Quotes & Sayings About School Teaching

Didn't care if I wasn't paid for working after school for seven months teaching a 9th grader to read, but when he finally could, priceless! The best times in my life were when I went way beyond my paygrade to service students in need. — Ace Antonio Hall

It isn't that some gay will get some rights. It's that everyone else in our state will lose rights. For instance, parents will lose the right to protect and direct the upbringing of their children. Because our K-12 public school system, of which ninety per cent of all youth are in the public school system, they will be required to learn that homosexuality is normal, equal and perhaps you should try it. And that will occur immediately, that all schools will begin teaching homosexuality. — Michele Bachmann

I have a completely worthless degree: a BS in Photojournalism from Boston University (BU). With this degree, I suppose I could have gotten a job teaching grade school kids how to photograph their relatives, but knowing about B&W photo processing and developing and how to shoot a picture story is good basic info that every photographer should have. — Peter Menzel

Thus godlike sympathy grows and thrives and spreads far beyond the teachings of churches and schools, where too often the mean, blinding, loveless doctrine is taught that animals have no rights that we are bound to respect, and were only made for man, to be petted, spoiled, slaughtered or enslaved. — John Muir

I had thrived in Miss Popham's class because she was in charge of her own curriculum. She had a wonderful idea and freedom to teach as she wished. I still think hers is the best way to organize a literature class in high school if the goal is to encourage wide reading and the love of books. My own best teaching in high school reflected my attempts to replicate the spirit of that 1943 class — James Gray

In New Haven, Conn., when I was growing up, there were two sorts of Irish. There were the "drugstore cowboy" micks, who hung around the Elm Street poolroom over Longley's Lunch. And there were the earnest young Irishmen who fought their way up from the Grand Avenue saloonkeeper backgrounds of their fathers, went through Yale Law School, and have now found high place by the preferment of local politics or in the teaching profession. — James T. Farrell

Successful teaching is not head-to-head; it is heart-to-heart. — Tamara L. Chilver

As formal teaching and training grow in extent, there is the danger of creating an undesirable split between the experience gained in more direct associations and what is acquired in school. This danger was never greater than at the present time, on account of the rapid growth in the last few centuries of knowledge and technical modes of skill. — John Dewey

By teaching tools and problem solving instead of memorization and by hiring only teachers with master's degrees, Finland created a higher educational platform that gave its kids an advantage. That's how its school system shot to number one.* — Shane Snow

Not long after the book came out I found myself being driven to a meeting
by a professor of electrical engineering in the graduate school I of MIT. He said that after reading the book he realized that his graduate students were using on him, and had used for the ten years and more he had been teaching there, all the evasive strategies I described in the book - mumble, guess-and-look, take a wild guess and see what happens, get the teacher to answer his own questions, etc.
But as I later realized, these are the games that all humans play when others
are sitting in judgment on them. — John Holt

She could not think what it would be to teach school twelve miles away from home, along among strangers. The less she thought of it the better, for she must go, and she must meet whatever happened as it came.
"Now Mary can have everting she needs, and she can come home this next summer," she said. "Oh, Pa, do you think I - I can teach school?"
"I do, Laura," said Pa. "I am sure of it. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

I think my parents wanted me to be whatever I wanted to be. But I do remember them - when I first moved out to L.A. - sending me applications to grad school for teaching. — Riki Lindhome

A school of esotericism usually arises in connection with some special realization of the Truth, which it sometimes stresses beyond its due proportion to life as a whole, but there will never be found any teaching which has the power to hold together a body of earnest seekers which has not a spark of the divine fire at its heart; therefore respect should be given to all how seek in sincerity, however far from the goal they may appear to be, and all who are engaged in the great Quest should rather try to see the vision which a brother has glimpsed than the special errors to which he has fallen victim. — Dion Fortune

Such a principled disregard of ad hominem evidence is a characteristically modern prejudice of professional philosophers. For most Greek and Roman thinkers from Plato to Augustine, theorizing was but one mode of living life philosophically. To Socrates and the countless classical philosophers who tried to follow in his footsteps, the primary point was not to ratify a certain set of propositions (even when the ability to define terms and analyze arguments was a constitutive component of a school's teaching), but rather to explore 'the kind of person, the sort of self' that one could elaborate as a result of taking the quest for wisdom seriously. — James Miller

Presently Arnaud folded the paper napkin, in the same careful way he always folded a table napkin, and said I ought to follow Chantal's suggestion and get a job in teaching a nursery school. (So Maman had mentioned that to Mme. Pons, too) I should teach until I had enough working time behind me to claim a pension. It would be good for me in my old age to have an income of my own. Anything could happen. He could be killed in a train crash or called up for a war. My father could easily be ruined in a lawsuit and die covered with debts. There were advantages to teaching, such as long holidays and reduced train fares.
"How long would it take?" I said. "Before I could stop teaching and get my pension."
"Thirty-five years," said Arnaud. "I'll ask my mother. She had no training, either, but she taught private classes. All you need is a decent background and some recommendations. — Mavis Gallant

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

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 very immersed in the world. I'm very worldly. I love world. I was immersed in my career, in school, in teaching. — Frederick Lenz

Mrs. Hanks taught that everybody's bodies were exactly the same. She was ignorant and didn't think much about things, but she was teaching her students to be ignorant too. She was teaching them the wrong thing. — Jesse Haubert

I like teaching, too," said Gilbert. "It's good training, for one thing. Why, Anne, I've learned more in the weeks I've been teaching the young ideas of White Sands than I learned in all the years I went to school myself. — L.M. Montgomery

It didn't take long to figure out I'll never go back to teaching public high school. Why would I, when I can make virtually the same money waiting tables, have no stress, and work half the hours? When I can give away or trade my shifts if I need time to write or study. When I'll never have to wake up early, take my work home, or talk to anyone's parents
unless it's in regards to the nightly specials, the Spanish grenache that pairs beautifully with our house-made mole sauce. — Nicole Hardy

Restoring prayer ... will scarcely at this date solve the grievous public school problem. Public schools are expensive and massive centers for cultural and ideological brainwashing, at which they are unfortunately far more effective than in teaching the 3 R's or in keeping simple order within the schools. Any plan to begin dismantling the public school monstrosity is met with effective opposition by the teachers' and educators' unions. Truly radical change is needed to shift education from public to unregulated private schooling, religious and secular, as well as home schooling by parents. — Murray Rothbard

I guess I've done a lot of different kinds of performing at various times - opera singing, poetry reading, not least high school teaching - and I do enjoy it, at least sometimes. But I find it incredibly anxiety-producing and exhausting. Privacy is more congenial, and I go a little crazy if I can't spend a big chunk of every day, or almost every day, alone. Certainly I have to be alone to write. — Garth Greenwell

I think that school just isn't for everyone. A lot of people don't learn well when they're - have to sit in a place for eight hours. A lot of people learn best lying in their own bed, teaching themselves from books. And I was a bad student. I was a brat. If I was a teacher, I would not have liked myself. — Molly Crabapple

I went back to graduate school because I wanted to avoid being a professional, to try to piece together a life that would let me avoid the tenure race and full-time teaching. — Garth Greenwell

The petty worries of the
school room must not be carried to your home or boarding place. — Thomas E. Sanders

Mechanical Notation ... I look upon it as one of the most important additions I have made to human knowledge. It has placed the construction of machinery in the rank of a demonstrative science. The day will arrive when no school of mechanical drawing will be thought complete without teaching it. — Charles Babbage

I don't like the idea of teaching religion in schools, and creation is not my thing, but that's a trivial point compared to saving the creation. I'd much rather have half of the people in the country be creationists and work really hard to save the creation than have everybody be evolutionists and be destroying the planet. — Paul R. Ehrlich

Of course present knowledge of psychology is nearer to zero than to complete perfection, and its applications to teaching must therefore be often incomplete, indefinite, and insecure. The application of psychology to teaching is more like that of botany and chemistry to farming than like that of physiology and pathology to medicine. Anyone of good sense can farm fairly well without science, and anyone of good sense can teach fairly well without knowing and applying psychology. Still, as the farmer with the knowledge of the applications of botany and chemistry to farming is, other things being equal, more successful than the farmer without it, so the teacher will, other things being equal, be the more successful who can apply psychology, the science of human nature, to the problems of the school. (pp. 9-10) — Edward Lee Thorndike

The polemics of right-wing radio are putting nothing less than hate onto the airwaves, into the marketplace, electing it to office, teaching it in schools, and exalting it as freedom. — Patricia J. Williams

you cannot be friends either with boy or man unless you give yourself away in the process, and Mr. Pembroke did not commend this. He, for "personal intercourse," substituted the safer "personal influence," and gave his junior hints on the setting of kindly traps, in which the boy does give himself away and reveals his shy delicate thoughts, while the master, intact, commends or corrects them.
Originally Rickie had meant to help boys in the anxieties that they undergo when changing into men: at Cambridge he had numbered this among life's duties. But here is a subject in which we must
inevitably speak as one human being to another, not as one who has authority or the shadow of authority, and for this reason the elder school-master could suggest nothing but a few formulae. Formulae, like kindly traps, were not in Rickie's line, so he abandoned these
subjects altogether and confined himself to working hard at what was easy. — E. M. Forster

I went to art school, but I didn't last because in those days you couldn't take comics as a course. And they weren't even teaching you to draw real things, they were really into abstracts, and I was not into abstracts, so art school and I did not work out. — Trina Robbins

In high school, I decided I wanted to learn guitar, so I picked it up and starting teaching myself some basic chords and started playing with friends. Guitar inherently lends itself to be guitar music, especially when you're not good at guitar. — Autre Ne Veut

What's a' your jargon o' your schools, Your Latin names for horns and stools; If honest nature made you fools. — Robert Burns

Maybe I'll work for a label someday, write some fiction, nonfiction. Someday I'd like to go back to school and get my teaching degree. I want to be a grandpa. I want to have more kids. — Art Alexakis

No one likes to feel used. When the perceived focus becomes the content over the person, people feel used. When teachers are valued only for the test scores of their students, they feel used. When administrators are "successful" only when they achieve "highly effective school" status, they feel used. Eventually, "used" people lose joy in learning and teaching. Curriculum does not teach; teachers do. Standards don't encourage; administrators do. Peaceable schools value personnel and students for who they are as worthy human beings. ... If your mission statement says you care, then specific practices of care should be habits within your school. — Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz

All Negroes shall be prohibited from voting, holding public office, practicing law, medicine, or teaching in any class above the grade of grammar school, and they shall be taxed 100 per cent of all sums in excess of $10,000 per family per year which they may earn or in any other manner receive. — Sinclair Lewis

We spoke French at home and I didn't know any English until I went to school. My mother was French and met my father when he visited France as a student on a teaching placement. — Joanne Harris

It needs more than ever to be stressed that the best and truest educators are parents under God. The greatest school is the family. In learning, no act of teaching in any school or university compares to the routine task of mothers in teaching a babe who speaks no language the mother tongue in so short a time. No other task in education is equal to this. The moral training of the children, the discipline of good habits, is an inheritance from the parents to the children which surpasses all other. The family is the first and basic school of man. — Rousas John Rushdoony

There may be little room for the display of this supreme qualification in the retail book business, but there is room for some. Be enterprising. Get good people about you. Make your shop windows and your shops attractive. The fact that so many young men and women enter the teaching profession shows that there are still some people willing to scrape along on comparatively little money for the pleasure of following an occupation in which they delight. It is as true to-day as it was in Chaucer's time that there is a class of men who "gladly learn and gladly teach," and our college trustees and overseers and rich alumni take advantage of this and expect them to live on wages which an expert chauffeur would regard as insufficient. Any bookshop worthy of survival can offer inducements at least as great as the average school or college. Under pleasant conditions you will meet pleasant people, for the most part, whom you can teach and form whom you may learn something. — A. Edward Newton

It's like the difference between a kid who goes to school and learns and a kid who goes to school and learns and comes home to parents who are reading to her and talking to her about the world, showing her things, teaching by their actions. — Roland Merullo

I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of simple decorative arts. It would be a golden hour to the children. — Oscar Wilde

I don't think it matters what school you go to, but I think it's important for parents to be involved. And to know that when school stops, learning continues, and to continue teaching at home. — Erykah Badu

True autism, Jack had decided, was in the last analysis an apathy toward public endeavor; it was a private existence carried on as if the individual person were the creator of all value, rather than merely the repository of inherited values. And Jack Bohlen, for the life of him, could not accept the Public School with its teaching machines as the sole arbiter of what was and what wasn't of value. For the values of a society were in ceaseless flux, and the Public School was an attempt to stabilize those values, to jell them at a fixed point-to embalm them. — Philip K. Dick

I didn't take the typical path and go to college after high school. Instead, I saved up money from teaching dance classes and moved to L.A. But my family was so supportive - I never felt pressure from them. It's crucial to find a support system, even if it's not your family. — Dianna Agron

Any teaching of falsehoods in science classes should certainly be identified and stopped by school inspectors. School inspectors should be looking at science teachings to make sure they are evidence-based science. — Richard Dawkins

Tis pleasing to be school'd in a strange tongue By female lips and eyes
that is, I mean, When both the teacher and the taught are young, As was the case, at least, where I have been; They smile so when one's right; and when one's wrong They smile still more. — Lord Byron

Primary (the LDS Church's Sunday school for children) is where you go to do with somebody else's mother the things you would do with your own mother if she weren't so busy teaching Primary. — George Eliot

To hug Toni Burgess and Sandy Wilson, the Devil Girlz we'd met in Taylor Creek, Oregon. Correction: former Devil Girlz. There was no sign of leather. Instead Toni was in a dress and had soccer-mom hair, and she said she was going back to teaching school. Sandy just looked sweet. More people were introduced: lawyers for both sides, and His Honor Marlon Sykes, a judge — James Patterson

Anyway I was in the school nurse's office now recovering from my slit wrists. Snap and Loopin and HAHRID were there too. They were going to St. Mango's after they recovered cause they were pedofiles and you can't have those fucking pervs teaching in a school with lots of hot gurlz. Dumbledore had constipated the cideo camera they took of me naked. I put up my middle finger at them. — Tara Gilesbie

Bruner discusses the need for teachers to understand that children should want to study for study's own sake, for learnings's sake, not for the sake of good grades or examination success. The curriculum should, in other words, be interesting. (Yes, it sounds too obvious even to say, but sometimes the emphasis on content has trumped all other considerations, including that of making learning interesting.) — Gary Thomas

...a school's worth should be measured not by how its students perform on standardized tests but by how well they function as adult graduates of the school... — Terry Roberts

Moreover, with the possible exception of high school - level math teachers, there is little evidence that better students make better teachers. Some nations, such as Finland, have been able to build a teaching force made up solely of star students. But other places, such as Shanghai, have made big strides in student achievement without drastically adjusting the demographics of who becomes a teacher. — Dana Goldstein

Much of the cause of the teacher attrition rate is the condition under which many teachers work. "The data suggest that school staffing problems are rooted in the way schools are organized and the way the teaching occupation is treated and that lasting improvements in the quality and quantity of the teaching workforce will require improvements in the quality of the teaching job."39 — Ken Robinson

The process of learning to be holy, like the process of learning to pray, may properly be thought of as a school - God's own school, in which the curriculum, the teaching staff, the rules, the discipline, the occasional prizes and the fellow pupils with whom one studies, plays, debates and fraternizes, are all there under God's sovereign providence. — J.I. Packer

His attitude and behaviour was no different from any other Australian high school student and being in the teaching profession she was not entirely unfamiliar with the student culture and their perceptions that academic excellence was not the only gateway to success. — Neetha Joseph

I was teaching drum lessons at a few high schools - everything from marching to classical to rock and jazz. I found that really rewarding, having to explain my thought process, having to think about stuff that I take for granted or as second nature. — Glenn Kotche

Om Schooled is the perfect manual for anyone who wants to start teaching yoga to kids. This is not just a theoretical book - it is a step-by-step manual. Sarah Herrington shares the wisdom she has gained from her day-to-day experiences, for many years, teaching all ages of children yoga in the New York School system. — Sharon Gannon

You mean you live down here?' Matilda asked.
'I do', Miss Honey replied, but she said no more.
Matilda had never once stopped to think about where Miss Honey might be living. She had always regarded her purely as a teacher, a person who turned up out of nowhere and taught at school and then went away again. — Roald Dahl

For the most part, people use "empathy" to mean everything good. For instance, many medical schools have courses in empathy. But if you look at what they mean, they just want medical students to be nicer to their patients, to listen to them, to respect them, to understand them. What's not to like? If they were really teaching empathy, then I'd say there is a world of problems there. — Paul Bloom

Don't make me turn on the room's ability blockers. I'm not teaching middle school here. And turn off your phones, people. — Kasie West

Teaching high school in an inner-city school is not an easy task. Every teacher is responsible for 150 teenagers. The amount of work is just mind-boggling. Remember, you're not just doing a job. You have these kids' futures in your hand; you have to inspire them. — Tony Danza

If religious freedom is to endure in America, the responsibility for teaching religion to public school children must be left to the homes and churches of our land, where this responsibility rightfully belongs. It must not be assumed by the government through the agency of the public school system. — Sam Ervin

Delaware State began as a school bent on service - teaching education, social services and nursing. — Michael N. Castle

Forward-thinking teachers and school administrators across the country are creating a whole range of alternatives to cookie-cutter teaching and evaluation methods, such as the use of student portfolios and exhibitions in addition to conventional exams to assess students' progress. — Hillary Rodham Clinton

What borders on the criminal is the poor teaching and neglect of those subjects that deal with the history of ideas and ideals, a knowledge of which is essential to all youth who would assume their place in society as thinking, feeling human beings. — John Mortimer Smith

My teaching career started with me teaching comp at a very small school in Buffalo. And I was terrible at that point. They never should have hired me. — Rob Roberge

There has been so much recent talk of progress in the areas of curriculum innovation and textbook revision that few people outside the field of teaching understand how bad most of our elementary school materials still are. — Jonathan Kozol

The point is to develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition and to guide the child over to important fields for society. Such a school demands from the teacher that he be a kind of artist in his province. — Albert Einstein

Experience is the best school,
Failures, Mistakes, Embarrassments, and Heartaches are teaching there,
Offering only one lesson called Life,
That you could only finish once you're dead! — Nelson M. Lubao

Your mother would have more luck winning her election than teaching you how to be charming. Izzy Malone, going to charm school! Are you going to walk across the room with a book stuck on your head?"

"No, it's not like that at all," I said as he doubled over with laughter. "And I really don't see what's so funny."

"It's just that"--he gasped--"it would be like teaching a hippo to wear high heels! — Jenny Lundquist

Men, your primary responsibility in your home, after your wife, is you to disciple your own children. And if you don't do it, you're in sin; you are in sin. And if you turn it over to a Sunday school teacher, you are in sin. And you are to be teaching these children more than just stories about animals that went into Noah's ark. You're to be teaching them about God, about radical depravity, about blood atonement, about propitiation, expiation, justification, sanctification; you are to teach your children! — Paul Washer

I need to be alone. After a full day of talking, smiling, listening, showing, nodding, translating, I want to be alone. I want simply to come home, close the door, and sit in silence, gathering up the bits of myself that have come loose. I want to think, or not think. I want to rest. — Jamie Zeppa

Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition. — Jacques Barzun

In schools the main problem is not the absence of innovations but the presence of too many disconnected ... piecemeal, superficially adorned projects ... We are over our heads. — Michael Fullan

Any school for free citizens must begin by teaching distrust, not trust. It must teach questioning, not acceptance of stock answers. — Brian Herbert

Grub Street Writers is the reason I've stayed in Boston. I started teaching for Grub back in 1997, when founder Eve Bridburg, a Boston University M.A. alumna, as I am, kindly gave me my first job out of grad school. — Jenna Blum

If we spark a student's passion, we unleash a powerful force upon the world. — Tim Fargo

I loathe it when they [English teachers] are bullied by no-nothing parents or cowardly school boards. — Pat Conroy

A school is a place through which you have to pass before entering life, but where the teaching proper does not prepare you for life. — Ernest Dimnet

Our approach to education has remained largely unchanged since the Renaissance: From middle school through college, most teaching is done by an instructor lecturing to a room full of students, only some of them paying attention. — Daphne Koller

One of the troubles of the day, observes Mr. C.N. Peac, is that once we came upon the little red schoolhouse, whereas now we come upon the little-read school boy. — Bennett Cerf

People don't want children to know what they need to know. They want their kids to know what they ought to need to know. If you're a teacher you're in a constant battle with mildly deluded adults who think the world will get better if you imagine it is better. You want to teach about sex? Fine, but only when they're old enough to do it. You want to talk politics? Sure, but nothing modern. Religion? So long as you don't actually think about it. Otherwise some furious mob will come to your house and burn you for a witch. — Nick Harkaway

If I had my choice, every high school would be teaching financial literacy along with math and science. — Gregory Meeks

Have faith that your child's brain is an evolving planet that rotates at its own speed. It will naturally be attracted to or repel certain subjects. — Suzy Kassem

It was a tough school. The kids on the debating team took steroids! — Milton Berle

If one takes meaning into consideration, happiness might best be described as "a zest for life in all its complexity," as Sissela Bok writes in her book. To achieve it means to "attach our lives to something larger than ourselves." To be happy, one must do. It could be something as simple as teaching Sunday school or as grand as leading nonviolent protests. It could be as cerebral as seeking the cure for cancer or as physical as climbing mountains. It could be creating art. And it could be raising a child - my "best piece of poetrie," as Ben Jonson said in his elegy for his seven-year-old son. — Jennifer Senior

My colleague Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican, erroneously suggested that I support the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to biological evolution. That simply is not true. ... Unlike biological evolution, intelligent design is not a genuine scientific theory and, therefore, has no place in the curriculum of our nation's public school science classes. — Edward Kennedy

Teaching Black Studies, I find that students are quick to label a black person who has grown up in a predominantly white setting and attended similar schools as "not black enough." ... Our concept of black experience has been too narrow and constricting. — Bell Hooks

When I was growing up my mom was home. She wanted to go to work, but she waited. She was educated as a teacher. The minute my youngest sister went to school full-time, from first grade, mom went back to work. But she balanced her life. She chose teaching which enabled her to leave at the same time we left, and come home pretty much the same time we came home. She knew how to balance. — Martha Stewart

Not long after graduation I was teaching at an alternative school and already I had serious doubts about my career choice. My students were hellions. I'd been assaulted twice. My car had been vandalized. I had to testify in court against one of my students, and afterward - and purely for spite - I delivered her textbook and homework assignments to the juvenile detention facility. Not my finest moment, but I enjoyed it. — Tucker Elliot

Abuse doesn't come from people's inability to resolve conflicts but from one person's decision to claim a higher status than another. So while it is valuable, for example, to teach nonviolent conflict-resolution skills to elementary school students - a popular initiative nowadays - such efforts contribute little by themselves to ending abuse. Teaching equality, teaching a deep respect for all human beings - these are more complicated undertakings, but they are the ones that count. — Lundy Bancroft

School prepares people for the alienating institutionalization of life, by teaching the necessity of being taught. Once this lesson is learned, people loose their incentive to develop independently; they no longer find it attractive to relate to each other, and the surprises that life offers when it is not predetermined by institutional definition are closed. — Ivan Illich

Anyone who really wants to coach and have a lot of impact on people's lives, high school's the way to go. To be honest with you, of all the jobs I've ever had, the one I really, truly enjoyed the most was teaching and coaching in high school. It just doesn't pay as well. — Charlie Weis

The school takes its coloring from your
own attitude, — Thomas E. Sanders

Teaching is a Creative profession, it is our duty as School Leaders and Education Influencers to offer the right climate to foster innovation and support Innovative Teaching practices within our schools, and that's what will make our students succeed in the 21st century — Samer Chidiac

The thing that's depressing is teaching graduate students today and discovering that they don't know simple elemental facts of grammar. They really do not know how to scan a line; they've never been taught to scan a line. Many of them don't know the difference between 'lie' and 'lay,' let alone 'its' and 'it's.' And they're in graduate school! — Maxine Kumin

We were living in Denver, Colorado, and I was teaching high school. I asked the kids to write a short story, so I thought I should write some myself. — Adrian McKinty

Since belief determines behavior, doesn't it make sense that we should be teaching ethical, moral values in every home and in every school in America? — Zig Ziglar

People in the city are poor because they are oppressed, discriminated against and alienated; people in the country are poor because they're too stupid to realize they ought to be living in the city. — Garret Keizer