Engaging Students Quotes

My goal in the classroom was always to make sure they were having so much fun that they didn't realize they were learning.

Science class is traditionally taught as science history class - you learn all these facts that someone else discovered, which you need to know, but that's not really an inspiring way to learn science.

The truth of the matter is that about 99 percent of teaching is making the students feel interestedin the material. Then the other 1 percent has to do with your methods. And that's not just true of languages. It's true of every subject.

What all great teachers appear to have in common is love of their subject, an obvious satisfaction in rousing this love in their students, and an ability to convince them that what they are being taught is deadly serious

I made a point of always teaching undergraduates because they are not a captive audience. . . . I always tried out my research ideas first in the classroom to get feedback from people who didn't have to listen to me if I didn't make it interesting.

You know, I want to teach, but I don’t want to read?

In 1847 I gave an address at Newton, Mass., before a Teachers' Institute conducted by Horace Mann. My subject was grasshoppers. I passed around a large jar of these insects, and made every teacher take one and hold it while I was speaking. If any one dropped the insect, I stopped till he picked it up. This was at that time a great innovation, and excited much laughter and derision. There can be no true progress in the teaching of natural science until such methods become general.

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.

The drills we do, where you're telling kids to memorize things, don't actually work. What works is engaging them and letting them do things and discover things.

When you're too robotic and scripted, the students tune you out. So I always tried to use different learning modalities - kinesthetic, auditory, visual, whatever might bring learning to life.

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.

A good teacher, like a good entertainer first must hold his audience's attention, then he can teach his lesson.

A lesson taught with humor is a lesson retained.

Much as a teacher may wince at the thought, he is also an entertainer—for unless he can hold his audience, he cannot really instruct or edify them.

Mostly, whenever I'm booked to do instruction, I just play a little bit and get people to ask questions. We'll play some music for 'em, 'til somebody hollers out, 'Play 'Milk Cow Blues' or 'Play 'San Antonio Rose.' We play requests and demonstrate our music.

Teaching is only interesting because you struggle with trying to talk about photographs, photographs that work, you see.