Quotes & Sayings About Teaching Profession

Teaching is a creative profession, not a delivery system. Great teachers do [pass on information], but what great teachers also do is mentor, stimulate, provoke, engage. — Ken Robinson

But it is a hard, it's a hard profession teaching acting. — Dabney Coleman

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

Teaching is not only a profession, but it a is a purpose of a great life. — Debasish Mridha

Teaching has always been, for me, linked to issues of social justice. I've never considered it a neutral or passive profession. — Bill Ayers

In the long run, much public opinion is made in the universities; ideas generated there filter down through the teaching profession and the students into the general public. — B. Carroll Reece

Government provided free tuition tends more and more to produce a uniform conformist education, with college faculties ultimately dependent for their jobs on the government, and so developing an economic interest in profession and teaching a statist, pro-government, and socialist ideology. — Henry Hazlitt

When all is said and done we simply must make teaching in this country an honorable profession-since it's in the classrooms of America where the battle for excellence, ultimately, will be won or lost. — Ernest L. Boyer

Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith. — Lord Acton

Police and firefighters are great, but they don't create wealth. They protect it. That's crucial. Teaching is a wonderful profession. Teachers help educate people to become good citizens so that citizens can then go create wealth. But they don't create the wealth themselves. — Rush Limbaugh

I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession. — John Wooden

...practicing or teaching business administration can, inshallah, essentially become a profession that is full of righteous acts on the part of the believer if a person follows the rights, commands, and limits established in Islam. — Mohammad Rahman

Most professional beliefs, especially Christian religious beliefs, are taught through formal, usually verbal, instruction. Such formal instruction may be devoid of personal experience to match the verbal teaching. . . Just as the instruction is verbal, the learner's profession of the belief is verbal. — Donovan L. Graham

Teaching seems to me beyond doubt the greatest of the professions. — Theodore Burghard Hurt Brameld

Teaching and office work held little appeal - the former meant taking care of someone else's children, the latter someone else's man - so they entered the only other profession open to them, nursing. After — Elizabeth M. Norman

Teaching is a function, not a profession. Anything with something to offer can teach. — John Taylor Gatto

I've heard a number of our alumni - people who are running schools and school systems - think a lot about different models for the teaching profession. — Wendy Kopp

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

I had one criticism to make of my teachers. I had heard a few of them say, "Oh, I'm just a teacher." This burned me up. I told my teachers to never say this. I told them to walk proudly, with their heads held high, and to thank God they had chosen the teaching profession--the mother of all professions; that they were members working in the front line of American democracy. that they were the ground roots and not the brace roots of American democracy. — Jesse Stuart

Teaching and research are not to be confused with training for a profession. Their greatness and their misfortune is that they are a refuge or a mission. — Claude Levi-Strauss

There is no nobler profession, nor no greater calling, than to be among those unheralded many who gave and give their lives to the preservation of human knowledge, passed with commitment and care from one generation to the next. — Laurence Overmire

In some circumstances, a focus on extrinsic rewards (money) can actually diminish effort. Most (or at least many) teachers enter their profession not because of the money but because of their love for children and their dedication to teaching. The best teachers could have earned far higher incomes if they had gone to banking. It is almost insulting to assume that they are not doing what they can to help their students learn, and that by paying them an extra $500 or $1,500, they would exert greater effort. Indeed, incentive pay can be corrosive: it reminds teachers of how bad their pay is, and those who are led thereby to focus on money may be induced to find a better paying job, leaving behind only those for whom teaching is the only alternative. (Of course, if teachers perceive themselves to be badly paid, that will undermine morale, and that will have adverse incentive effects) — Joseph E. Stiglitz

Admitting that it is the profession of our sex to teach, we perceive the mother to be first in point of precedence, in degree of power, in the faculty of teaching, and in the department allotted. For in point of precedence she is next to the Creator, in power over her pupil, limitless and without competitor. — Lydia Sigourney

Teaching is a passionate profession. — Andy Hargreaves

I think there is a sort of box-ticking mentality. Not just in the teaching profession. You hear about it in medicine and nursing. It's a lawyer-driven insistence on meeting prescribed standards rather than just being a good doctor. — Richard Dawkins

My mom is one of my role models in a complicated way. I learned from her how to be a good mom. She was one of those natural moms who really took to it. Her chosen profession was teaching. She loves kids. But she was extremely frustrated and unhappy because for much of my life she was a stay-at-home mom. — Leslie Morgan Steiner

I think teaching should be an exalted profession, not a picked-on profession. — Chuck Schumer

Teaching is a sacred profession. And art is a form of teaching. — Stephen Sondheim

Well, teachers have been profoundly demoralized in recent years and are often treated with contempt by politicians. There's a great deal of reckless rhetoric in Washington about the mediocrity of the teaching profession - and I don't find that to be true at all. — Jonathan Kozol

The good people look for challenges. When teaching becomes a prestigious profession, then you'll get good people. — Dan Shechtman

Surveys show that many talented and committed young people are reluctant to enter teaching for the long haul because they think the profession is low-paying and not prestigious enough. — Arne Duncan

I always like to make explicit the fact that before I went off not too long ago to fight in the trenches, I was a mathematician by profession. I don't like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living. I mean, it isn't as though I had to do this, you know, I could be making, oh, three thousand dollars a year just teaching. — Tom Lehrer

Teaching sometimes seems like not one profession, but every profession. We ask them to be doctor and diplomat, calf-herder, map-maker, wizard and watchman, electricians of the mind. — Nancy Gibbs

Of all the nouns we use to disguise the hollowness of the human condition, none is more influential than "myself". It consists of a collage of still images - name, gender, nationality, profession, enthusiasms, relationships - which are renovated from time to time, but otherwise are each a relic from one particular experience or another. The defining teaching of the Buddhist tradition, that of non-self, is merely pointing out the limitations of this reflexive view we hold of ourselves. It's not that the self does not exist, but that it is as cobbled together and transient as everything else. [With] the practice of meditation, ... we can begin to see how each artifact of the mind is raised and lowered to view, like so many flashcards. But we can also glimpse, once in a while, the sleight-of-hand shuffling the card and pulling them off the deck. Behind the objects lies a process. Self is a process. Self is a verb. — Andrew Olendzki

My parents and grandparents have always been engaged in teaching or the medical profession or the priesthood, so I've sort of grown up with a sense of complicity in the lives of other people, so there's no virtue in that; it's the way one is raised. — Colin Firth

Teaching, the most noble profession, should be rewarded based on merit alone, not seniority. — Mark Kostabi

What had become of the girl who sought out British Socinian texts all on her own, argued over Swedenborgian theology with adults three times her age, read the New Testament thirty times in one summer, and taught herself Hebrew so that she could make her own translation of the Old Testament? There had been many obstacles. Because of financial hardship, she had been "thrown too early" into the working world, teaching long hours when she might have studied and written more. And there was the fact of her sex. Without the option of college or a profession, Elizabeth had not known how or where to apply herself. She had looked to men of genius to confirm her talents and grown "dependent on the daily consolations of friendship." She could see now that she had "constantly craved . . . assurances" that should have "come from within." Yet — Megan Marshall

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

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

Teaching is an art and a profession requiring years of training. — Dick Cavett

Within a couple of weeks of starting the Ph.D. program, though, she discovered that she'd booked passage on a sinking ship. There aren't any jobs, the other students informed her; the profession's glutted with tenured old men who won't step aside for the next generation. While the university's busy exploiting you for cheap labor, you somehow have to produce a boring thesis that no one will read, and find someone willing to publish it as a book. And then, if you're unsually talented and extraordinarily lucky, you just might be able to secure a one-year, nonrenewable appointment teaching remedial composition to football players in Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the Internet's booming, and the kids we gave C pluses to are waltzing out of college and getting rich on stock options while we bust our asses for a pathetic stipend that doesn't even cover the rent. — Tom Perrotta

I am aware that teachers in modern societies often face tremendous challenges. Classes can be very large, the subjects taught can be very complex, and discipline can be difficult to maintain. Given the importance, and the difficulty, of teachers' jobs, I was surprised when I heard that in some western societies today teaching is regarded as a rather low-status profession. That is surely very muddled. Teachers must be applauded for choosing this career. They should congratulate themselves, particularly on days when they are exhausted and downhearted. They are engaged in work that will influence not just students' immediate level of knowledge but their entire lives, and thereby they have the potential to contribute to the future of humanity itself. — Dalai Lama XIV

Even we set aside the nearly 50 percent of all beginner teachers who choose to leave the profession within five years - and ignore the evidence that those who leave are worse performers than those who stay - it is unclear whether teachers are formally terminated for poor performance any less frequently than are other workers. — Dana Goldstein

If a Coach is determined to stay in the coaching profession, he will develop from year to year. This much is true, no coach has a monopoly on the knowledge of basketball. There are no secrets in the game. The only secrets, if there are any, are good teaching of sound fundamentals, intelligent handling of men, a sound system of play, and the ability to instill in the boys a desire to win. — Adolph Rupp

Teaching is a very noble profession that shapes the character, caliber, and future of an individual. If the people remember me as a good teacher, that will be the biggest honour for me. — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Teaching, may I say, is the noblest profession of all in a democracy. — Kurt Vonnegut

Teaching is the rare profession where the customer isn't always right and needs to be told so appropriately. — John Maeda

The most successful businessmen were often uneducated when measured by the scholastic standards of the teaching profession. But they were equal to their social function of adjusting production to the most urgent demand. Because of these merits the consumers chose them for business leadership. — Ludwig Von Mises

Teaching is a truly noble profession. It's sad the amount of responsibility that teachers have today. They're not only teaching kids: they're raising kids, policing kids - and they don't make a lot of money. — Jesse L. Martin

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

Henry David Thoreau, Susan B. Anthony, W. E. B. DuBois, and Lyndon B. Johnson are just a few of the famous Americans who taught. They resisted the fantasy of educators as saints or saviors, and understood teaching as a job in which the potential for children's intellectual transcendence and social mobility, though always present, is limited by real-world concerns such as poor training, low pay, inadequate supplies, inept administration, and impoverished students and families. These teachers' stories, and those of less well-known teachers, propel this history forward and help us understand why American teaching has evolved into such a peculiar profession, one attacked and admired in equal proportion. — Dana Goldstein