“My father was a swim teacher. We used to swim before school, swim after school.”
A good teacher changes lives, often without realizing it until years later. These quotes honor educators — their patience, dedication, creativity, and the underappreciated truth that teaching is one of the most demanding and important professions there is.
“For the longest time, you just sound like a broken record, but you have to be consistent when teaching kids.”
“My father was a swim teacher. We used to swim before school, swim after school.”
“I think once you're in the public eye, whether you're a boss, a teacher or whatever you do, that you're automatically in the position of role model. You have people looking up to you, so whether you choose to accept it or not is a different question.”
“The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without his teacher.”
“As a teacher, as a propagandist, Mr. Shaw is no good at all, even in his own generation. But as a personality, he is immortal.”
“I remember telling my creative writing teacher that you never want to have a journal, because if you lose it, then someone's going to know all your secrets. And then she stopped using a journal, but I always write everything down... Anytime I travel, I try and fill up notepads.”
“To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.”
“I've always remembered something Sanford Meisner, my acting teacher, told us. When you create a character, it's like making a chair, except instead of making someting out of wood, you make it out of yourself. That's the actor's craft - using yourself to create a character.”
“We can teach a lot of things, but if the teacher can't relate by talking to a group of friendly students, he'll never be a competent teacher.”
“So what does a good teacher do? Create tension - but just the right amount.”
“A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.”
“My art teacher in junior high was a very out gay man and a mentor to me. He would tell us about Greenwich Village and show us the 'Village Voice' and describe his life, but it was all sort of subversive and below the radar.”
“I think it goes back to my high school days. In computer class, the first assignment was to write a program to print the first 100 Fibonacci numbers. Instead, I wrote a program that would steal passwords of students. My teacher gave me an A.”
“I can remember exactly where I sat when my teacher first read Roald Dahl's 'James and the Giant Peach'.”
“I've never considered myself a celebrity or even part of the entertainment business. I'm a cooking teacher.”
“Most of us end up with no more than five or six people who remember us. Teachers have thousands of people who remember them for the rest of their lives.”