The biggest barrier we’ve seen to student progress is this: School policies and practices often prevent good teachers from doing great work and even dissuade some talented Americans from entering the profession. This needs to change.
America does not need gorgeous halls and concert rooms for its musical development, but music schools with competent teachers, and many, very many, free scholarships for talented young disciples who are unable to pay the expense of study.
The big shift in approach on education that we are taking – which is different from what happened before – is that we trust teachers and we trust heads.
I didn’t really want to be a teacher, but there was nothing else I could be. Most of those who went to the university became teachers. It was just the racial restriction on Africans.
We learned about gratitude and humility – that so many people had a hand in our success, from the teachers who inspired us to the janitors who kept our school clean… and we were taught to value everyone’s contribution and treat everyone with respect.
As they work hard for our children, America’s teachers often reach into their own pockets to make sure they have the best classroom supplies. I feel strongly that the federal government should help make up for their personal financial burden.
We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change.
You can have great teachers, but if you don’t have a good principal, you won’t have a good school.
One thing I’ve learned is that preschool teachers really have seen it all – and they can be a wealth of information! If you have any questions about a certain behavioral hurdle with your child or if you have a question about a certain age or phase, ask them!
I went to school with butterflies of fear every day for years – from primary school onwards – not just worried about being bullied by classmates, but by teachers.
When I am able to resist the temptation to judge others, I can see them as teachers of forgiveness in my life, reminding me that I can only have peace of mind when I forgive rather than judge.
High school teachers who want to get reluctant readers turned around need to give the students some say in the reading list. Make it collaborative: The students will feel ownership, and everyone will dig in.
A residential school also takes cares of the problem of malnourishment and interaction with their peers, and their teachers help build the qualities of a leader.
Spiritual teachers and artists that have opened the eye of wisdom for the world, and visionary community builders, have influenced my work.
I love to sing and play the piano. As a child, I’ve always loved to sing my heart out, and even my teachers encouraged me to take up singing.
The U.S. has spent billions of dollars on educating and supporting teachers or developing curricula but no resources are applied to ‘improving the brain’ that a student brings to the classroom.
I think public sector workers, our teachers, our firefighters, our home health workers who work for states, they do God’s work. They are some of our most important employees.
I am confident that the vast majority of teachers will work with us towards achieving that goal.
My teachers helped guide and motivate me; but the responsibility of learning was left with me, an approach to learning which was later reinforced by my experiences at Amherst.
Sure, the job of high school teachers is not to tear down students’ self-esteem. But it’s certainly not to inflate students’ sense of self-worth with a bunch of unearned compliments and half-truths.
I don’t envy my teachers. I used to preach to them.
When we become a really mature, grown-up, wise society, we will put teachers at the center of the community, where they belong. We don’t honor them enough, we don’t pay them enough.
I just think the most important aspect in being able to have a productive relationship between the teachers’ unions and the districts and the states that they’re dealing with is that the person sitting across the table from them should not have received the largest campaign contributions from the teachers’ union itself.
I was always the classroom clown, and the teachers allowed me a certain latitude. The assemblies were good, and the headmaster used to tell little stories; I loved the idea of communal storytelling.
I didn’t learn to read until I was almost 14 years old. Reading out loud for me was a nightmare because I would mispronounce words or reconstruct things that weren’t even there. That’s when one of my teachers discovered I had a learning disability called dyslexia. Once I got help, I read very well!
Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students.
Teachers make a difference in individual students’ lives, yet they do not get the respect they deserve.
I was a disadvantaged child from a non-educated family, yet I had the advantage of being in the company of great teachers.
As we try to compete in this global marketplace, we need to rebuild our infrastructure. We need to rebuild our schools. We need to make sure that teachers and first responders and veterans who are coming home from serving our country so proudly have jobs waiting for them.
Charter schools are public schools that operate, to a certain extent, outside the system. They have more control over their teachers, curriculum and resources. They also have less money than public schools.
Everything good that I know was taught to me by great teachers and I feel like giving back and sharing the technique is the thing to do.
I loved Debussy, Stravinsky, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, anything with romantic melodies, especially the nocturnes. Nietzsche was a hero, especially with ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra.’ He gets a bad rap; he’s very misunderstood. He’s a maker of individuals, and he was a teacher of teachers.
While technology and assessment can help complement the important work of our teachers, I worry that we are spending too much of our time testing.
Those who learned to know death, rather than to fear and fight it, become our teachers about life.
I think I always wanted to be an actor – sounds a bit boring, doesn’t it? And I pretended once that I wanted to be a vet because one of the teachers asked me and saying you want to be an actor sounds a little bit silly. And I do still feel a bit silly saying it. You feel a bit fraudulent.
I think so many of our educators, when they hear about these programs coming from the federal government, they’re just thinking, ‘Uh, that’s another book of paperwork that I’m going to have to do,’ and teachers are so weighed down with that.
Honestly, I don’t know if I’d want to be an educator. I find teachers to have more responsibility, in a way, than being a parent. You’re molding hundreds of minds every year.
Like it or not, there are a lot of dance teachers in this country who respect me, whether they personally like me or not.
I tell young teachers who are determined to dissent from some of the Draconian aspects of the current orthodoxy that the best form of protection is to be incredibly good at what you do and keep good discipline in class.
I remember the mentoring experiences of some teachers that I had, like a second term home room teacher in public school that really was very helpful to me.
If you could draw a picture of the best high school in the world – where all the teachers are wonderful and all the classrooms are beautiful, it would be my high school.
I spoke French a bit, and I could speak a bit of this and that, and when you were taught those things by people who couldn’t really do it, you can do some pretty wonderfully, imaginative horrific things to teachers.
I had a few teachers when they would hear a noise they would immediately be like, ‘Nadine, outside!’ I spent about two years standing outside the physics classroom.
If you have to put someone on a pedestal, put teachers. They are society’s heroes.
We want Florida to be first for jobs, and we must have a skilled workforce to reach that goal. By investing in science, technology, engineering and math education, we are ensuring our students are prepared for the jobs of the future. Our teachers are essential to preparing our students.
I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children. Some of the teachers were just doing their job, but others had that little extra. They really cared about children and they wore pretty dresses.
I didn’t learn much about writing at Sarah Lawrence, but I learned a lot about the sources of poems – dreams, myth, history – from the really great teachers, Joseph Campbell, Charles Trinkhaus, Bert Loewenberg, and a young Australian anthropologist named Harry Hawthorne.
I believe that curiosity, wonder and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers; that restlessness and discontent are vital things; and that intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways that less intense emotions can never do.
Teachers need to be comfortable talking about feelings. This is part of teaching emotional literacy – a set of skills we can all develop, including the ability to read, understand, and respond appropriately to one’s own emotions and the emotions of others.
