“Leadership comes in a lot of different formats, but anyone interested in influencing change can orchestrate experiences to disrupt unproductive beliefs.”

“Teachers who are continually reflecting on their practice and always seeking to improve are the best teachers. They're always evolving, adjusting, reflecting, and paying attention to their kids.”

“Don’t be afraid of your own teacher voice and exercising that. Advocacy is one of the best things you can do.”

“When you look at where you started and where you ended up with a student, with a teacher, with a school, you realize that there's always progress.”

“ Sometimes it gets really hard before it gets better. It just always reminds me to just remember the long game.”

“Change really begins when we look at the unintended consequences of our practice.”

“As a learner, you have to have humility. Otherwise you won't grow.”

“If you think you know it all, you're never going to be open to getting new information.”

“People don't change just because someone tells them they need to. We change when we experience something that challenges what we used to think and then we have time to reflect on it.”

“I needed to be in a place where I could be my full self, demonstrating all of the identities that make me who I am.”

“The first step is recognizing your own identity and your own values and the aspects of you that you want to see reflected in the place that you're going to pour your love and heart into.”

“Change and improvement happen over time.”

“Go where you’re going to grow.”

“If I'm in an environment where I can't be my authentic self, and I know what that is and I know what I value, then it might be time for me to go somewhere where I can flourish.”

“A system is not a person. If you build something on a person, then when that person leaves or gets burned out, your system falls apart.”

“When you are a school administrator, you can't be confused as to what your identity is. People expect you to step in with voice, with passion, with vision, and direct the path.”

“When we talk about knowledge building, when we talk about knowledge acquisition, it's actually predicated on critical thinking. That critical thinking is not just a higher-level task that we have kids do. It's deep thinking.”

“[Critical thinking] is actually cognitive support. It's a mental act, a process in which you acquire knowledge and understanding.”

“When I see questioning that really probes, that's how I know I'm in a classroom where a teacher honors students' thinking. It is an honor to hear what children have to think.”

“That's how you know you're in a classroom with critical thinking: We're not rushing the conversation. We're enjoying it.”

“There's an art and a science to teaching, and I think that they're two different things.”

“The importance of modeling can’t be overstated.”

“If you're engaged emotionally, that's going to help you be engaged cognitively.”

“We start small with just talking to them, helping them figure out how to have a conversation about math. They can talk about everything else, but we have to teach them how to talk about math. We have to give them the words, give them the tools.”

“There's only so many ways you can teach the same thing. When I was teaching addition, there's only so many ways I could do it. But if that's their goal and that's what we're working on, I’ve got to try to come up with a hundred different ways to teach addition until they have mastered addition. And so you get very creative.”

“When [I] see the light bulb come on in a kid, I'm like, ‘Ah, this is why I teach.'”

“It's impactful to spend that little extra time saying, ‘Let me build some relationships and show these babies how to be students in my classroom.'”

“Predictable routines really help students feel safe, because they know what's going to happen.”

“When things are consistent and repeated, [students] know what to expect and it's not as big of a cognitive lift for them to do it. Each time eventually gets easier and you can get into the deeper learning.”

“That human aspect, that dependability, that consistency is a big, big barrier for students when they don't feel like it's there. When we can create that by creating these routines, learning happens deeper and faster.”

“Explaining requires you to juggle information in your working memory and then turn it into language.”

“Understand that a teaching style is not just [something] you find once and then that's it, right? It's ever evolving; it's always in progress; and it's not ‘one size fits all.'”

“Great teaching is just like cooking, right? You never really stop learning, adjusting, and reflecting, because our students keep evolving and so we should also.”

“ My style came, really, with experience, with time, and with observing other teachers.”

“It's important to make sure that it feels like a partnership with your students, that we are equal partners in learning.”

“There will be times that you have challenges, and there'll be times that you call them mistakes. I call them ‘challenges’ because if they don't occur, we don't learn how to pivot.”

“Look at your strengths, your personality, and your values, and then build your classroom approach based on that.”

“When I did show up as my authentic self, it made such an impact in my classroom.”

“Students thrive when teachers combine firm boundaries, high expectations, and genuine care.”

“It's teeny tiny little things. When you combine those together, you are tapping into that brain research that's giving our brain a different assignment and looking for the positive. And we will find it.”

“The research is really clear that the absolute, most direct correlation to student achievement that we have control over is the teacher in the classroom.”

“This is the reminder that, yes, of course we have to talk about instruction, but the magic isn't in the strategy; it's in the person providing that strategy.”

“I always say it's an ‘and'—it's not an ‘or.' It's not instruction or self-care.”

“It's those small wins that we look over. If we're not looking for them, we can miss them, and we just keep thinking, ‘I'm not as good as that person.’”

“It's vulnerable but it's necessary to be able to honor yourself and say, ‘I need help. I need support.’”

“You can curse the darkness, or you can light a candle. One candle can light 15,000 without losing its flame.”

“Sometimes your day is just teaching someone a life skill…and hopefully that's going to get them to learning.”

“Whatever I'm feeling is not just impacting me, even though I want to think it is, or that I’m masking it. I know that if I'm not at my A game, it's impacting my students.”

“It is not just trying hard that makes you successful. You need to be set up in a situation that helps you like an ally, as opposed to fighting you like an enemy.”

“If you put temptations very close to you…it's much more psychologically potent than if you put it away where you cannot see it or you cannot touch it, or both.”

“The strategy for regulating yourself that is the most successful for people of any age tends to be situation modification. That is not relying on willpower, but deliberately placing things either farther or closer, depending on whether you want to do them more or do them less.”

“Aside from parents, there's nobody more important than teachers in the life of a kid. They are looking to you as a role model.”

“That science of self-control—we have to actually teach that to our students. That is not something they come out of the womb knowing how to do.”

“Culture is this living thing, and it can shift from classroom to classroom, and it shifts from year to year. And so, building that is just as much of an art as it is a science, but it's so critical.”

“I believe that all students can be successful in a classroom given the right support, but students have to believe that as well. So we have to be genuine and authentic when we show up in that way, because they know when you're not.”

“First come in with the attitude of I'm a learner, too. I want to learn about you, and you'll learn about me.’”

“You don't have to be an expert in every single language. You just need to know enough about that language to serve your students.”

“I look at the faces of the students that are there and that motivates me. All the other noise doesn't matter because I'm there to help them reach their dreams.”

“I am an educator of all students, it doesn't matter who they are.”

“As a teacher, you're always confronted with things that you may not be strong in. Like, it's part of the job. And that hits you. And I'll be transparent, it hits you in the ego.”

“You're always going to be presented with people that you don't feel properly equipped to serve. And that's okay. It's part of being a human. So what do we do? We go and find resources so that we can become better.”

“Education is the kind of job that I love, because I think I'll always feel, to some degree, like an amateur, like a learner in the work.”

“Create spaces where every kid could come in and say, ‘Whatever I offer here, if it's personal and earnest, it's gonna be well received and valuable.'”

“I was never seen as a student who was good at math. So I made it a point to be that math teacher that actually embraced a community of, “‘Hey, let's, you know, let's look at all the possibilities of how we can get to that answer.'”

“The posters are one thing, but the pedagogies are another.”

“What I'm always thinking about is how to make math more like the humanities, how to allow students to be right in personal ways and wrong in smart ways.”

“Kids like and learn from teachers who like and learn from them. ”

“As human beings, sometimes we can get binary with things like tech or analog. But in reality, it's a tool. If I use the proper tool for the right job, I can be much more precise and accurate and detailed and creative.”

“When we view students not as difficult, but as those who challenge us to be our best, we switch from frustration to growth.”

“There's research out there. I know some of us feel like we intuitively know that [smiling] is important, but the data shows how important that is.”

“What I discovered is that when I was funny, if I could make them laugh, if I could say something that was unexpected, they paid attention. They hung on every word.”

“When we teach kids from a place of love and lightheartedness, we can really draw in even the most volatile and vulnerable youngsters.”

“We can do both rigor and relationships. We can address standards and smiles. We can do content and care.”

“ When you have a joyous classroom, you have a learning classroom.”

“I’m at the age now where I really don’t have much patience for things that aren’t gonna make a difference.”

“We can busy ourselves doing a lot of other things, but when you learn to read, your life trajectory changes drastically.”

“Where do we want our young people to go? What opportunities, what paths do we want them to have access to? Reading is a gateway for life.”

“If you can’t grow people, what are you doing in a seat? If you’re an administrator and you can’t grow teachers’ practice, then you’re a manager, not an administrator.”

“Hope is wonderful, but that’s not a strategy. You have to be very specific about what you’re going to fix, what you’re going to address, and what you’re going to master.”

“There are no broken children; there’s broken systems.”

“Self-care has gotta be on the front of the agenda, not the back burner. Many educators, we just are so busy in the grind of teaching and learning, we forget.”

“ Being prepared in so many aspects of life outside of the classroom makes you better in the classroom.”

“I want future me to be grateful for past me.”

“There are a lot of lessons to be learned from ‘back in the day.’ It doesn’t mean we always had it right. We were learning along the way and we recognize that our students are not the same students that were sitting in front of us ‘back in the day.’”

“Seasoned teachers are often looked at as the ones with all the answers, and they may not truly have all the answers, but they’ve lived experiences that I think a lot of new teachers could learn from.”

“When you look at a lot of the seasoned teachers who’ve been in the profession for quite some time, there’s a calmness about them. And you work effectively when you’re in that calm space.”

“One of the things that I’ve learned over the years is you cannot make change by yourself.”

“We’re talking about the kind of professional development that people have time to invest in learning, and where teachers are treated as the professionals they are.”

“When you think about legacy, you’re thinking about what things you can put in place that are going to support the generations in the future. And that means you are investing in the people around you now that will be in the field to make those decisions.”

“All of us kind of feel like there’s work undone … it’s never ever finished. But I think you get to a point where you just feel that you have given your entire heart.”

“Be open to learning … that also means standing back and being a reflective learner.”

“Every kick in the butt is a boost up.”

“My teaching is not something I do. It’s who I am.”

“Asking for mentoring is not a sign of weakness. It’s saying, ‘I want to be better and I want to grow.’ And sometimes, if you don’t ask, they’re not going to do it.”

“I coach some people who are thinking about becoming principals. I’m like, ‘Hey, slow it down…wait for that perfect school for you. You’ll know it.’ You don’t just want the role to have the title.”

“Don’t forget where you came from. There were times I had to shovel snow. There were times I had to help sweep the lunchroom. There are times that I covered a classroom so my teacher can have a prep. That gives you so much credibility and it shows how much you care about others.”

“When you have a passion for people and you have a purpose for making a difference, and if you’re open to learning, anything is possible. And that’s what my life has demonstrated in education.”

“You’ve got to have a mentor or sponsor who tells you that you can. There’s no doubt in my mind, if I had not had mentors and people who believed in me, that I would not have attempted. I wouldn’t have applied. I wouldn’t have done it.”

“The best way to get the next job is to do a good job where you are.”

“All of us in education, we are responsible for lifting as we rise. So as you rise in a number of years, or you rise and are able to do different positions, you have to reach back and make sure that you’re pulling people behind you.”

“Public education is the profession that makes all other professions possible.”

“We can’t just be siloed. We can’t just go in our classrooms, close the door, and not be helpers one to another.”

“Sometimes people say, ‘Oh, teaching is not for me. I tried for one year and it didn’t work.’ Maybe you were in the wrong place. Maybe that’s not the grade level for you. Just try something different before quitting. Try something different.”

“You need a lot of love for your students. Doesn’t matter where you are. You need love for your students and understanding that tomorrow is going to get better.”

“When you transition, especially from one country to another country, you don’t have any family. Every day you are going to wake up and you need to solve everything by yourself. It’s tough, but you grow up as a person. You become more independent and you make more friends. You get deeper connections with everyone around you, because those are the people that you count on.”

“I’m here to teach this language. And it’s not just the language—it’s the culture that comes with the language.”

“There were moments that I was missing because I wasn’t making space for them to land.”

“This was like training my brain to become a good noticer and to take delight in my students’ quirks, and their genius, and their goofiness, as well as their beauty.”

“It takes a lot of courage to stand in the present. It is mindfulness. It is joy.”

“This is our profession. I think we reclaim it, and we reclaim it with a sense of joy. We reclaim it by saying, ‘This is hard work. And this is really beautiful work. I am exhausted, and I am exhilarated. Yes, I’m ready to go home, and you better believe I’m going to be here tomorrow, ready to give my whole heart and soul and mind again.’”

“I thought…I had to earn my seat at the table. I don’t want any kid to ever think they have to earn their spot. I want them to know they are in, exactly as they are. There is no need to perform. They are loved on their good days, their hard days, whether they make the “A” or not—they are in. And more than that, they are celebrated.”

“Physicists have found that particles at the subatomic level move when they’re seen, so that bearing witness to them changes the trajectory of the particle. And I just think, on my good days, that’s what I do, right? When I see, I can change a trajectory. I think that’s our superpower as teachers…we see the invisible.”

“When you build that currency in students, they will jump—literally, jump. They will do anything for you. It’s not a magic wand. No. It takes time. Seeing them, acknowledging them, and believing in them.”

“I hope that the way I love is so radical that it changes the way my students love themselves and love each other. … I hope with all my heart that is true. But even if it doesn’t, it changes something in me. I am better because of this profession and because of my students.”

“That’s how we build our joy, how we build our resiliency—when we do the work together.”

“Find a mentor. Someone you trust. Listen to that person, watch that person, ask that person questions. You know, you don’t have to figure this out on your own. People want to help you, and you have to take that help. It’s not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign that you want to be better.”

“I want them to be proud of where they came from, always, because that’s part of their story. It’s always going to be an important part of their story.”

“I had a mentor who said, ‘Sometimes you have to slow down teaching to speed up learning.’ Slowing down, allowing those spontaneous moments to happen, allowing it to interrupt your plan, and then going there and diving into that, because you got the engagement. You have these natural phenomena. You have this natural curiosity. And that’s true learning. And that’s what’s memorable.”

“I have no magic answers. I have some experiences and I have a little bit of wisdom from three decades of time spent in the education field, but I absolutely do not have it all figured out.”

“The reality is that the journey toward wisdom in any career, especially in education, has to be slow and steady.”

“We have to help guide our younger cohorts with our wisdom, but we also have to take pointers from them. They know lots of things that I do not know, things that I never learned how to do. They also were students more recently than I was, little students … they remember what it feels like when this or that happens to you.”

“Even though they’re coming to me at five and six years old, they are coming with a lot of rich knowledge that I don’t have. And then if I remain open and work with them, I’ve got a lot to learn.”

“The people that have lived there for 10,000 years; they know how to live in the Arctic. There’s architectural or archaeological evidence of 10,000 years of continued occupation of that land. So they have a lot to teach us. They’re experts there.”

“I wish I could go back and tell myself, ‘Don’t be so concerned with what you’re teaching but how you’re teaching it.’ Really get into the community.”

“We’ve just got to be quiet enough, long enough to hear what our students are saying—or not saying.”

“When you do make a mistake, ‘cause you’re going to make cultural mistakes, we have to kind of own up to it and then ask for advice on how to fix it or how to not make that mistake again.”

“Enjoy it. Enjoy the kids. Take time to enjoy your job. I know teaching now is a very high-pressure situation. There is so much pressure on us and so much to do, but we can’t forget to take that time and enjoy it because if you enjoy it, your kids will enjoy it.”

“Teachers are taking care of the world. So now teachers take care of you.”

“If you’re just talking about somebody who has more teaching experience, then yes, I consider myself seasoned. But [in my] heart, I feel like because I’m a lifelong learner, I’m still learning new things every single year. I’m never relying on my old tricks. I’m always adding new tools to my tool belt.”

“The experiences I had growing up definitely affect the way that I teach and [they’re] actually a huge reason why I really advocate for girls and females in STEM, because I was almost prevented from finding my path just because of my gender.”

“I remember one class that I had [with only] one female student, and she was just looking around and I could see in her eyes that she just felt like this is not a place for her. She dropped out of that class and after that I was like, no, this is unacceptable.”

“This next school year, she told me I’m up at 60 percent girls in my intro to coding classe,. and that’s huge! I want to make sure that girls have access and they feel wanted and included and they can see themselves in these fields.”

“Sometimes [parents say], ‘Oh, no, this is not for girls. You shouldn’t learn engineering.’ And I invite them in, I say, ‘please come to my class, please come to my club.’ And when they come, they’re always so impressed.”

“We just need more women. More of their voices. They need more seats at the table because if we all hear [only] male voices, then 50 percent of the population isn’t going to have their problem solved as easily or as efficiently.”

“I know a lot of teachers [say], ‘Oh no, I don’t have time for that. I’ve got to cover the standards and I have to have all this done by the end of the year. So I don’t have time to spend two weeks doing this in my classroom.’ But let me tell you, it is so worth it because once you have that relationship and connection with your students when you do dive into the content, it is smooth sailing because they trust you now.”

“In my next lifetime, I would still teach, I would go back to teaching. That’s how much I love it.’”

“It has to be an exchange. We can’t be just receiving, asking kids to be [themselves] and yet we ourselves are not.”

“[Seasoned educators] are experienced and experience means good and bad. We want to learn from both. I certainly didn’t want a mentor who never made a mistake, ‘cause I’m not gaining anything.”

“It’s about separating the behavior from the person. And another thing, separate what they don’t know at the time from what they’re capable of.”

“He said to me, ‘You want to be a teacher, don’t you?’…I said, ‘Well, yeah, I’d love to, but I didn’t get enough qualifications when I left school. So I don’t think I’d ever really be qualified.’ And he said the magic words, ‘What are you waiting for?’”

“What I would say to young teachers is this: ‘Don’t teach science. Don’t teach maths. Don’t teach French. Don’t teach geography. Teach children.’”

“You’ve got to love teaching; you’ve got to love the kids; and you’ve really got to want to do it. Almost, dare I say, in your blood.”

“At the end of my 10 or 12 years of touring around and nattering on about bullying and trying to sort of quantify it in some way so that we could teach specifics…there is now a law in Britain that says every school must have an anti-bullying policy.”

“I like teaching kids things they didn’t know before and now they’re excited about. I love the idea that they will then move on into realms of industry and economics success that I would never dream of.”

“I’m in the education business. I’m not in the vengeance business. And if a boy doesn’t know how to use a knife and fork, I’ll teach him. If an infant doesn’t know how to tie shoelaces, I’ll teach him. If a child doesn’t know how to behave in society, I’ll teach him. Pleasantly, and productively, and creatively, and positively, I will teach him if that’s what he needs to learn.”

“Sometimes your bad days are going to outweigh your good days, but when you … remain focused and see what your goal is, and you look at those students and say, ‘This is my main focus,’ that can be the greatest motivator.”

“A lot of times they are dependent upon you to teach them in every aspect of their life. When you understand the community, you can serve.”

“Me and my military buddies definitely had respect for each other. And we operated as a team, regardless of our differences, because sometimes you may not agree with every teacher on your team, which many times I did not. But you have to keep your focus toward our mission, [which] is to move a certain child or do this for the student body.”

“They know when you care. And they will have a whole different level of respect for you when they know you care. And you set the bar high for them. That shows that you care, because you know that they can do it and you believe in them.” —Joyce Abbott

“I think it’s so important in the schools that they embrace the younger teachers, because you only get better through learning and through support.”

“When you’re passionate about a profession and committed to the goal of the whole school, you’re going to do what you can to help these new teachers because they have to learn. So many leave because they’re encountering so many problems and they don’t feel that they’re supported effectively.”