Chris Biffle > Quotes

“Terrible as this is, there’s worse news. An article in the New York Times points out a statistic that should make our nation’s leaders tremble… suspension rates, kindergarten through high school, have nearly doubled from the early 1970s through 2006. Whatever is happening with our test scores, something else, something catastrophic, is going on in our schools. As countless teachers across America can testify, disruptive kids are hijacking our classrooms.”
― Chris Biffle, Whole Brain Teaching: 122 Amazing Games!: Challenging Kids, Classroom Management, Writing, Reading, Math, Common Core/State Tests

“We enter teaching because we want students to be successful and we are daily beaten down by the kids who most need our help.”
― Chris Biffle, Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids

“Truth be told, we think everyone has problems with paying attention… in traditional classrooms, students with ADD aren’t able to conceal their inattentiveness as well as the rest of us!”
― Chris Biffle, Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids

“Don’t think your challenging kids are not learning; they are studiously acquiring, from each other, the arts of rebellion.”
― Chris Biffle, Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids

“Teaching is a performing art.”
― Chris Biffle, Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids

“You cannot manage student behavior if you cannot manage your own behavior.”
― Chris Biffle, Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids

“You have to build a bridge to your most rebellious student before you can walk across it.”
― Chris Biffle, Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids

“It is certainly true that no child should be left behind. A greater truth is that no child should be permitted to hold other children behind. Our nation’s education experts are missing the point. Reading is not the problem. Math proficiency is not the problem. Test scores, which everyone obsesses over, are not the problem. The problem is that disruptive students are driving teachers batty. One third of all new teachers leave after three years; almost half bail out in five years. Every day, this should be the newspaper headline:”
― Chris Biffle, Whole Brain Teaching: 122 Amazing Games!: Challenging Kids, Classroom Management, Writing, Reading, Math, Common Core/State Tests

“A predictable opponent is already half defeated.”
― Chris Biffle, Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids

“our Whole Brain Teaching rule:   The more we talk, the more students we lose.”
― Chris Biffle, Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids

“We found our students were completely engaged in class when they were emotionally involved in lessons that required seeing, saying, hearing and physically moving.”
― Chris Biffle, Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids

“(On a side note: we believe there will be no substantial educational reform until administrators, specifically principals, roll up their sleeves, step into rebellious classes and show teachers how to instruct unruly students. We need educational leaders… not financial bean counters.”
― Chris Biffle, Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids