I was a student in Germany when Hitler came to power.
I don't know why I should have to learn Algebra... I'm never likely to go there.
I like school. Actually, I don't really like it.
Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner; put yourself in his place so that you may understand . . . what he learns and the way he understands it.
I wrote a letter to Harvard, explaining that I was having difficulty deciding between it and the University of Pennsylvania. Could I come and visit? Years later, the dean of students at Harvard told me that my letter had been posted in the dean’s office for the amusement of the staff. Thus did I learn the measure of institutional arrogance.
Oh, sure. What's this supposed to teach me?" "Is it what the teacher teaches? Or what the students learns?" "What's the difference?" "That is, itself, a question worth considering, yes?" -Jacen & Vergere
At the beginning of every semester, I ask my graduate students whether there is something I should read that will help me understand their work.
I don't envy my teachers. I used to preach to them.
When '36 Chowringhee Lane' was released in 1981, I was a student of the Film and Television Institute of Tamil Nadu. Everyone who had seen the film was very impressed with its flawless direction and acting. But we, cinematography students, were stunned by the visual style, which was truly international.
Good teachers realise that the students are the antenna; they are sensing things that the teachers don't yet sense.
If you read a book about school - someone else's book - you always translate it into your own school experiences. It's describing the student: he's bewildered and lost in a large crowd in a university classroom. You'll visualize that from your own experiences. So, everything you know is what you're really writing.
I want to help change the way young people look at school, and hence, the way they look at their futures.
When we're doing our lessons, the teacher doesn't say, 'Ready, set, work,' They say, 'Ready, set, play,' and I always took that word seriously.
If you film a little boy going to school, the big event in that boy's day and all the classmates' and teachers' day is you being there filming, not the school.
The most valuable aid I have found in teaching is to remember my own experiences as a student.
I was in honors classes in high school. I'd get an A on every test, but I had a 1.9 grade point average. The teacher would say, 'You didn't do your homework.' I'd say, 'But isn't the homework supposed to be the lead-up to the test?'
During my school visits, I really enjoy the feedback I get from them much more than anything I might tell say to them.
Not that I had any special reason for hating school. Strange as it may seem to my readers, I was not unpopular there. I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.
My students often say, 'My roommate read this story and really liked it,' and it's hard to convince them that there are things wrong with it. I say, 'Well, people who love you want you to be happy. But I'm your professor and I'm supposed to be teaching you something.'
I had very high respect for the Pratt Institute, but I thought that I had done my best, and that was not their version of the best.
Sometimes, I even learn new techniques from my students. Although I am still a student at the Art Institute, I think that I have learnt a lot from the classes that I have already taken.
The point of being a teacher is to do more than impart facts, it's to shape the way students perceive the world, to help a student absorb the rules of a discipline. The teachers who do that get remembered.
Personally, as a student who loves words, who loves texts, I am concerned with finding something in the text from within.
If a teacher wants to know something why doesn't she look it up herself instead of making we students do it? We benefit ourselves more by listening to her, after all she's the teacher!
I get letters from classes all the time. Say it's assigned in someone's 8th grade class, and the teacher asks everyone to write a letter to me about their impressions and what they learned. So, it's incredibly gratifying to hear.
