Famous Teachers Quotes

“I see the most effective teacher being the one who facilitates learning in the same way a gardener facilitates growth, as opposed to the one who is just giving instruction.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr., Principles of a Poinciana School

“The best learning is achieved through experience, not by instruction. Though instruction is sometimes necessary and helpful, it is often best to foster conditions and allow conditions whereby students learn through experience.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr., Principles of a Poinciana School

“Henry David Thoreau, Susan B. Anthony, W. E. B. DuBois, and Lyndon B. Johnson are just a few of the famous Americans who taught. They resisted the fantasy of educators as saints or saviors, and understood teaching as a job in which the potential for children’s intellectual transcendence and social mobility, though always present, is limited by real-world concerns such as poor training, low pay, inadequate supplies, inept administration, and impoverished students and families. These teachers’ stories, and those of less well-known teachers, propel this history forward and help us understand why American teaching has evolved into such a peculiar profession, one attacked and admired in equal proportion.”
― Dana Goldstein, The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession

“Education must be cultivated, not force fed.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr., Principles of a Poinciana School