Teacher Appreciation Quotes

the Joy of Teaching and Learning...

Review this collection of teacher appreciation quotes to find the perfect quote to express your appreciation for those called into the noble profession of teaching.

My mother taught the 2nd-4th graders for many years in a different school district from where I attended school. 

I always wished that my mother would have been my teacher because she had such a knack of making learning interesting and fun for her students.

She always went the extra mile. 

She would teach about different cultures by bringing in the food and art of that culture in engage the children.  She had some of the most beautiful bulletin boards that were truly a work of art. 

This page of my website is dedicated to my mother and all of the other great teachers who sparked the curiosity in a child to make them a life-long learner.  I can truly say that my mother sparked that quest to learn that remains with me even to this day and I’m almost 60 years old. 

Thanks Mom!

Teacher Appreciation Week is May 6th – 10th 2013 

Have you ever wanted to let your current or previous teacher know how grateful you are for all that they have done for you?

Now you can, create a FREE tribute your teacher.

About Education

"The real object of education is to have a man
in the condition of continually asking questions."
~ Bishop Creighton

"If I may, Mr....
Michael Maslin
Buy This at Allposters.com

Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
~ Malcolm Forbes

Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.
~ Daniel Boorstin

The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.
Robert M. Hutchins

The highest result of education is tolerance.
~ Helen Keller

Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.
~ Aristotle
Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance.
~ William James "Will" Durant

Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they do not know and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it.
~ William Haley

The purpose of education is to enlighten the student as to how to use their own mind, rather than to fill it with facts for a test.
~ Robert John Meehan

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

About Learning

Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning.
~ William Arthur Ward

Developing a desire to learn is the kindling point of all classroom achievement.
~ Robert John Meehan

If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.
~ Lord Chesterfield
Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
~ Abigail Adams

Persistent questioning and healthy inquisitiveness are the first requisite for acquiring learning of any kind.
~ Gandhi

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

About Teachers

"It is the supreme art of the teacher
to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."
~ Charles M. Dickenson

The Supreme Art...

Buy This at Allposters.com

What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.
~Karl Menninger

Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task.
~ Haim Ginott

A teacher's purpose is not to create students in his own image, but to develop students who can create their own image.
~ Anonymous

A teacher is a compass that activates the magnets of curiosity, knowledge, and wisdom in the pupils.
~Ever Garrison  

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

About Teaching

Buy this Personalized Teacher Tote Bag

"2 Teach is
2 Touch lives
4 Ever"
~ Author Unknown

Also available in a: Key Ring, Note Cards, and a Mug.

---

Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.
~ Josef Albers

Teaching is the profession that teaches all the other professions.
~ Unknown

To teach is to learn twice.
~ Joseph Joubert

Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.
~ John C. Dana

The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another.
~ Marva Collins

Teaching should be full of ideas instead of stuffed with facts.
~ Anonymous

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Teaching is the greatest act of optimism.
~ Colleen Wilcox

Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.
~ Aristotle

More important than the curriculum is the question of the methods of teaching and the spirit in which the teaching is given.
~ Bertrand Russell

We teach what we like to learn and the reason many people go into teaching is vicariously to re-experience the primary joy experienced the first time they learned something they loved.
~ Stephen Brookfield

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
~ Anatole France

Teaching does not come from a political mandate...it comes from the heart
~ Robert John Meehan

Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.
~ Albert Einstein

To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching.
~ Henri Frederic Amiel

The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without a teacher.
~ Elbert Hubbard

You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.
~ Galileo

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Appreciation

I would thank you from the bottom of my heart, but for you my heart has no bottom.
~ Unknown

Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
~ Voltaire

I can no other answer make, but, thanks, and thanks.
~ William Shakespeare

No one is more cherished in this world than someone who lightens the burden of another. Thank you.
~ Unknown

No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.
~ Unknown

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone.
~ G.B. Stern

The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.
~ Eric Hoffer

No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.
~ James Allen

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
~ William James

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.
~ William Arthur Ward

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Beautiful

Buy this Personalized Teacher Quote Mug

"A teacher takes a hand,
opens a mind, and touches a heart."
~ Unknown

Also available in a: Treat Jar, Tote Bag, and a Mouse Pad.

---

We cannot hold a torch to light another's path without brightening our own.
~ Ben Sweetland

What a teacher writes on the blackboard of life can never be erased.
~ Unknown

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
~ Carl Jung

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

A successful teacher can create a never ending legacy for generations to come.
~ Robert John Meehan

When you love people and have the desire to make a profound, positive impact upon the world, then will you have accomplished the meaning to live.
~ Sasha Azevedo

True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their
own.
~ Nikos Kazantzakis

I'm more interested in arousing enthusiasm in kids than in teaching the facts. The facts may change, but that enthusiasm for exploring the world will remain with them the rest of their lives.
~ Seymour Simon

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Being a Teacher

Buy this Plaque with the Teacher's Creed

"A hundred years from now,
it will not matter what kind of car I drove,
what kind of house I lived in,
how much money I had in the bank...
but the world may be a better place
because I made a difference in the life of a child."
~ Forest Witcraft

---

 Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 40 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn't want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher's job.
~ Donald D. Quinn

Discover wildlife: be a teacher!
~ Unknown

There are three good reasons to be a teacher - June, July, and August.
~ Unknown

We didn't go into teaching to get rich, but to enrich others.
~ Robert John Meehan

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Teachers believe they have a gift for giving; it drives them with the same irrepressible drive that drives others to create a work of art or a market or a building.
~ Angelo Bartlett Giamatti

Teachers are unique problem solvers by character, temperament, and resilience. Teachers cannot be manufactured.
~ Robert John Meehan

I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized.
~ Dr. Haim Ginott

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Funny

"Some hacker from an obscure university in China ate my homework."
~ The New Yorker

"Some hacker from...
Lee Lorenz
Buy This at Allposters.com

 I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.
~ Lily Tomlin as "Edith Ann"

Often, when I am reading a good book, I stop and thank my teacher. That is, I used to, until she got an unlisted number.
~ Unknown

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
~ Albert Einstein

Teachers are the only professionals who have to respond to bells every forty-five minutes and come out fighting.
~ Frank McCourt

As long as teachers give test there will always be prayer in schools.
~ Unknown

A cross-eyed teacher can keep twice the number of children in order better than any other teacher, because the pupils do not know who she's looking at.
~John R. Kemble, 1902

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Good Advice to Teachers

You will notice that most of the advice to teachers comes from Robert John Meehan. His insight into the heart and soul of both teacher and student tugs at readers' emotions like few writers can.

His depth of experience as a teacher in some of the nation's most difficult schools over a period of four decades is deeply embedded in each of his selections of poetry. His ability to share the joy, sorrows, and at times, the horror of teaching in today's inner city schools is brought to the forefront in each of the poems included in his The Teacher's Journey.

Meehan has accomplished much over the past decades in encouraging other teachers to share their feelings, emotions, and experiences in working with students. Follow Meehan as he inspires students and teachers alike in The Teacher's Journey to understanding the meaning of being an authentically effective teacher. 

---

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Your career as a teacher is going to fill a large part of your life. The only way to be a truly satisfied teacher is to do it with passion and vigor.
~ Robert John Meehan

Culturally relevant teaching content is essential to engaging today's young people in the urban classroom.
~ Robert John Meehan

We must shift the focus of our classrooms from obedience to understanding.
~ Robert John Meehan

Be a reflective teacher. Honestly look at what you do from time to time. Evaluate the purpose of your role as a teacher.
~ Robert John Meehan

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Some students can be extremely frustrating, distant and downright irritating, but they are children, and should be treated as such.
~ Robert John Meehan

Sharing our experiences, our successes, our failures, is a great way to help other teachers and to contribute with the educational reform.
~ Robert John Meehan

Every child has a different learning style and pace. Each child is unique, not only capable of learning but also capable of succeeding.
~ Robert John Meehan

A key to growing as a teacher is to keep company only with teachers who uplift U, whose presence inspires U & whose dedication drives U.
~ Robert John Meehan

A teacher needs to have the vision and conviction that dreams can and will be achieved.
~ Robert John Meehan

Remember the current political climate is not a reflection of YOUR self worth. You can prosper as a teacher every day and in every way.
~ Robert John Meehan

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Emulate those teachers that instilled the sense of wonder and curiosity that inspired you.
~ Robert John Meehan

Too many students don’t know what success feels like, thus failure is no longer scary or painful, it’s become the norm. Create a new norm.
~ Robert John Meehan

A good teacher must be able to empathize what it must be like to struggle to learn something that may have come so easily to them.
~ Robert John Meehan

We all need to go into the classroom believing our students can and will meet and often exceed our expectations.
~ Robert John Meehan

We should each day in the classroom teach as though that day is the one by which our students shall remember us.
~ Robert John Meehan

It shouldn't matter how slowly a child learns as long as we are encouraging them not to stop.
~ Robert John Meehan

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Teachers must create an environment for students where their past failures are irrelevant to the learning occurring in their classrooms.
~ Robert John Meehan

Every day that you teach you have two options: be focused, passionate and caring, or to be focused, passionate and caring.
~ Robert John Meehan

Perseverance is the hard work you do in the classroom after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.
~ Robert John Meehan

Children need to be challenged and pushed, not to the point where they give up but to the point where they think, "Wow, look at me go! "
~ Robert John Meehan

When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's [children's] minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

The point is to develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition and to guide the child over to important fields for society. Such a school demands from the teacher that he be a kind of artist in his province.
~ Albert Einstein

We must view young people not as empty bottles to be filled, but as candles to be lit.
~ Robert H. Shaffer

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Good vs. Bad Teachers

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
~ William A. Ward

Good teachers are costly, but bad teachers cost more.
~ Bob Talbert

Good teachers are those who know how little they know. Bad teachers are those who think they know more than they don't know.
~ R. Verdi

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Heart of a Teacher Poem

Watch this inspiring video with the "Heart of a Teacher" poem. 

What a lovely tribute to a teacher!

Heart of a Teacher

by Paula J. Fox

The child arrives like a mystery box...
with puzzle pieces inside
some of the pieces are broken or missing...
and others just seem to hide

But the HEART of a teacher can sort them out...
and help the child to see
the potential for greatness he has within...
a picture of what he can be

Her goal isn't just to teach knowledge...
by filling the box with more parts
it's putting the pieces together...
to create a work of art.

The process is painfully slow at times...
some need more help than others
each child is a work in progress...
with assorted shapes and colors

First she creates a classroom...
where the child can feel safe in school
where he never feels threatened or afraid to try...
and kindness is always the rule

She knows that a child
can achieve much more when he feels secure inside
when he's valued and loved...and believes in himself
...and he has a sense of pride

She models and teaches good character...
and respect for one another
how to focus on strengths...not weaknesses
and how to encourage each other

She gives the child the freedom he needs...
to make choices on his own
so he learns to become more responsible...
and is able to stand alone

He's taught to be strong and think for himself...
as his soul and spirit heal
and the puzzle that's taking shape inside...
has a much more positive feel

The child discovers the joy that comes...
from learning something new...
and his vision grows as he begins
to see all the things he can do

A picture is formed as more pieces fit...
an image of the child within
with greater strength and confidence...
and a belief that he can win!

All because a hero was there...
in the HEART of a teacher who cared
enabling the child to become much more...
than he ever imagined...or dared

A teacher with a HEART for her children...
knows what teaching is all about
she may not have all the answers...
but on this...she has no doubt

When asked which subjects she loved to teach,
she answered this way and smiled...

"It's not the subjects that matter...
It's all about teaching the CHILD."

---

Buy this Teacher Appreciation Gift Set

Whether you have children in school now or you're a "grown-up" who wants to send a thank-you gift to an influential teacher from your past, Heart of a Teacher Poem, DVD, and Teacher's Creed Plaque makes a wonderful, unique gift for educators.

Teacher's Creed: A hundred years from now, it will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, how much money I had in the bank...but the world may be a better place because I made a difference in the life of a child.
~ Forest Witcraft

---

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quote

Importance of Education

The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.
~ Plato

Education is the best provision for the journey to old age.
~ Aristotle

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
~ Andy McIntyre

Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation.
~ John F. Kennedy

Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.
~ John F. Kennedy

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
~ Benjamin Franklin

Education...beyond all other devices of human origin, is a great equalizer of conditions of men --the balance wheel of the social machinery...It does better than to disarm the poor of their hostility toward the rich; it prevents being poor.
~ Horace Mann

The road to freedom, here and everywhere, begins in the classroom.
~ Hubert H. Humphrey
Education is the mother of leadership.
~ Wendell L. Willkie

Education is the transmission of civilization.
~ Will Durant

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Importance of Teachers

Buy the Teacher Quote Scented Candle

"Teachers inspire the hopes of today
and the dreams of tomorrow."
~ Unknown

---

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
~ Henry Adams

I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.
~ Alexander the Great

The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called "truth."
~ Dan Rather

Seldom will you find a person happy with their successes in life but who can't name a teacher that inspired them along the way.
~ Robert John Meehan

Think for a moment about the people who have inspired you most in your life. Chances are, one of them was a teacher.
~ Robert John Meehan

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well.
~ Aristotle

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Insightful

The test of a good teacher is not how many questions he can ask his pupils that they will answer readily, but how many questions he inspires them to ask him which he finds it hard to answer.
~ Alice Wellington Rollins  

Children are like cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression.
~ Dr. Haim Ginott

The critical factor is not class size but rather the nature of the teaching as it affects learning.
~ C.B. Neblette

A good teacher is a good student first. By repeating his lessons, he acquires excellence.
~ M. K. Soni

Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education.
~ Chuang-Tzu

A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.
~ Horace Mann

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

The teachers who get "burned out" are not the ones who are constantly learning, which can be exhilarating, but those who feel they must stay in control and ahead of the students at all times.
~ Frank Smith

There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million.
~ Walt Streightiff

To be a success in the classroom, a student's attitude is equally as important as his ability.
~ Robert John Meehan

Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.
~ Albert Einstein

When we strive to become better teachers than we are, everyone in our classroom becomes better too.
~ Robert John Meehan

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves.
~ Abbe Dimnet

If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.
~ John Dewey

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know.
~ Anatole France

If a strong parent is lacking to demand excellence and instill them with a desire to get better in everything they do, then teachers must fill that role.
~ Robert John Meehan

The teacher’s demonstrated attitude of respect and empathy can be a significant factor in successfully working with challenging students.
~ Robert John Meehan

Take away art, music and sports and you take away the one hook for many students that keeps them motivated and involved.
~ Robert John Meehan

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Inspirational

Buy this Teacher Quote Travel Mug

"A teacher touches a life forever."
~ Unknown

Also available as a: Tote Bag, Mug, Mouse Pad, and Note Cards.

---

If your actions inspire children to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are indeed worthy of the title "Teacher."
~ Robert John Meehan

Teach as if what you are doing makes a difference. It does.
~ Robert John Meehan

True teachers illuminate the path to achievement, believing the best way to predict a child's future is to help create it.
~ Robert John Meehan

True teachers rise to the top not by chance but through passion and purpose.
~ Robert John Meehan

There is no challenge too great for a teacher who has the will and heart to make it happen.
~ Robert John Meehan

Twenty years from now, your name may be forgotten...but the world will be a better place because you made a difference as a teacher.
~ Robert John Meehan

The strength of our teaching lies in the depth of our convictions and the integrity of our goals.
~ Robert John Meehan

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quote

Inspirational Quotes for Teachers

Buy this Book of
Inspirational Quotes for Teachers

As you know I'm a big fan of inspirational quotes. 

This book contains 130 inspirational quotes for teachers. 

Below is a sampling of a few of them.

---

 I touch the future. I teach.
~ Christa McAuliffe

The greatest gift that you can give to another is knowledge, for knowledge is power—power to build and to dream. What you can envision in your mind you can achieve.
~ Jack Podojil

Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students.
~ Charles Kuralt
 
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.
~ Andy Rooney
 
In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.
~ Jacques Barzun
 
A child miseducated is a child lost.
~ John F. Kennedy
 
If your plan is for 1 year, plant rice;
If your plan is for 10 years, plant trees;
If your plan is for 100 years, educate children.
~ Confucius
 
I'm not a teacher, but an awakener.
~ Robert Frost
 
Nine-tenths of education is encouragement.
~ Anatole France

---

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quote

Jaded

Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
~ Jacques Barzun

Doctor's mistakes are in the cemetery and lawyers' mistakes are in prison, teachers' mistakes get elected.
~ Robert John Meehan

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
~ Albert Einstein

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Profound

If kids come to us from strong, healthy functioning families, it makes our job easier. If they do not come to us from strong, healthy, functioning families, it makes our job more important.
~ Barbara Colorose

Correction does much, but encouragement does more.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If a child can't learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.
~ Ignacio Estrada

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Proverbs

Teachers open the door. You enter by yourself.
~ Chinese Proverb

If a seed of a lettuce will not grow, we do not blame the lettuce. Instead, the fault lies with us for not having nourished the seed properly.
~ Buddhist Proverb

Every truth has four corners: as a teacher I give you one corner, and it is for you to find the other three.
~ Confucius

Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.
~ Japanese Proverb

By learning you will teach; by teaching you will understand.
~ Latin Proverb

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Teacher Appreciation

I've seen and met angels wearing the disguise of ordinary people living ordinary lives.
~ Tracy Chapman

Teacher appreciation makes the world of education go around.
~ Helen Peters

If you can read this, thank a teacher.
~ Unknown

Without teacher appreciation there can’t be any student progress.
~ Theresa Grimm

There's no one quite like a special teacher, and no teacher quite as special as you.
~ Unknown

Teachers appreciate being appreciated, for teacher appreciation is their highest award.
~ William Prince

If students don’t feel teacher appreciation, their whole education has failed.
~ Michael Balkers

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Teacher Blessing

May your walls know joy; May every room hold laughter and every window open to great possibility.
~  Maryanne Radmacher-Hershey

A Teacher’s Blessing:
For patience in teaching each day,
for sharing your knowledge in so many ways.
~ Unknown

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Teacher's Salary

Summer vacation is the time when parents realize that teachers are grossly underpaid.
~ Unknown

Modern cynics and skeptics see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.
~ John F. Kennedy

Why else would a teacher take a crappy salary, really long hours and enduring stress to teach children unless they really loved to do it?
~ Robert John Meehan

Many reformers have foolishly accepted at face value that teachers in lower income schools are less effective. They couldn't be more wrong.
~ Robert John Meehan

Republicans fear caps on CEO pay/bonuses will drain talent from those jobs. Shouldn't they have same fears about slashing teacher comp and pay?
~ Robert John Meehan

A gifted teacher is as rare as a gifted doctor and makes far less money.
~ Unknown

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Teaching - A Noble Profession

What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

For most of us teaching is not just what earns our paycheck. Teaching is what we were put on earth to do.
~ Robert John Meehan

It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference.
~Tom Brokaw

I choose to believe that teaching the least desired is the most noble choice of all.
~ Robert John Meehan

Effective teaching may be the hardest job there is.
~ William Glasser

Where your talents and the needs of your students meet there lies your calling as a teacher.
~ Robert John Meehan

I choose to believe that teaching the least desired children is the most noble choice of all.
~ Robert John Meehan

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Teaching and Learning

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.
~ Benjamin Franklin

I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.
~ Albert Einstein

In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.
~ Phil Collins
Teaching is only demonstrating that it is possible. Learning is making it possible for yourself.
~ Paulo Coelho, The Pilgrimage

You can't really teach a kid anything: you can only show him the way and motivate him to learn it himself.
~ Dave Cullen, Columbine

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Tests and Assessments

"Teaching to the test is sucking the joy and flexibility out of learning,
all in the name of helping kids to read and write."
~ Robert John Meehan

"Are you sure...
John Klossner
Buy This at Allposters.com

Children are born addicted to learning. High-stakes assessments are drumming the love of learning out of kids.
~ Robert John Meehan

Shouldn't we be as concerned as to what the student thinks as we are to what pat answer he puts on a test?
~ Robert John Meehan

I'm willing to wager that not one of our students' dreams include being proficient on a standardized test.
~ Robert John Meehan

Demanding that students test well in the absence of appropriate resources is disheartening for teachers and disastrous for students.
~ Robert John Meehan

Our vision of teaching often becomes blurred by the restraints of standardized tests, administrative burdens, parental complaints and lack of support.
~ Robert John Meehan

Inventive teachers can create life long learners but a love for learning can not be tested.
~ Robert John Meehan

Authentic student achievement cannot be measured by test scores but in the small day to day moments of their students’ individual triumphs.
~ Robert John Meehan

It's tragic that we are mandated to turn so many eager young learners into frustrated test performers.
~ Robert John Meehan

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

Traits of an Exemplary Teacher

The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book.
~ Unknown

A good teacher is like a candle - it consumes itself to light the way for others.
~ Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, translated from Turkish

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. ~ Albert Einstein

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
~ Maya Angelou

When you study great teachers... you will learn much more from their caring and hard work than from their style.
~ William Glasser

The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate "apparently ordinary" people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people.
~ K. Patricia Cross

A truly special teacher is very wise, and sees tomorrow in every child's eyes.
~ Unknown

The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.
~ Khalil Gibran

The highest respect should go to those teachers who let their actions rise above other teachers' excuses.
~ Robert John Meehan

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.
~ Gail Godwin

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.
~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton

A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though awakens your own expectations.
~ Patricia Neal

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.
~ Mark van Doren

The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior.
~ Marva Collins

A good teacher is a master of simplification and an enemy of simplism.
~ Louis Berman

A good teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.
~ Thomas Carruthers

The greatest sign of a success for a teacher, is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist".
~ Maria Montessori

A gifted teacher is not only prepared to meet the needs of today's child, but is also prepared to see the tomorrow in every child's eyes.
~ Robert John Meehan

A well prepared and engaging teacher is a catalyst... a spark that creates the desire to learn in our students.
~ Robert John Meehan

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

The true aim of every one who aspires to be a teacher should be, not to impart his own opinions, but to kindle minds.
~ F. W. Robertson

A saint is one who makes goodness attractive. Surely, a great teacher does the same thing for education.
~ Laurence Houseman

No man can be a good teacher unless he has feelings of warm affection toward his pupils and a genuine desire to impart to them what he believes to be of value.
~ Bertrand Russell

One mark of a great educator is the ability to lead students out to new places where even the educator has never been
~ Thomas Groome

If we are truly effective teachers, then we are creating autonomous, independent, and self directed learners.
~ Robert John Meehan.

The best teacher of children, in brief, is one who is essentially childlike.
~ H. L. Mencken

Good teaching is one-forth preparation and three-fourths theater.
~ Gail Godwin

Return to Index of Teacher Appreciation Quotes

---

Return to Life Quotes - from Teacher Appreciation Quotes
Return to Inspiration Oasis Home Page

Like this Page?