Student Understanding Quotes

For students, understanding the separate and unique functions of each branch of government can help them understand how different kinds of government officials can help solve different kinds of problems.

The Gates Foundation has learned that two questions can predict how much kids learn: 'Does your teacher use class time well?' and, 'When you're confused, does your teacher help you get straightened out?'

I think if you enjoy teaching, if you enjoy talking about your craft, that's probably the best way to do it... because once a player starts to get it, once he figures it out, he'll never forget it.

I say that, you know, it's a lifetime goal trying to teach organic chemistry, to make it easy, and I'm starting to wonder if I'm ever going to achieve it in my lifetime.

You have not taught until they have learned.

All learning is remembering. A good teacher causes students to remember what they already know.

Very often we developed a better grasp of the subjects than the over worked teachers.

There's very little that's comparable to seeing the spark in a student's face when she gets something that she's been struggling with.

You haven't taught until they've learned.

I'm a shy, nervous person, and I don't like teaching with "terms." I didn't teach them, like, "This is first person, this is second person, this is foreshadowing," or whatever, so no one probably felt like they were learning anything. But I feel like teaching in that way reduces the concept to a term.

The faster you go, the more students you leave behind. It doesn't matter how much or how fast you teach. The true measure is how much students have learned.

If I can get them to think, get them to feel, get them to see, then I've done about all that I can as a teacher.

At MIT, I had the good fortune for seven years to teach network theory, which is basic to many disciplines, to one-third of the undergraduate student body. It was an experiment to see how high we could bring their level of understanding, and it exceeded all of my expectations.

By looking at the questions the kids are asking, we learn the scope of what needs to be done.

As you lecture, you keep watching the faces, and information keeps coming back to you all the time.

A big part of teaching is being emphatic. Maybe I'm right or wrong, but part of my approach was that when I said something, the kids understood exactly what I meant and what I wanted.

Data adds concrete information to a teacher's observations and intuition, but it will never replace experience, personal relationships, and cultural understanding.

Students are often in no position to judge 'relevance' until long after the fact.

Feeling pummeled by the outside pounding of tests and standards, a teacher can easily hide and simply turn to the immediacy of the classroom. It is not surprising that many teachers burrow in their rooms with all that they know about their students. There is no place to take the information.

At DonorsChoose.org, we believe that classroom teachers often know their students better than anybody else in the system and that their front-line experience gives them a special kind of wisdom.