William James Quotes

So what does a good teacher do? Create tension - but just the right amount.

Our approach to education has remained largely unchanged since the Renaissance: From middle school through college, most teaching is done by an instructor lecturing to a room full of students, only some of them paying attention.

Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students.

I have learned that, although I am a good teacher, I am a much better student, and I was blessed to learn valuable lessons from my students on a daily basis. They taught me the importance of teaching to a student - and not to a test.

If a teacher does not involve himself, his values, his commitments, in the course of discussion, why should the students?

If, then, you wish to insure the interest of your pupils, there is only one way to do it; and that is to make certain that they have something in their minds to attend with, when you begin to talk. That something can consist in nothing but a previous lot of ideas already interesting in themselves, and of such a nature that the incoming novel objects which you present can dovetail into them and form with them some kind of a logically associated or systematic whole.

Back in the class room, open your books, keep up, the teacher don't know how mean she looks.

To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teacher.

The instruction at Edinburgh was altogether by lectures, and these were intolerably dull, with the exception of those on chemistry.

The exercise of voluntary attention in the schoolroom must therefore be counted one of the most important points of training that take place there; and the first-rate teacher, by the keenness of the remoter interests which he is able to awaken, will provide abundant opportunities for its occurrence.

When I entered normal school, it was hard for me to adjust sometimes. I was so unused to just sitting down in a classroom and copying off the board - simple things.

The way that I teach now is just by listening. I listen a lot.

Although there are some enormously gifted lecturers and preachers who do create community with oratory, I like to do anything I can to engage my students with each other, with me, and with the subject. And the subject, I think, always has to take prominence.

Of all the excellent teachers of college English whom I have known I have never discovered one who knew precisely what he was doing. Therein have lain their power and their charm.

I've opened up my school in California in a beautiful facility on Ventura Boulevard. I'm always in heaven when I'm doing my classes.

We think it's about little techniques and tricks, but techniques only take you so far. We need teachers who care about kids, who care about what they teach, and who can communicate with kids.

The nature of the labyrinth, I scribbled into my spiral notebook, and the way out of it. This teacher rocked. I hated discussion classes. I hated talking, and I hated listening to everyone else stumble on their words and try to phrase things in the vaguest possible way so they wouldn't sound dumb, and I hated how it was all just a game of trying to figure out what the teacher wanted to hear and then saying it. I'm in class, so teach me.

I'm a high school teacher. I'm someone who stumbles my way through, leads with my chin in some cases, leads with my heart in all cases.

PERIPATETIC, adj. Walking about. Relating to the philosophy of Aristotle, who, while expounding it, moved from place to place in order to avoid his pupil's objections. A needless precaution - they knew no more of the matter than he.

I enjoyed teaching. I liked the students. Having to formulate my ideas about literature made them clearer. I did not particularly enjoy the more bureaucratic aspects of the job. However, if you are teaching fervently, your energy and time are used up at a great rate.

The only thing that happens when I'm teaching is that I hope there are some students out there in the class who will ask questions.

I loved teaching and I did a lot of work as a teacher's assistant in college, and my favorite experience was basically getting a laugh from a bunch of people because they had just understood something. Because I had shown them something they hadn't seen before, and it amused them. That's the combo platter. That's a perfect moment.

In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection; otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books.

What matters school? We can go to school to-morrow. Whether we have a lesson more or a lesson less, we shall always remain the same donkeys.

Ask a kid who's struggling in math if he likes being in a mixed-level class, and he'll tell you he feels like a moron. Ask the math genius if he likes being in a mixed-level class, and he'll tell you he's sick of doing all the work during group projects. Sometimes, it's better to sort like with like.