Teacher Motivation Quotes

I spent a few years after college as a Boston public school teacher and I loved it. But I was never committed to it, committed to it as a career.

Merit pay has failed repeatedly, and it's no surprise. When you base teacher pay on standardized test scores, you won't improve education; you just promote the high-stakes testing craze that's led parents, students and educators to shout 'Enough!' all across the country.

Good education is linked with good teachers. We need to think how we can have good teachers. India has the capability to produce & export as many teachers to the World as it needs. We need to think about how we can create an environment where children want to become good teachers.

I think the problem with schools is not too many incentives but too few. Because of tenure, teachers' unions, and the fact that teachers generally aren't observed in their classrooms, they can do whatever they want in class.

And when it comes to developing the high standards we need, it's time to stop working against our teachers and start working with them. Teachers don't go in to education to get rich. They don't go in to education because they don't believe in their children. They want their children to succeed, but we've got to give them the tools. Invest in early childhood education. Invest in our teachers and our children will succeed.

And that's it; that's why I want to teach; that's the one and only compensation: to make a permanent difference in the life of a child.

No one should teach who is not in love with teaching.

You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.

I was going to show my kids that no matter what happened with their parents, parole officers and other teachers, I wouldn't give up on them. I let them know it matters to me that you come to class, it matters to me that you try, it matters to me when you succeed.

Teachers are sort of faced with a thankless task, because no matter how good they are, unless they find a way to personally rationalize the rewards of their effort, nobody else is really going to do it for them en masse.

You don’t become a teacher to make a world of money. You become a teacher to make a world of difference.

My entire stay there [high school] might have been time lost if it hadn't been for the unique personality of a brilliant teacher. Miss Kirwin was that rare educator who was in love with information. I will always believe that her love of teaching came not so much from her liking for students but from her desire to make sure that some of the things she knew would find repositories so that they could be shared again.

Given the professionalism of Michigan teachers, I think they're not teaching because of the financial rewards.

If you do not actually like boys and girls, or young men and young women, give up teaching.

When I ask teachers why they teach, they almost always say that it is because they want to make a difference in the lives of children.

... anybody with the brains and energy to become a teacher ought to want to become something better.

If you have one of the worst schools in the city, then chances are the teachers are not going to care for you. Chances are the parents don't feel seriously about coming to meet with teachers.

Teachers need to feel they are trusted. They must be allowed some leeway to use their imagination; otherwise, teaching loses all sense of wonder and excitement.

Teachers have such hard jobs and they don't get paid well. And in order to be a teacher you need a lot of education, so people aren't teachers for any other reason than they want to be, and they want to help educate the next generation of people.

If we hope to give our children a chance, it's time we start giving our teachers a chance.

Barack Obama wants teacher service scholarships.

Great teachers should be rewarded.

The essential dilemma of education is to be found in the fact that the sort of man (or woman) who knows a given subject sufficiently well to teach it is usually unwilling to do so.

It is vital that teachers can be paid more without having to leave the classroom. This will be particularly important to schools in the most disadvantaged areas as it will empower them to attract and recruit the best teachers.

I walk around the school hallways and look at the people. I look at the teachers and wonder why they're here. If they like their jobs. Or us. And I wonder how smart they were when they were fifteen. Not in a mean way. In a curious way. It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report due on top of that. Or wondering who did the heart breaking. And wondering why.