Esmé Raji Codell > Quotes

“The difference between a beginning teacher and an experienced one is that the beginning teacher asks, "How am I doing?" and the experienced teacher asks, How are the children doing?”
― Esme Raji Codell

“It's not our job to be liked(teachers)", I reminded her. "Its our job to help them be smart(students)". Secretly, I thought, who gives a rat's ass if they like us? Sometimes I can hardly stand them!”
― Esme Raji Codell

“...'Loving children is what teachers do for extra credit. It's not the main assignment.'
'Seems to me that the extra credit is more important than the main assignment,' observed Cordelia.”
― Esme Raji Codell

“So much of teaching is sharing. Learning results in sharing, sharing results in change, change is learning. The only other job with so much sharing is parenting. That's probably why the two are so often confused.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

“I tend not to share things unnecessarily with those I despise.”
― Esme Raji Codell

“I suppose an active imagination can be a form of madness. Or it can be the thing that keeps you from going mad.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year, Expanded Edition

“Sometimes a little song is sweet to hear, even if the orchestra is more accomplished”
― Esmé Raji Codell, Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

“Today so many creative and devoted teachers not only have to struggle against unimaginative administrations, fearful parents, and wearied colleagues, they have also to battle entire legislative bodies that have never taught a child yet dare to equate educational success or failure with the ability of fourth graders to choose one out of four given answers to mind-numbing questions that have nothing to do with the joy of literature or the elegance of math.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year, Expanded Edition

“And when you go to God's house, it ain't got to be no fashion show. You just come as you are.”
― Esmé Raji Codell

“Sometimes I think, Why invent projects? What is the point? How will I ever accomplish what I set out to do, what I imagine? Then I think of the past, even before I was born, the great small feats people accomplished.
[...]
Those people had to work to accomplish those things, they thought of details, they followed through. Even if I come off as naive and zealous, even if I get on everyone's nerves, I have to follow these examples. Even if I fail, I have to try and try and try. It may be exhausting, but that is beside the point. The goal is not necessarily to succeed but to keep trying, to be the kind of person who has ideas and sees them through.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

“Why do these dumb fucks keep guns around the house? They make the world as ruinous as they imagine it is.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

“The goal is not necessarily to succeed but to keep trying, to be the kind of person who has ideas and see them through. We’ll”
― Esmé Raji Codell, Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year, Expanded Edition

“We do not argue about what happened in the past but discuss what we desire for the future.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year, Expanded Edition

“So much of teaching is sharing. Learning results in sharing, sharing results in change, change is learning.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year, Expanded Edition

“Oh, thank you, Darrell Sikes, for being wild and nasty and rude and getting me out of The Program and making me Normal Dumb, not Special Dumb. I owe you one, Darrell Sikes.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, Sahara Special

“Nobody really knows which is happening when the teacher closes the door. At worst, mediocrity. At best, miracles.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year, Expanded Edition

“That file full of letters meant I met with a Special Needs teacher in the hallway to get something called Individualized Attention, and let me tell you, working in the hallway with a teacher is like being the street person of a school. People pass you by, and they act like they don't see you, but three steps away they've got a whole story in their heads about why you're out there instead of in the nice cozy classroom where you belong, Stupid? Unlucky? Unloved?”
― Esmé Raji Codell, Sahara Special

“Something's going on in Cordell's room, but I'm not sure I want to know what it is.”
― Esme Raji Codell

“You're saying she doesn't do her work? So take care of your business! Fail her like a normal kid. The failure will be between me and my daughter, then. You won't like it if her failure is between me and you.”
― Esme Raji Codell, Sahara Special

“...they looked so much the same; perhaps their faces were a little less doughy, more defined. Are they stunted? Am I seeing them the way I will always see them? Am I the keeper of the ghosts of their childhood selves?”
― Esmé Raji Codell, Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

“For the rest of the day I was glad I listened instead of yelled, but I still burned with shame at the thought of what I almost said and at all the occasions I have spoken harshly.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year, Expanded Edition

“Thirty-one children. Thirty-one chances. Thirty-one futures, our futures. It's an almost psychotic feeling, believing that part of their lives belongs to me.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

“Mr. Turner gets mad when I say, “I don’t work for you, I work for the children.” But it’s true. Isn’t it? I’ll find out when I get fired, I guess.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year, Expanded Edition