A Practical Guide to Effective Post Secondary Teaching and Learning
Chapter 3 - Thoughts and Ideas for Self Reflection and Personal Growth
3E. What are some inspirational and motivating thoughts and ideas on teaching for long term professional growth?
"The profession of post secondary instructor or professor is time honoured and important in the lives of future generations and societies. There have been many inspirational ideas regarding the teaching profession. It is fitting that these ideas provide a reminder for how important our work is and how we can continue to grow personally and professionally."
Inspirational Teaching Ideas and Quotes
As a good teacher knows, the methods or instruction and range of material covered are matters of small importance compared with the success in arousing the natural curiosities of students and stimulating their interest in exploring on their own.
- Noam Chomsky
Whoever our students may be, whatever the subject we teach, ultimately we teach who we are.
- Parker Palmer
A good te3acher has been defined as one who makes himself/herself progressively unnecessary.
- Thomas J Carruthers
Who a teacher is, is more important than what he/she teaches.
- Karl Menninger
The Teacher as Scholar is important... the Teacher as Person is crucial... the Teacher as Communicator is indispensable.
- J. Jordan
Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
- Frank Outlaw
To be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner. Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learners, put yourself in their place so that you may understand when they understand and in the way they understand it.
- Soren Kierkegaard
To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching.
- Henri Frederic Amiel
We should not be speaking to, but with; that is second nature to any good teacher.
- Noam Chomsky
A teacher is a very special person who uses his or her creativity and loving, inquiring mind to encourage others to think, to dream, to learn, to try, to do!
- Beverly Conklin
I have heard that successful people do the best he/she can with the conditions as he/she find, and do not wait for next year for better.
- E. W. Howe
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theatre.
- Gail Godwin
I am not a teacher, but an awakener.
- Robert Frost
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
- William Arthur Ward
The teacher who is full of his/her subject is usually very slow in emptying himself/herself.
- Evan Esar
The person who can make hard things easy is the educator.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The difference between knowing and teaching is communication.
- Hurt, Scott and McCroskey
Much have I learned from my teachers and colleagues, but most from my students.
- Talmud: Ta'anith, 7b
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
- William James
The educator should be the "leading learner."
- Thomas Groome
Not only is there an art in knowing a thing, but also a certain art in teaching it: "Nam non solum scire aliquid artis est. Set quaedam ars etiam doendi."
- Cicero, DeLegibus
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
- Charles Colton
There are three things to remember when teaching: know your stuff, know whom you are stuffing, and then stuff them elegantly.
- Lola May
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
- Edith Wheaton
The real art of communication is not only to say the right thing in the right place, but also to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
- E-mail humour
The real challenge in college teaching is not covering the material for the students but uncovering the material with the students.
- Karl Smith
We must view young people not as empty bottles to be filled, but as candles to be lit.
- Robert H. Shaffer
To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
- Theodore Roosevelt
Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.
- Dale Carnegie
Cover less, uncover more.
- Bland Tomkinson (possibly)
Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.
- John Wood
If you plan for a year, plant a seed. If for ten years, plant a tree. If for a hundred years, teach the people. When you sow a seed once, you will reap a single harvest. When you teach the people, you will reap a hundred harvests.
- Kuan Chun
It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
- Ursula K. LeGuin
The key to teaching anything is to remember what it was like not to understand that thing. That's a very hard thing to do. Every time you come to understand something you didn't understand before, you are transformed. You become a different person from who you were before. The key to teaching someone else to understand that same thing is to remember your former, untransformed self. If you can do that, I think you can teach anything.
- David Goodstein
Teaching without learning is just talking.
- Unknown
Tell me; I'll forget. Show me; I may remember. Involve me and I will understand.
- Old Proverb
Results! Why, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.
- Thomas A. Edison (on light bulb experiments)
Teachers and learners are correlates, one of which was never intended to be without the other.
- Johnathan Edwards
Teaching that impacts is not head-to-head, but heart-to-heart.
- Howard G. Hendricks
Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.
- Albert Einstein
A life isn't significant except for its impact on other lives.
- Jackie Robinson
The story is told here of a student at one of our more prestigious universities who was approached by one of his lecturers who had observed that the student was not taking notes. "Young man," said the lecturer, "I notice that you don't take notes in my lectures. How can you hope to pass the exams?" "No problem," replied the young man. "I have my father's notes!"
- Bland Tomkinson
The teacher, whether mother, priest, or schoolmaster, is the real maker of history.
- H. G. Wells
The people who influence you are the people who believe in you.
- Anonymous
We do not learn to teach - we learn from our teaching.
- Laura Lipton
Be the change you want to see in the world.
- Gandhi
Be wise to: wealth without work; pleasure without conscience; knowledge without character; commerce without morality; science without humanity; worship without sacrifice; politics without principles.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Education is not filling a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
- William Butler Yeats
It's not what is poured into a student that counts, but what is planted.
- Linda Conway
No speech can be entirely bad if it is short.
- Anonymous
People populate the world. Teachers civilize it.
- Greg Henry Quinn
Reading is to the mind that exercise is to the body.
- Richard Steele
To teach is to learn.
- Japanese Proverb
What a teacher doesn't say... is a telling part of what a student hears.
- Maurice Natanson
What are the purposes and priorities of teaching? First, to inspire. Second, to challenge. Third, and only third, to impart information.
- Michael J. Bishop
What could matter more than to take a human being and help change her into a different human being?
- Professor Henry Higgins in "My Fair Lady"
Every job is a self-portrait of the individual who did it.
- Carolyn Coats
Every September is like Christmas, and every student, a surprise gift to open.
- Mary Bicouvaris
Every truth has four corners: as a teacher I give you one corner, and it is for you to find the other three.
- Confucius
Far and away the best prize that life offers is the change to work hard at work worth doing.
- Theodore Roosevelt
Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.
- C. W. Ceran
I touch the future. I teach.
- Christa McAuliffe
The mere imparting of information is not education. Above all things, the effort must result in helping a person think and do for himself/herself.
- Carter G. Woodson
Teachers are the architectural designers of nations. People must see that education is not an expense, but an investment.
- Donna Oliver
Teaching is a process of becoming that continues throughout life, never completely achieved, never completely denied. This is the challenge and the fun of being a teacher - there is no ultimate end to the process.
- Frances Mayforth
Few rise to low expectations.
- Les Brown
Teaching is not just a job, it is a human service, and it must be thought of as a mission.
- Dr. Ralph Tyler
People need: 1) someone to care for; 2) something to do; 3) something to hope for.
- Unknown