Joshua Lederberg Quotes

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.

I was in public school until third or fourth grade, and after that, I was homeschooled. I was homeschooled until I was 14, and then when I was 14, I began attending college. Mom was not playing about that education.

I was an appalling person to teach. At 14, I was pretty advanced. I would read all the books in a few minutes, and I was bored. It must have been awful for a teacher to have a bright boy who's giving them his undivided indifference.

Early in my school career, I turned out to be an incorrigible disciplinary problem. I could understand what the teacher was saying as fast as she could say it, I found time hanging heavy, so I would occasionally talk to my neighbor. That was my great crime, I talked in school.

You have to have teachers who are empowered to facilitate great teaching.

We've long believed teachers know best what their students need to succeed, and that includes the creation of healthy, supportive school communities.

I'd like to see a reality where, if someone wants to work when they turn 18 to help support their family, and they learn at their own pace on something like the Khan Academy or other things, that they can just, on their own, get a bunch of the credits they need just by testing out of things.

Public school teachers from every corner of America post classroom project requests on DonorsChoose.org. Requests range from pencils for a poetry writing unit to violins for a school recital to microscope slides for a biology class.

Don't get me wrong: school is good and all, but school is way too slow for me. Like, super slow. So I didn't want to go. I wanted to learn on my own with real life experiences.

I was a social studies teacher at a high school in the Bronx for five years.

I really love teaching; I was actually studying to be a preschool teacher.

I was a teacher before comedy, but it was good because no two days were the same, which this job is too.

I'm a good teacher and am great at observation and picking out what's wrong and fixing it.

I started doing a Ph.D., and then I thought, 'I don't really want to spend all this time on my own in the library.'

Teachers know how to improve education.

One of the biggest reasons that teachers have trouble with student-centered learning is that they have to give over a level of control to the kids. And, when you do that, you can have chaos, or you can have high levels of learning. Often, teachers are afraid of the chaos.

I was a PE teacher, and when you teach, you can say, 'You have to do this.' It's an order. That's one way. Or you can say, 'Listen, we have these problems, so give me the solution,' and they have to think about it. Or you can say, 'Here are three options - which one is best?'

To be clear, people are the most important part of any classroom. If given the choice between a great teacher and the world's most advanced education technology, I'd pick the teacher any day for my own children.

It's every teacher's job to be rigorous about constantly being open to new ideas and innovation.

Successful state schools work because charismatic heads or teachers are terrific bluffers, giving the impression that they are to be feared while knowing in their hearts that they have no real power.

I do my schooling through an independent study program where I am able to do all my work at home, and then every two weeks, I meet with my teacher and turn in my work. When I am on set, I work with a studio teacher, and we do a mandatory three hours of school a day.

I believe that our teachers need more freedom to be creative in the classroom in order to maximize the time students spend learning, not the time they spend taking tests.

As a teacher in order not to have to answer too many questions, you stretch your answers.

In all the works on pedagogy that ever I read — and they have been many, big, and heavy — I don't remember that any one has advocated a system of teaching by practical jokes, mostly cruel. That, however, describes the method of our great teacher, Experience.

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