers to teach the same restricted, unintuitive curriculum. Longtime educator Brent Evans has said that today's schools are organized as assembly lines, "(running at a set speed) and with each worker (teacher) at designated places (way levels) on the assembly line performing predetermined actions on products (students) considered to be somewhat generic (one-size-fits-all) and passive (waiting to be filled or formed to the desired shape). — Brent Evans

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

It is because of our unassailable enthusiasm, our profound reverence for education, that we habitually demand of it the impossible. The teacher is expected to perform a choice and varied series of miracles. — Agnes Repplier

The teachers of small children are paid more than they were, but still far less than the importance of their work deserves, and they are still regarded by the unenlightened majority as insignificant compared to those who impart information to older children and adolescents, a class of pupils which, in the nature of things, is vastly more able to protect its own individuality from the character of the teacher. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

School should become the place where teachers, not just students, learn. — Vijay Dhameliya

Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength of the nation. — John F. Kennedy

You become a real teacher when your understanding of the wants and needs of the student results in the student revealing her inner beauty. — Debasish Mridha

A teacher will be frustrated if she is only motivated to teach what she has learned. Yet, if she is motivated because of the students, then she will learn from them how to teach. — Tanya R. Liverman

The most important duty of a teacher is to not only teach but to also inspire and enhance the desire for learning. — Debasish Mridha

Adversity is a better educator than the best teacher. — Debasish Mridha

Can't India dream of exporting teachers of high calibre? Can't we instil the desire in children to become great teachers? — Narendra Modi

Educators, long disturbed by schoolchildren's lagging scores in math and reading, are realizing there is a different and more alarming deficiency: emotional literacy. And while laudable efforts are being made to raise academic standards, this new and troubling deficiency is not being addressed in the standard school curriculum. As one Brooklyn teacher put it, the present emphasis in schools suggests that "we care more about how well schoolchildren can read and write than whether they'll be alive next week." — Daniel Goleman

The only thing worse than his arrogance was his incompetence. He was a bully, behaving like an ass. I saw Angel though, not him. The memorial was right there, just outside the window. It's in the flowers, and it makes me angry. Angel liked to sit on the couch, watch TV, eat chips. She hated outside. Maybe I should have been a bully and an ass to Angel's parents. Maybe Angel and Grace would still be alive if I'd behaved like this piece of shit teacher. — Tucker Elliot

Your mentor may not be the teacher you dreamed of, and that's the point. This is your education of what is, not what you think should be. — Jeff Goins

A teacher's job is to take a bunch of live wires and see that they are well-grounded. — Darwin D. Martin

The whole secret of the teacher's force lies in the conviction that men are convertible. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When asked what learning was the most necessary, he said, "Not to unlearn what you have learned!" — Diogenes Laertius

The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education because it's not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened. The teachers can't teach and administrators run the place and nobody can be fired. It's terrible. — Steve Jobs

A few lessons learned as a teacher: I've learned that if you whisper, children will listen ... a scribble can be anything (I mean anything!) a monster, a cat, a mom, a dad
our job is to ask to find out and pay attention
usually the most challenging student needs the most challenges to keep them learning and engaged
most of all we must care and the rest handles itself. xo — Jill Telford

All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. — Alfred North Whitehead

Education of youth is not a bow for every man to shoot in that counts himself a teacher; but will require sinews almost equal to those which Homer gave to Ulysses. — John Milton

You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. — T.H. White

As a teacher of fourth-graders in a public school, where corporal punishement was not allowed, she had years of violence stored up and was, truth be told, sort of enjoying letting it out on Kona, who she felt could have been the poster child for the failure of public education. — Christopher Moore

Teachers are reservoirs from which, through the process of education, students draw the water of life. — Sathya Sai Baba

Financial planners are salespeople. They are NOT teachers. Get your education from someone NOT getting a commission. — Robert Kiyosaki

School is temporary. Education is not. If you want to prosper in life: find something that fascinates you and jump all over it. Don't wait for someone to teach you; your enthusiasm will attract teachers to you. Don't worry about diplomas or degrees; just get so good that no one can ignore you. — James Marcus Bach

The dyed-in-the-wool teacher takes everything seriously only with respect to his students
himself included. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Difficulties come into our lives to develop us. Every storm is a school. Every trial is a teacher. Every experience is an education. — Nicky Gumbel

As a teacher, the desire to teach is valuable, but the desire to educate is priceless. — Debasish Mridha

Only the mind cannot be sent into exile. — Ovid

Fuck what you have heard or what you have seen in your son. He may lie about homework and laugh when the teacher calls home. He may curse his teacher, propose arson for the whole public system. But inside is the same sense that was in me. None of us ever want to fail. None of us want to be unworthy, to not measure up. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Bail out the bankers and bankrupt the school teachers - we will still teachI will never follow the lead of those who exclude the kids who need education the most so that my precious scores will rise. I will never line up with those whose idea of reform is the subtle segregation of the poor and desperate. I want no part of the American caste system. — John Kuhn

I wanted to be a fifth grade teacher because my teacher was so important to me and was giving me the education that was going to take me through life and through this world. — Steve Wozniak

But for all of them, regardless of their ability, the responsibility of their education falls to the teacher. And who can fulfill that for every single child? What teacher is capable of that? — Cynthia Swanson

A teacher (a good teacher) is composed of molecules of education and intelligence, bonded together by patience and passion. — Laurie Halse Anderson

I was sitting in the classroom trying to look intelligent in case the teacher looked at me. — Elton John

The atmosphere [in the school lunchroom] is not quite that of a prison, because the students are permitted to talk quietly, under the frowning scrutiny of teachers standing around on duty, during their meal-they are not supposed to talk while standing in line, though this rule is only sporadically enforced. — Edgar Friedenberg

For many kids, a good teacher may be the most palpable form of honor they will ever experience. — David Denby

Education makes life self-reliant. It inspires man to live with dignity in the society. It is the foremost requisite of a teacher to identify his own virtues. He needs to live supported by his inherent virtues-and must continue to uphold them. — Narendra Modi

We grow up thinking that the best answer is in someone else's brain. Much of our education is an elaborate game of 'guess what's in the teacher's head?' What the world really needs to know right now is what kind of dreams and ideas are in your head. — Roger Von Oech

You have to be a whole, dignified, self-respecting person in order to be an English teacher or whatever kind of job your education would prepare you for, and I just knew that segregation was wrong, and I knew that I should not be going along with it. That I should resist it. — Diane Nash

The normal school should provide for the training of the educator to make him realize that his is a twofold job: education as a teacher and education as a propagandist. — Edward Bernays

Every single major push in education has made it worse and right now it's really bad because everything we've done is de-humanizing education. It's destroying the possibility of the teacher and the student having a warm, friendly, intellectual relationship. — William Glasser

Experience is a great teacher, and sometimes a pretty teacher is a great experience. — Evan Esar

Dogma is actually the only thing that cannot be separated from education. It IS education. A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching. There are no uneducated people; only most people are educated wrong. The true task of culture today is not a task of expansion, but of selection-and-rejection. The educationist must find a creed and teach it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Anxiety is an even better teacher than reality, for one can temporarily evade reality by avoiding the distasteful situation; but anxiety is a source of education always present because one carries it within. — Rollo May

The genesis of my interest in being a writer can be traced to fourth grade when we listened to a radio production of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and I asked the teacher if I could rewrite it for our class to present. Nothing like going head-to-head with the Bard, right?
I can still visualise the pages I filled creating this first "great" literary endeavor. Encouraged by teachers (and one doting grandmother), I went on to write reams of yearbook copy in high school and college and, then, to teach high school English. My "real" writing career didn't begin until I turned from education to the full-time pursuit of storytelling. — Laura Abbot

Educators are in the news, too. Usually that's bad. I had a favorite college professor. He used to tell us, 'If you make CNN as a teacher, you're probably going to jail. — Tucker Elliot

There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable. — Harold Bloom

Going to school is like going to prison ... you have about two weeks to establish your credibility, failing which you're either a punk or as good as dead. Depending on the school, some students can manage ot avoid those stark alternatives, but even at the best school, no teacher does. — Garret Keizer

President Obama and Secretary Duncan have made stronger teacher evaluation a key part of their education reform efforts. Under their signature plan, called 'Race to the Top,' states can win federal support for schools by improving teacher evaluations. — Juan Williams

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

The Arts are fundamental resources through which the world is viewed, meaning is created, and the mind developed. To neglect the contribution of the Arts in education, either through inadequate time, resources, or poorly trained teachers, is to deny children access to one of the most stunning aspects of their culture and one of the most potent means for developing their minds. — Elliot W. Eisner

What the critic as a teacher of language tries to teach is not an elegant accomplishment, but the means of conscious life. Literary education should lead not merely to the admiration of great literature, but to some possession of its power of utterance. The ultimate aim is an ethical and participating aim, not an aesthetic or contemplative one, even though the latter may be the means of achieving the former. — Northrop Frye

I am still a learner, not a teacher, feeding somewhat omnivorously, browsing both stalk & leaves — Henry David Thoreau

I was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, the youngest of four girls, including my oldest sister, Lisa, who has special needs. My mom was a special education teacher, and my dad worked on the Army base. We weren't wealthy, but we were determined to succeed. — Eva Longoria

There's no question that a great teacher can make a huge difference in a student's achievement, and we need to recruit, train and reward more such teachers. But here's what some new studies are also showing: We need better parents. Parents more focused on their children's education can also make a huge difference in a student's achievement. — Thomas Friedman

Education and the process of educating is a total integral, contextual situation which includes students, teachers, parents, administration and environment. — Jean Houston

A Minneapolis, Minnesota high school teacher hung this sign under the clock in her classroom. "Time will pass ... Will you?" — James E. Myers

Wherever possible, home is by far the best nest until at least eight, ten or twelve. Psychologists and psychiatrists who understand child development would prefer an even later age. In a reasonably warm home, parent-child responses, the true ABC's of sound education, are likely to be a hundred times more frequent than the average teacher-child responses in a classroom. — Dorothy Moore

In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions. — Jerry Pournelle

Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they do not know and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it. — William Haley

To quote the exceptional teacher Marva Collins, "I will is more important than IQ." It is wonderful to have a terrific mind, but it's been my experience that having outstanding intelligence is a very small part of the total package that leads to success and happiness. Discipline, hard work, perserverance, and generosity of spirit are, in the final analysis, far more important. — Rafe Esquith

This is at the heart of all good education, where the teacher asks students to think and engages them in encouraging dialogues, constantly checking for understanding and growth. — William Glasser

He thinks about his teacher in his literary class, he's staring at her legs. — Alice Cooper

We get through life and this is part of the education process also. In real life, we meet bad bosses and good bosses and good friends and bad friends. I think we should let the teachers do their work and not impose too much stuff on them. — Philippe Falardeau

Daily contact with some teachers is itself all-sided ethical education for the child without a spoken precept. Here, too, the real advantage of male over female teachers,especially for boys, is seen in their superior physical strength,which often, if highly estimated, gives real dignity and commands real respect, and especially in the unquestionably greater uniformity of their moods and their discipline. — G. Stanley Hall

Education at a deep level means to 'lead out' what is trying to be born from within. The job of a true teacher is to help awaken the inner pupil that has its own way of being and unique way of perceiving
the world. — Michael Meade

I also see how essential a comprehensive treatment plan is, a plan that incorporates education, understanding, empathy, structure, coaching, a plan for success and physical exercise as well as medication. I see how important the human connection is every step of the way: connection with parent or spouse; with teacher or supervisor; with friend or colleague; with doctor, with therapist, with coach, with the world "out there." In fact, I see the human connection as the single most powerful therapeutic force in the treatment of ADHD. — Edward M. Hallowell

I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more. — Sarah Palin

There is also one excellent reason why the veriest amateur may feel entitled to have an opinion about education. For if we are not all professional teachers, we have all, at some time or other, been taught. Even if we learned nothing-perhaps in particular if we learned nothing-our contribution to the discussion may have a potential value. — Dorothy L. Sayers

You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it. — J.D. Salinger

The quality of the relationships that students have in class with their peers and teachers is important to their success in school. — Bob Pletka

Does sex education encourage sex? Many parents are afraid that talking about sex with their teenagers will be taken as permission for the teen to have sex. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, the more children learn abour sexuality from talking with their parents and teachers and reading accurate books, the less they feel compelled to find out for themselves. — Benjamin Spock