| [T]he powers of [students] sometimes sink under too great severity
in correction; for they despond, and grieve, and at last hate their work;
and what is most prejudicial, while they fear everything, they cease to
attempt anything.... A teacher ought, therefore, to be as agreeable as
possible, that remedies, which are rough in their nature, may be rendered
soothing by gentleness of hand; he ought to praise some parts of his pupils'
performances, tolerate some, and to alter others, giving his reasons why
the alterations are made.
--Quintilian |
| If my talk is narrow, superficial, biased, and confined to cliches,
my thinking is likely to be so too.
--from"Collaborative Learning and the Conversation of Mankind" by Kenneth Bruffee |
| To engage our students, we must frame issues in ways that are familiar
to them, while at the same time destabilizing that familiarity by leading
them into the unfamiliar. The most interesting questions we ask are
the ones for which we do not have the answers.
--from “Teaching and Learning the Unfamiliar” by Marvin Lazerson and Ursula Wagener |
| Passion is perhaps the least understood and least appreciated aspect
of learning, but without it, our students will not risk the uncertain journey.
By simultaneously caring about the subject matter and about the ways students
learn, we try to model the emotional commitments that drive us as teachers
and scholars. Only in this way can we stimulate a deep desire in
our students to come with us. Our task as teachers, then, it to make
the pedagogical moment safe enough and passionate enough so our students
will accept the uncertainty of the unfamiliar.
--from “Teaching and Learning the Unfamiliar” by Marvin Lazerson and Ursula Wagener |
| The third essential of good teaching is to like the pupils. If
you do not actually like [the students], or young men and young women,
give up teaching.
It is easy to like the young because they are young. They have no faults, except the very ones which they are asking you to eradicate: ignorance, shallowness, and inexperience. The really hateful faults are those which we grown men and women have. Some of these grow on us like diseases; others we build up and cherish as though they were virtues. Ingrained conceit, vulgar self-satisfaction, puffy laziness of body and mind—these and the other real sins result from years, decades of careful cultivation. They show on our faces, they ring harsh and hollow in our voices, they have become bone of our bone and flesh or our flesh. The young do not sin in those ways. Heaven knows they are infuriatingly lazy and unbelievably stupid and sometimes detestably cruel—but not for long, not all at once, and not (like grown-ups) as a matter of habit or policy. They are trying to be energetic and wise and kind. When you remember this, it is difficult not to like them. --from The Art of Teaching by Gilbert Highet |
| "Each of your students is someone’s child!"
--Dr. Jenny Cooper, Southeast Missouri State University |