Robert Sternberg Quotes

I'd like to think I'm a great teacher.

I wasn't a very good teacher.

I'm just not a natural teacher.

People think of teachers who are born to teach, and you think of all these charismatic folks. Some of the most successful teachers are some of the least charismatic, interestingly. But they have a gift of figuring out what motivates people.

Teaching is not the work in which a man can live and grow.

Great teaching requires incredible talent and dedication, strong intellectual ability and interpersonal skill, real discipline and empathy.

Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the 'naturals', the ones who somehow know how to teach.

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 do think we know that a teacher who knows what he or she is doing, knows their subject matter, and knows how to impart knowledge to kids is a critical piece of closing the achievement gap.

Teachers say their schools of education did not adequately prepare them for the classroom. They would have welcomed more mentoring and feedback in their early years.

Effective teaching may be the hardest job there is.

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.

A teacher should have a creative mind.

I hope to become a better teacher. I love teaching.

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

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

Both of my sisters have been teachers and they used to say you get asked between 300 and 600 questions every day which you have to answer. That's exactly what directing is. And the vast majority of those questions are not very interesting really, but they need somebody to make a decision - a good one or a bad one - and they follow it.

I tell young teachers who are determined to dissent from some of the Draconian aspects of the current orthodoxy that the best form of protection is to be incredibly good at what you do and keep good discipline in class.

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

I am a teacher. It's how I define myself. A good teacher isn't someone who gives the answers out to their kids but is understanding of needs and challenges and gives tools to help other people succeed. That's the way I see myself, so whatever it is that I will do eventually after politics, it'll have to do a lot with teaching.

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

My daughter became a teacher right out of college.

Benevolence alone will not make a teacher, nor will learning alone do it. The gift of teaching is a peculiar talent, and implies a need and a craving in the teacher himself.

Sure, just like there are bad lawyers, bad doctors and bad politicians, there are people who aren't cut out to be teachers. But by and large, the people who are called to be teachers are passionate about the profession.

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