Teaching is most certainly not an easy job and there are times throughout a teaching career when you can grow tired, exhausted and lacking motivation to keep on going. This is a job which will test your patience everyday and it requires someone is strong willed, to be a very good teacher. Many years ago I was given some advice by the great Kevin Rolle Alabama A&M University Vice President and a man with an educational mind like never I have seen before. The advice was simple and it has served me throughout my career to keep me motivated and focused on being the best teacher that I can possibly be, surround yourself with quotes. There are thousands of positive quotes out there about teaching and here are my favourites.
“True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their
own.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis
“When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.”
― Bertrand Russell
“Seek opportunities to show you care. The smallest gestures often make the biggest difference.”
― John Wooden
“The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without a teacher.”
― Elbert Hubbard
“If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller
“I’m more interested in arousing enthusiasm in kids than in teaching the facts. The facts may change, but that enthusiasm for exploring the world will remain with them the rest of their lives.”
― Seymour Simon
“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
“Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting. Most people learn best by being “with it,” yet school makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth with elaborate planning and manipulation.”
― Ivan Illich
“That’s what education should be,” I said, “the art of orientation. Educators should devise the simplest and most effective methods of turning minds around. It shouldn’t be the art of implanting sight in the organ, but should proceed on the understanding that the organ already has the capacity, but is improperly aligned and isn’t facing the right way.”
― Plato
“The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott
Having these kind of quotes around you can really help to remind you the importance of teaching and why it is crucial that you stay focussed and motivated.