MARVA COLLINS

We can’t be what we don’t know.

[Kid] never learned to read in kindergarten, first, and second, so in third grade he begins to be placed in the EMH or the learning-disabled rooms.

Students do not need to be labeled or measured any more than they are. They don't need more Federal funds, grants, and gimmicks. What they need from us is common sense, dedication, and bright, energetic teachers who believe that all children are achievers and who take personally the failure of any one child.

When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed.

Death cannot put the brakes on a good dream.

A person cannot all of a sudden become good at what they do just by switching streams.

I'm a teacher. A teacher is someone who leads. There is no magic here. I do not walk on water. I do not part the sea. I just love children.

If you can't make a mistake, you can't make anything.

I have discovered few learning disabled students in my three decades of teaching. I have, however, discovered many, many victims of teaching inabilities.

Praise is essential in developing the right attitude toward learning and toward school.

I believe the more difficult a child is, the more I want that child. But I won't take a child until the parent brings him to us. So it is just the opposite - we get the ones that no one else will take. We get sawdust, and we have to make boards out of it.

One of the things that even wealthy children need is an education, and I think the problems I saw really have nothing to do with economics. So I was unhappy with what my own children were getting even in the better schools, and then I was seeing so many children here recruited for failure.

When someone is taught the joy of learning, it becomes a life-long process that never stops, a process that creates a logical individual. That is the challenge and joy of teaching.

Character is what you know you are, not what others think you have.

Don't try to fix the students, fix ourselves first. The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior. When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed.

I think what we've done is given children a lot of things that they didn't ask for instead of what they do want.

Once children learn how to learn, nothing is going to narrow their mind. The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another.

Before I can effectively discipline students, I have to earn their friendship and respect.

Teaching children to read was one thing; keeping them interested in reading was something else.

If you don't give anything, don't expect anything. Success is not coming to you, you must come to it.

That's how I try to think of education - a school is a miniature society where children learn to function in a real world.

You can't find me 20 children in Chicago, I don't care which section you go in - you can be on Michigan Avenue or here - and they won't be able to tell you that y is a vowel when it's the final syllable in a word, as in Nancy and icy. And no one bothers to teach the rules anymore - "i before e except after c."

There isn't a certain time we should set aside to talk about God. God is part of our every waking moment

I was very, very unhappy with even the so-called very elite schools. The one thing I've always done every day with my children is to watch what they do at school, and I was always a bit unhappy with the academic program. It was a kind of hit and miss.

An error means a child needs help, not a reprimand or ridicule for doing something wrong.