Sydney J. Harris Quotes

A good teacher feels his way, looking for response.

Of all the excellent teachers of college English whom I have known I have never discovered one who knew precisely what he was doing. Therein have lain their power and their charm.

The nature of the labyrinth, I scribbled into my spiral notebook, and the way out of it. This teacher rocked. I hated discussion classes. I hated talking, and I hated listening to everyone else stumble on their words and try to phrase things in the vaguest possible way so they wouldn't sound dumb, and I hated how it was all just a game of trying to figure out what the teacher wanted to hear and then saying it. I'm in class, so teach me.

The best method for a given teacher is the one which is most familiar to the teacher.

I'd love to go back and teach primary school. I used to teach fourth grade and fifth grade. I'd love to spend several years teaching kindergarten or maybe third grade.

So what does a good teacher do? Create tension - but just the right amount.

I was terrified of being a teacher. To stand in front of a classroom, the responsibility is boggling. Imagine! Standing in front of people!

Kids' views are often just as valid as the teachers'. The best teachers are the ones that know that.

Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students.

We expert teachers know that motivation and emotional impact are what matter.

Like most of the other teachers, I'd done a bit of teaching and we all think we're great at what we do, but you realize that normally you have an audience who are all onside, who all want to listen.

I have learned that, although I am a good teacher, I am a much better student, and I was blessed to learn valuable lessons from my students on a daily basis. They taught me the importance of teaching to a student - and not to a test.

I was an elementary school teacher.

I found early on in teaching, if you're too blunt an instrument, the students discredit you and think you're just being mean. They're not interested in what you have to say.

Knowing what to expect from a teacher is a really good thing, of course: It lets you get the right answers more quickly than you would otherwise.

Many instructional arrangements seem "contrived," but there is nothing wrong with that. It is the teacher's function to contrive conditions under which students learn. Their relevance to a future usefulness need not be obvious. It is a difficult assignment. The conditions the teacher arranges must be powerful enough to compete with those under which the student tends to behave in distracting ways.

Going to school is not really education. It's really who's in front of the classrooms and who's endearing themselves to the kids and who's making the kids want to learn and who's inspiring them to be curious about any topic in the world.

I was a schoolteacher; I taught seventh and eighth grade, and I tried to write fiction on the side.

If you are giving a graduate course you don't try to impress the students with oratory, you try to challenge them, get them to question you.

I just think it would be interesting. I already applied to be a substitute teacher.

Most teachers in America could dramatically improve their teaching if they just made every second count.

Coach Reid is a great teacher. He understands how people learn, understands how to get people to get the concept of what the play is and why we're running it.

You know, master classes are essentially extended Q&As. That's how I always approach them. I don't mean to downplay it. It's just that I never fancy myself as someone who is taking a class. 'Master class' insinuates a teacher, and I'm not one.

Teachers must learn how to teach ... they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.

The successful teacher is no longer on a height, pumping knowledge at high pressure into passive receptacles.