The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead

Learning tells us how to teach Grade the difficulty of the reading or listening task,

not the difficulty of the text

"Learners do not acquire information perfectly, one thing at a time. Theylearn numerous things, imperfectly, at the same time."David Nunan Tell me and I forget.

Show me and I remember.

Involve me and I learn.

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all. (Thomas Szasz) The mediocre teacher tells.

The superior teacher demonstrates.

The great teacher inquires.We are

each others best resource.

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.AristotleGood teaching isn't about technique. I've asked students around the country to describe their good teachers to me. Some of them describe people who lecture all the time, some of them describe people who do little other than facilitate group process, and others describe everything in between. But all of them describe people who have some sort of connective capacity, who connect themselves to their students, their students to each other, and everyone to the subject being studied.Parker PalmerI enter the classroom with the conviction that it is crucial for me and every other learner to be an active participant, not a passive consumer...a conception of education as the practice of freedom.... education that connects the will to know with the will to become. Learning is a place where paradise can be created.(adapted from Bell Hooks)The person who does not read good books has no advantage over the person who cannot read them.

Mark TwainThe process of creating and entrenching highly selective, reshaped or completely fabricated memories of the past is what we call "indoctrination" or "propaganda" when it is conducted by official enemies, and "education," "moral instruction," or "character building," when we do it ourselves.

Noam Chomsky

The question is not so much,

How can I teach?

as it is,

How can I help these people learn?I hear and I forget;

I see and I remember.

I do, and I understandThe courage to teach is the courage to keep ones heart open in those very moments when the heart is asked to hold more than it is able so that teacher and students and subject can be woven into the fabric of community that learning, and living, require.

Parker PalmerTeaching is subordinate

to learningExperience is not what happens to you;

its what you do with what happens to you.

Aldous Huxley

Go with the people. Live with them.

Learn from them. Love them.

Start with what they know.

Build with what they have.

But of the best leaders, when the job is done,

the task accomplished, the people will say

We have done this ourselves.

Lao Tzu, 700 BC,The students job is to learn the language. The Teachers job is to learn the students.There is no difference between living and learning . . . it is impossible and misleading and harmful to think of them as being separate. Teaching is human communication and like all communication, elusive and difficult...we must be wary of the feeling that we know what we are doing in class. When we are most sure of what we are doing, we may be closest to being a bore. (John Holt)

The true teacher defends her pupils against her own personal influence.She inspires self-distrust.

She guides their eyes from herself to the spirit that quickens her.

She will have no disciple.To teach

is

to learn twiceWhere I grew up, learning was a collective activity. But when I got to school and tried to share learning with other students that was called cheating. The curriculum sent the clear message to me that learning was a highly individualistic, almost secretive, endeavor. My working class experience . . . was disparaged.

(Henry A Giroux)

Students learn what they care about . . .," Stanford Erickson has said, but Goethe knew something else: "in all things we learn only from those we love. " add to that Emersons declaration: "the secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. " and we have a formula something like this: "students learn what they care about, from people they care about and who, they know, care about them . . .

(Barbara Harrell Carson)

Mistakes should be thought of as gifts, for they reveal what needs to be worked on next.We teach who we are.

Teaching is creating art.

When carving a stone, the sculptor removes everything that is NOT the statue.

She does not add anything to create it except the willingness to do the work.

Teaching without affection is not as effective.

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 build bridges of their own.

The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a persons foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.Without grammar little can be communicated.Without vocabulary nothing can be communicated.

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

If you dont trust the people, you make them untrustworthy.

The more you know,

the less you understand.

The teacher opens the door, but the learners are the ones who must walk through it.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought.

As teachers, we tend to reproduce our own prior learning experience.

To do so unquestioningly is a mistake.Making a mistake

is nowhere near as bad as going through life

afraid of making one.

Speaking is easy, but communicating is a miracle.Give a person a fish,

she eats for a day. Teach a person to fish, she eats for a lifetime.

Chinese proverb

There isnt an answer to give,

but one to find.

Expect

the

unexpected.

Learn the rules and then break some.

We are given the experiences we need to understand the world.

We make the road by walking

If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the world against me.

There is no effective and lasting learningif it is not experienced with others, from others, and for others.

Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over,

it became a butterfly.

Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.

The ultimate limitation of possibilities

is perception

Its no use walking everywhere to preach

unless our walking is our preaching.

St. Francis of Assissi

Change is mandatory.

Growth is optional.

If at first you succeed,

try not to show your astonishmentTry to understand that an oyster can only make a pearl from a grain of sand.

If you always do

what youve always done,

Youll always get

what youve always got.

Be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a foreign language. Dont search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live the questions now. Perhaps then, some day far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Ranier Marie Rilke in Letters to a Young PoetTo know which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this is the skill most needful in times of stress and darkness.

Ursula K. LeGuin

By three methods we may learn wisdom.

First, by reflection, which is noblest.

Second, by imitation, which is easiest.

Third, by experience, which is bitterest.

Confucius

Who dares to teachmust never cease to learn.

You didnt walk on water, nor did you drown.

Some questions have no final answers. A few answer-less questions are still worth asking. They are worth asking not for their answers, since they have none, but for what we do in struggling with them. We may come to notice what formerly we had overlooked because it was too small, or too distant, or too large, or too close to us. We may see how pieces fit together within what we had always thought were units, indivisible.

Earl W. Stevick

My earlier conclusion was that success depends less on materials, techniques, or linguistic analysis and more on what goes on inside and between the people in the classroom. Since that time, I have not changed my mind about the fundamental importance of what goes on inside and between, but I have been able to pursue this principle more deeply and at the same time, practice it more broadly than before. As a result, I have begun to suspect that the most important aspect of what does on is the presence or absence of harmony: it is the parts working with, or against, one another.

Earl W. Stevick

Life offers its wisdom generously. Everything teaches. Not everyone learns. Life asks of us the same thing we have been asked in every class: Stay awake, Pay attention. But paying attention is no simple matter. It requires us not to be distracted by expectations, past experiences, labels and masks. It asks that we not jump to early conclusions, and that we remain open to surprise. Wisdom comes most easily to those who have the courage to embrace life without judgement and are willing not to know, sometimes for a long time. It requires us to be more fully and simply alive than we have been taught to be. It may require us to suffer. But ultimately we will be more than we were when we began. There is the seed of a greater wholeness in everyone.

Rachel Naomi RemenLearn to equate making a mistake with making a learning stepConcentrate less on the mistake itself than on the reason for making it.Mistakes are evidence that learners are experimenting.

The person who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.Be the change you want to see in the world.

Mahatma GandhiI have not failed. Ive just found 10,000 ways that dont work. Thomas Edison

Inventor of the lightbulb

The real voyage of discovery consists not of seeking new landscapes but in seeing with new eyes. Marcel ProustI have come to a frightening conclusion that I amthe decisive element in the classroom. Its my personal approach that creates the climate.

Its my daily mood that makes the weather.

As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a students life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated

and a child humanized or de-humanized.

Haim Ginott

A teacher is someone who makes herself more and more unnecessary.The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Alvin TofflerWhat the reader brings to the text is more important than the text itself.

They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

A wise teacher lets others have the floor.Treat the students the way you would want to be treated.It is not so much what is poured into the student, but what is planted that really counts.Teaching is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

The secret of teaching is to appear to have known all your life what you learned this afternoon.

If we thought for a moment about what we were about to say, we would certainly speak less.

You teach best what you most need to learn. Richard Bach A wise man learns from his mistakes, but an even wiser man learns from somebody else's.

Teaching is the highest form of understanding. Aristotle

A good teacher is better than a spectacular teacher. Otherwise the teacher outshines the teachings.

Facilitate what is happening,rather than what you think ought to be happening.Silence says more than words, pay attention to it.

Continual classroom drama clouds work.

Allow time for genuine insight.

A good reputation arises naturally from doing good work. But do not nourish the reputation, the anxiety will be endless; rather nourish the work.

To know what is happening, relax and do not try to figure things out. Listen quietly, be calm and use reflection.

Let go of selfishness; let go of your ego, and you will receive what you need. Give away credit, and you will get more. When you desire nothing, much comes to you. The less you make of yourself, the more you are.

Instead of trying hard, be easy; teach by example and more will happen.

Trying to appear brilliant does not work.

The gift of a great teacher is creating an awareness of greatness in others.

Because the teacher can see clearly, light is shed on others.

Teach as a leader and a yielder. Constant force and intervention will backfire as will constant yielding. One cannot push the river; a leader's torch is light. Making others do what you want them to do can become a failure. While they may momentarily comply, their revenge may come in many forms. That is why your victory may become a loss.

To manage other lives takes strength; to manage your own life is real power. Be happy, content and at peace with yourself. Some good quotes here: http://www.brainyquote.com/If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.

Lilla WatsonMirri Aboriginal artist and elderWe remember . . . 10% of what we read 20% of what we hear 30% of what we see 50% of what we see and hear 70% of what we discuss 80% of what we experience 95% of what we teach others. ~ William Glasser ~The ingredients of successful learning:

want to learn,

know how to learn,

have a chance to learn.

John McClellandFailing to prepare is preparing to fail. When we plant a rose seed in the earth, we notice that it is small, but we do not criticize it as rootless and stemless. We treat it as a seed, giving it the water and nourishment required of a seed.

When it first shoots up out of the earth, we dont condemn it as immature and underdeveloped; nor do we criticize the buds for not being open when they appear. We stand in wonder at the process taking place and give the plant the care it needs at each stage of its development. The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change; yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is.

W. Timothy GallweyEvery truth has four corners. As a teacher I give you one corner, and it is for you to find the other three. ConfuciusIf you want to build a ship,

don't drum up people 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-Exupery