Quotes about teachers

To teach is to learn twice over.

A good teacher offers practice, a bad one offers theories.

"You are only a disciple because your eyes are closed. The day you open them you will see there is nothing you can learn from me or anyone."

"What then is a Master for?"

"To make you see the uselessness of having one."

A zealous disciple expressed a desire to teach others the Truth and asked the Master what he thought about this. The Master said, "Wait."

Each year the disciple would return with the same request and each time the Master would give him the same reply: "Wait."

One day he said to the Master, "When will I be ready to teach?"

Said the Master, "When your excessive eagerness to teach has left you."

It is always the teacher who must learn the most … or else nothing real has happened in the exchange.

We are simultaneously supposed to gasp in awe at teachers' raw dedication and be forced to listen to their incessant caterwauling about how they don't make enough money. Well, which is it? Are they dedicated to teaching tomorrow's future or are they in it for the money? After all the carping about how little teachers are paid, if someone enters the teaching profession for the big bucks, aren't they too stupid to be teaching our kids?

Important rule of professorcraft: never show resentment at a student insult — wait and get them later.

Because real teaching demands energy as well. To instruct calls for energy, and to remain almost silent, but watchful and helpful, while students instruct themselves, calls for even greater energy. To see someone fall … when a word from you would keep him on his feet but ignorant of an important danger, is one of the tasks of the teacher that calls for special energy, because holding in is more demanding than crying out.

We all choose our own teachers, don't we? I wonder if our choice of teacher shows anything about what our lives will be.

His misfortune was that he loved youth — he was weak to it, it kindled him. If there was one eager eye, one doubting, critical mind, one lively curiosity in a whole lecture-room full of commonplace boys and girls, he was its servant. That ardour could command him. It hadn't worn out with years, this responsiveness, any more than the magnetic currents wear out; it had nothing to do with Time.

...because academics everywhere are forever attacking one another, and I had long since learned that one must never believe what a teacher says of another.

Something has changed, and now, when I look at my students, I see only people who are going to eat up my time.