“Of some of our teachers, we remember their foibles and mannerisms, of others, their kindness and encouragement, or their fierce devotion to standards of work that we probably did not share at the time. And of those that inspired us most, we remember what they cared about, and that they cared about us, and the person we might become. It is the quality of caring about ideas and values, this fascination with the potential for growth within people, this depth and fervour about doing things well and striving for excellence, that comes closest to what I mean in describing a “passionate teacher”
Robert L. Fried - The Passionate Teacher
“I have come to the frightening conclusion: I am the decisive element in the classroom. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humour, hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated; a child humanised or dehumanised.”
H.Ginott - Teacher and Child
“Good colleagues inspire and encourage each other….good colleagues compliment and complement each other….They keep themselves and they keep each other alive.”
Jonathan Smith - The Learning Game
“In times of change, learners inherit the earth whilst the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”
Eric Hoffer - Vanguard Management
"It is the history of our kindnesses that above all makes this world tolerable. If it were not for that, for the effect of kind words, kind looks, kind letters… I should be inclined to think our life a practical jest in the worst possible spirit."
Robert Louis Stevenson
“It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.”
Jacob Bronowski
“Learning does not take place in isolation from children’s feelings. Being emotionally literate is as important for learning as instruction in maths or reading.”
Daniel Goleman - Emotional Intelligence
“The only effective method of education is to be an example.”
Albert Einstein - The World as I See it
“I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.”
Khalil Gibran
“Change comes from small initiatives which work – initiatives, which imitated, become the fashion. We cannot wait for great visions from great people for they are in short supply at the end of history. It is up to us to light our own small fires in the darkness.”
Charles B Handy - The Empty Raincoat
“Irons rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigour of the mind.”
Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks, 1508
“To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest: we must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song.”
Henri Frédéric Amiel
E: john@baugh.one
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