In order to teach you, I must know you.

Teaching is listening, learning is talking

Teaching is mostly listening, and learning is mostly telling.

Only secretly rebellious teachers have ever done right by our least advantaged kids.

Good schools, like good societies and good families, celebrate and cherish diversity.

We do not really see through our eyes or hear through our ears, but through our beliefs.

When one 'we' gets to determine standards for all 'we's' then some 'we's' are in trouble.

If you ask me, taking on risk and being more daring is a real important part of creativity.

It's the curiosity that drives me. It's making a difference in the world that prevents me from ever giving up.

A passion for learning...isn't something you have to inspire with; it's something you have to keep from extinguishing.

The art of good teaching begins when we can answer the questions our students are really trying to ask us, if only they knew how to do so.

If the curriculum we use to teach our children does not connect in positive ways to the culture young people bring to school, it is doomed to failure.

Those with power are frequently least aware of -- or least willing to acknowledge -- its existence [and] those with less power are often most aware of its existence.

The only thing they [government] want is better data. But data doesn't tell people someone is well educated. It's a vicious circle. There is some myth involved. Some of this attitude has a long history.

If you define yourself as someone fixing education, there's nothing short-range you can do to fix education directly. It's labor intensive. You have to change the way people act. You have to convince people, and change people.

Some people thought that if you put pressure on kids, parents, and teachers and schools, the pressure alone would produce results. It appealed to people who think the quick fix for education is to threaten people. It's not a left-right division.

We are all carriers of our own stories. We have never trusted our own voices. Reforms came, but we don't make them. They were presented by people removed from schools, by 'experts'. Such changes bi passes school. School by school changes, however slow, could make a powerful difference.

I take enormous pleasure every time I see something that I've done that cannot be wiped out. In some way ... I guess it's a protest against mortality. But it's been so much fun! It's the curiosity that drives me. It's making a difference in the world that prevents me from ever giving up.

Progressive white teachers seem to say to their black students 'Let me help you find your voice. I promise not to criticize one note as you search for your song'. But the black teachers say 'I've heard your song loud and clear. Now I want to teach you to harmonize with the rest of the world.

There's a radical - and wonderful - new idea here... that all children could and should be inventors of their own theories, critics of other people's ideas, analyzers of evidence, and makers of their own personal marks on the world. Its an idea with revolutionary implications. If we take it seriously.

We do not really see through our eyes or hear through our ears, but through our beliefs. To put our beliefs on hold is to cease to exist as ourselves for a moment -- and that is not easy ... but it is the only way to learn what it might feel like to be someone else and the only way to start the dialogue.

Mindset changes are not happening from change in legislation. Like desegregation. We legally got rid of legal segregation, but schools are still segregated. You can demand people have better math understanding, but it depends how you interpret math understanding, and what you want it for, and if you think everybody can and should have that.

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