When I first started my teaching career, I regularly had crises of faith about my abilities and my focus in terms of how I could best teach my students. I will always remember a conversation I had with the inspiration Kevin Rolle, a man who is Vice President in Colorado State University, although he was VP for student affairs back then, and a man who offered my some fantastic advice. One of the most important pieces of advice which I picked up from Kevin was to surround myself with positivity by way of famous quotes about teaching. I scoffed at the idea at first but after giving it a go, it is something which has stayed with me throughout my career. The following quotes may not make you a better teacher, but they will put you in the best frame of mind to be the best teacher that you can be.
“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else … Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.”
― Albert Einstein
“Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.”
― Plato, The Republic
“The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without a teacher.”
― Elbert Hubbard
“Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, teachers.”
― Richard Bach
“Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.”
― John Dewey
“The word “education” comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul.”
― Muriel Spark
“The expression ‘Those who can’t do, teach’ is a curious one, because if you look at the world , you’ll see that teachers aren’t particularly worse at doing things than anyone else, so perhaps the expression might be better worded as ‘nobody can do anything”
― Lemony Snicket
“The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of the mind for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.”
― Anatole France
And there you have it, feel free to take some of these quotes, put them on your wall and use them to keep you focused on being the best teacher that you can be.
