Henri Nouwen Quotes

Education must begin with the solution of the student-teacher contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.

We should not be speaking to, but with. That is second nature to any good teacher.

In a manner of speaking. I certainly never want to lose my voice as an educator.

I always wanted to be a teacher.

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of a good teacher.

I count myself well educated, for the admirable woman at the head of the school which I attended from the age of four and a half till I was thirteen and a half, was a born teacher in advance of her own times.

Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.

The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.

I've been lucky enough to work with extraordinary teachers along the way, and I'm excited to share what I've learned with graduate students at SNHU. I'm just as excited for what I'll learn from them.

David Levi is a teacher as well as a chef, and, like most teachers, he loves to talk.

I'm very involved with kids because after being a teacher for seven years, I just can't stop loving the kids. I am a teacher forever.

The best teachers, one hopes, don't shout at their students - because they are skilled at wooing as well as demanding the best efforts of others. For the ancient Greeks and Romans, this wooing was a sufficiently fine art in itself to be the central focus of education.

If you become a teacher, by your pupils you'll be taught.

A good teacher is a determined person.

What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've learned something about it yourself... The teacher usually learns more than the pupils. Isn't that true?

I think, however, that there isn't any solution to this problem of education other than to realize that the best teaching can be done only when there is a direct individual relationship between a student and a good teacher - a situation in which the student discusses the ideas, thinks about the things, and talks about the things. It's impossible to learn very much by simply sitting in a lecture, or even by simply doing problems that are assigned. But in our modern times we have so many students to teach that we have to try to find some substitute for the ideal.

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

What I know is that if I was asked to teach mathematics in French for a week to young kids, I would do my homework and I think I could do a decent job. I don't think a degree in education would make me a better teacher. I sometimes teach in college. I don't teach for long periods of time, but I give workshops and I think I can communicate stuff. So, it's about communicating.

We learn by teaching.

A teacher who establishes rapport with the taught, becomes one with them, learns more from them than he teaches them. He who learns nothing from his disciples is, in my opinion, worthless. Whenever I talk with someone I learn from him. I take from him more than I give him.

Teachers and learners are correlates, one of which was never intended to be without the other.

Mentoring is a mutuality that requires more than meeting the right teacher: the teacher must meet the right student.

Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.

Learning is a process of mutual discovery for teacher and pupil. Keep an open mind to their unexpected responses.

I never lose sight of the fact that before I was a writer, I was a teacher. I still am. My classroom's just gotten a little bigger.