Michael Pollan Quotes

I was in honors classes in high school. I'd get an A on every test, but I had a 1.9 grade point average. The teacher would say, 'You didn't do your homework.' I'd say, 'But isn't the homework supposed to be the lead-up to the test?'

People are attracted to teaching because they want to make a real impact. The teachers who are making the greatest difference go far beyond meeting standardised test measures. They aspire to truly level the playing field for their students, which means inspiring a love of learning, fostering the highest levels of critical thinking, building perseverance in working towards academic excellence, and so on.

When I was in school, in eighth grade, someone recognized something in me. She was an English teacher, and we read a play out loud in class, and she asked me to read one of the roles. I'd never done anything like that before, but something just lit up.

The point of being a teacher is to do more than impart facts, it's to shape the way students perceive the world, to help a student absorb the rules of a discipline. The teachers who do that get remembered.

What we now call school training, the pursuit of fixed studies at stated hours under the constant guidance of a teacher, I could scarcely be said to have enjoyed.

One of the first serious attempts I made to write a novel was when I was in Grade 6 and I had read 'Matilda.' I wrote my own version and my teacher had it bound and permitted me to read it to the class - cementing my love of reading, writing and Roald Dahl!

Study after study affirms what I saw in the classroom every day as superintendent of Denver Public Schools: Nothing makes a bigger difference for student learning than great teaching.

I believe there's not a harder job in the world than being a teacher, and there isn't a job with a more direct impact on the performance of our students.

I had a public school education - 3,000 kids when I was there. And there were a lot of teachers who would just sit there. You'd come in and sign your name and the teacher would just sit there at the head of the class and you would literally just have to stay in your seat for 40 minutes and that was the only thing you'd have to do in class.

Misdirected focus on paperwork, on procedures, and on bureaucracy frustrates teachers and fails to give children the education they need.

I've learned a lot about writing from listening to my students talk.

I never considered myself a writer. I'm a teacher. In a way, I feel kind of... kind of guilty for all the people who are writers who hope to be on the best-seller list someday, who live for that and don't get it, and it came to me as a kind of free gift, like God coming to Abraham and announcing, 'I've chosen you!'

American readers are so polite; their reactions make it seem like I've received thousands of thank-you notes. It's just lovely, and amazing the things people tell you that have touched them and related to their own lives.

Teachers make a difference in individual students' lives, yet they do not get the respect they deserve.

I was the kid who'd get up in class and tell the teacher, 'But we were supposed to have a test today! I studied for it!'

My last name is Taylor. So in school, every time we got a project, I'm at the end. So I get to see the whole class do their project. Then, when it comes time to do mine, of course I'd pass, and the teacher wouldn't have too many questions.

Teachers know how to improve education.

In essence, the education department argues that the quality of the education children receive is irrelevant, as long as someone stands in front of the class.

The idea of Herman Melville in a writing class is always distressing to me.

My dad took me to a high school basketball game and this very, very famous coach in Michigan, by the name of Lofton Greene - he was a guy that my dad was familiar with. He was from our hometown. And I watched the game and I said I didn't see this guy doing a lot of coaching. And my dad told me, well, it's just like a teacher - which he was - he said if you do a good job teaching during the week, when they take the test on Friday, that's not the time you have to do a lot of demonstrative things.

The teachers who have had the most impact on me and on most learners I know are teachers whose "selfhoods" have been deeply invested in what they are doing.

During my school visits, I really enjoy the feedback I get from them much more than anything I might tell say to them.

The teacher always used me as an example to the class of good English and good storytelling because we all had to write the same stories. But she used to make me go out front - which I hated - and read my story to the class and I would get huge applause. Not because of who I was but because they truly enjoyed the stories I wrote.

I like to remind teachers that even though they're all overwhelmed and overloaded, and it's easy to get burned out, it really is about the kids. It only takes one good teacher to change a life - one time, and one book. That's what happened when I was a kid. I had one good teacher that came in at the right time and turned me into a writer. So never lose sight - you could be that teacher.

Do you not know...that a child badly taught is farther from being wise than one not taught at all?