No other American bestows a finer gift than teaching – reaching out to the brilliant and the developmentally challenged, the gifted and the average. Teachers leave the world a little bit better than they found it, knowing if they have redeemed just one life, they have done God’s work. They are America’s unsung heroes.
'Good job, teach': Educators emerge as heroes in Okla. tragedy
One survivor told KFOR-TV about how he worked to rescue a teacher stuck beneath a car that landed in the front hallway of one of the schools.
“I don’t know what that lady’s name is, but she had three little kids underneath her. Good job, teach,” he said, breaking into tears.
Remarks by the President at Teacher of the Year Event, April 23, 2013.
These folks did not go into teaching for money. They certainly didn’t go into it because of the light hours and the easy work. They walk into the classroom every single day because they love doing what they do, because they're passionate about helping our children realize the best versions of themselves so that our country can become the best version of itself.
And I just want to say to all of them, I hope that in some small measure this award keeps them going. Because I never want our teachers to feel discouraged at a time of budget cuts, at a time when all too often problems in the schools are laid at the feet of teachers; where we expect them to do so much, and sometimes they get so little in return.
"One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child." -- Carl Jung
"Families bring their children in bright and early because they want them to learn," she said, "not because they want them to be test dummies." -- Zipporiah Mills, Principal of PS 261, Brooklyn, NY, when discussing field testing questions for new tests.
"In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less." -- Lee Iacocca
"I am a fortunate person: My work is my hobby. I think that being a teacher is the highest calling in life. One is trying to convey knowledge—I draw no hard distinction between being a teacher and being a researcher—but, more importantly than this, one is trying to infuse young people with a sense of joy of learning. Not just for its own sake, but for the lifelong results. Overall, the aim is to show and convince the student of the true worth of being a human being. And this is a moral quest. Not in some soft-sided fashion, but in a real, meaningful way." -- Michael Ruse
"The late W. Edwards Deming, guru of Quality management, once declared, 'The most important things we need to manage can't be measured.' If that’s true of what we need to manage, it should be even more obvious that it’s true of what we need to teach." -- Alfie Kohn, Schooling Beyond Measure
"That hunger and malnutrition should persist in a land such as ours is embarrassing and intolerable.
Special Message to the Congress Recommending a Program to End Hunger in America" —- Richard Nixon, May 6, 1969
"Do not accept directives from or pay consulting fees to people who have never in their lives been shut up in a room with 28 seventh graders...Count how many times the phrase 'joy in learning' is used in any proposal to 'fix' any school..." -- Susan Ohanian, Washington Post, Feb. 11, 2003
“The ‘bad teacher’ narrative as a way of explaining what’s wrong with our school system gets really old,” Ms. Cavanagh said. “Our union has taken a stance that we will collaborate and compromise and that is shortsighted when the other side seems bent on destroying you.” -- Julie Cavanagh
"It’s hard to think of another field in which experience is considered a liability and those who know the least about the nuts and bolts of an enterprise are embraced as experts." -- Pedro Noguera and Michelle Fine in Teachers Aren't the Enemy
"If kids come to us from strong, healthy functioning families, it makes our job easier. If they do not come to us from strong, healthy, functioning families, it makes our job more important." -- Barbara Colorose
~~~
Stop the Testing Insanity!
~~~
No comments:
Post a Comment