Quotes

Quotes I Like toc ==

**Learning & Children**
Jeffrey Rosen, professor of law at the George Washington University: In the age of Google, the worst thing you've done is the first thing that people know about you.

Read more: [|http://www.theage.com.au/technology/the-internet-never-forgets-20130322-2gle7.html#ixzz2OsWEXnU0]

Chris Lehmann on digital tools: That we take most complex creative tools we've ever had and turn them into Scantron machines is a failure of our imagination. SLJ Summit Keynote October 27, 2012

If you assign a project and get back 30 of the same thing, you didn't assign a //project,// you assigned a recipe. Chris Lehmann October 2012

Be skeptical of those people who are not humbled by the task of teaching. Chris Lehmann SLJ Summit Keynote October 27, 2012

on changing landscape of online tools & applications: Date the tools. Marry the abilities. --Adam Bellow I would add Be a learner.

You are the variable that you can control. You can change the world. You are a teacher. --Adam Bellow #140edu conference July 31, 2012

It's not how good you are. It's how good you want to be. ~Paul Arden

Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do. -Maurice Sendak

“And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming wild things.” ― [|Maurice Sendak]

"Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds." ~Albert Einstein

Dr. Seuss on the importance of "plausible nonsense" in childrens' literature:
 * Children analyze fantasy. They know you’re kidding them. There’s got to be logic in the way you kid them. Their fun is pretending . . . making believe they believe it.**
 * They want fun. They want play. They want nonsense.” He added, “If you write with these needs in mind, you’ll have a chance of having children accept you.**

Seuss, Lecture Notes for the University of Utah Workshop, July 1947, Box 19, Folder 7, cited in Morgan and Morgan, Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel, 124. Pease, Donald E. (2010-01-28). Theodor SEUSS Geisel (Kindle Locations 1011-1013). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

== Jefferson in a letter to Isaac McPherson, on information needing to be free: And no matter how many people share it, the idea is not diminished. When I hear your idea, I gain knowledge without diminishing anything of yours. In the same way, if you use your candle to light mine, I get light without darkening you. Like fire, ideas can encompass the globe without lessening their density.

Be humble enough 2 understand ur genius; Be smart enough 2 find a mentor, Be generous enough 2 pass the torch 2 another. Angela Maiers quoting Phil (?) @ #tedxsjc on Mar 26, 2011

“Being realistic is the most common path to mediocrity.” ― [|Will Smith]


 * "To teach is to learn twice." Joseph Joubert ||

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A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. --Albert Einstein

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman. Virginia Woolf It's important to understand that students are volunteers, whether we want them to be or not. Their attendance can be commanded, but their attention must be earned. Their compliance can be insisted upon, but their commitment is under their own control. --Phil Schlecty

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." -Gandhi

Wisdom is not a shield against mistakes. It is the wand that turns mistakes into evolution. --anonymous?

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn. --Alvin Toffler

The best thing teachers can do is help our students to out-grow us" Chris Lehmann Educon 2010

"Can't solve problems by doing things TO students, we must do things WITH students." Chris Lehman

The attitude of servitude is about love--we should add value to students, not judge them. Marilyn Perez Educon 2010

"When you're finished changing, you're finished." -Ben Franklin

It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge. -Enrico Fermi



"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." ―Andy Warhol

“If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original.” ― Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

“The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn't need to be reformed -- it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions.” ― Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

“Greatness and nearsightedness are incompatible. Meaningful achievement depends on lifting one's sights and pushing toward the horizon.” ― Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

“The monkeys solved the puzzle simply because they found it gratifying to solve puzzles. They enjoyed it. The joy of the task was its own reward.” ― Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”― Mahatma Gandhi

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” ― Nelson Mandela

“When you know better you do better.” ― Maya Angelou

“Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.” ― Mark Twain

“I am not a teacher, but an awakener.” ― Robert Frost

“[Kids] don't remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.” ― Jim Henson, It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider

“Try not to have a good time...this is supposed to be educational.” ― Charles M. Schulz

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” ― W.B. Yeats

Reading, Literacy & Libraries
The bottom line is that kids can no longer learn everything they need to learn, We have to teach them how to find information, categorize it, sift through and find what’s important, and share it. --Lauren Kniola, Elementary Librarian in Indianapolis

//If America can increase funding for libraries and librarians, I can only think that America has found one important way to rebuild itself.// //-Stephen Krashen//

//**On Poetry:**// When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgement. President John F. Kennedy October 26, 1963 from an address at Amherst upon the dedication of the Robert Frost Museum

******* From TLA speaker session April 2012: Stephen Chboskey--When I write, I try to write the story that only I can write. An author's voice is like a bell. Every bell makes a noise when it's struck. Each bell rings a unique tone, though, that only THAT bell can ring. Chboskey: We (writers) are all fringe people. We have to be on the edge looking in--we need that space to create. It enables us--forces us--to create. //note: my girl is fringe//



“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies," said Jojen. "The man who never reads lives only one.” ― George R.R. Martin

** // ‘Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.’ // **
 * // Emilie Buchwald // **

“Most people don’t realize how important librarians are. I ran across a book recently which suggested that the peace and prosperity of a culture was solely related to how many librarians it contained. Possibly a slight overstatement. But a culture that doesn’t value its librarians doesn’t value ideas and without ideas, well, where are we?” Neil Gaiman (via [|itisnotthejediway])

“Rule number one: Don't fuck with librarians.” ― [|Neil Gaiman]

“books for Children have a greater potential for good, or evil, than any other form of literature on earth,” --Dr. Seuss

everything. They're like plotting the revolution, man. I wouldn't mess with them." --Michael Moore*
 * "I really didn't realize the librarians were, you know, such a dangerous group. ... You think they're just sitting at the desk, all quiet and

“I have long contended that a room full of books is simply a closet but that an empty room with a librarian in it is a library.” - //R. David Lankes,// The Atlas of New Librarianship //(via colinthelibrarian)//


 * There are TONS of great quotes/articles about the importance of libraries on this blog: [|Walk You Home]. LOVE it!**

"In the nonstop tsunami of global information, librarians provide us with floaties and teach us to swim." — **Linton Weeks,**

If you do not have the time to read, you will not have time to lead. --Phil Schlecty

"What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it thinks about education." Harold Howe, Former U.S. Commissioner of Education

**On his students' limited experiential base when they come to his class at first:** It's hard to be able to imagine what could be if you don't know anything about what is. And if it's hard to imagine, where does your creativity spark from? And if you don't have a lot of imagination & creativity, where do you build passion from? Brian Crosby, TEDxDenverEd June 2010

A child's mind isn't a blank slate; it's more of a jungle. Each time a parent helps a toddler read, the child is walked through this jungle from one side to the other. Trip after trip, a seemingly impossible passage becomes a well-worn path. Children sent to kindergarten skipping merrily along this path to literacy fare far better than those sent to school with machetes. --Keith Mastrion "Reading Man" and 1998 National Teacher of the Year

From Los Angeles Times Letters to the Editor, July 10, 2010 **Check out our libraries**

Re "The public library blues," Opinion, July 6

Marilyn Johnson's message is especially relevant to California. In the 2009 America's Most Literate Cities report, six California cities placed in the bottom seven places in public library quality: Bakersfield (69th), Los Angeles (70th), Anaheim (71st), Sacramento (72nd), Stockton (74th) and Santa Ana (75th). California also has the worst-supported school libraries in the country, in terms of both holdings and staffing.

Study after study shows that library quality is related to higher scores on reading tests. It is therefore not surprising that California children do poorly on reading tests: Children get better in reading by reading a lot, and they read more when they have access to books.

Let's divert some of the huge sums spent on testing to funding libraries. Let's invest in promoting learning, not just measuring it.

//Stephen Krashen// //Los Angeles// //The writer is a professor emeritus at USC's Rossier School of Education.//

//“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”// — Benjamin Franklin

//“Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech.”// — Benjamin Franklin

//“Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us."// — Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

School Change

 * On filtering, over-controlling students with rules and parameters in schools by Doug Johnson on his blog Oct 16, 2013:**

I keep going back to Jonathan Kozol's observation in his book [|Savage Inequalities] (1991) in which he summarized: > ... children in one set of schools are educated to be governors; children in the other set of schools are trained for being governed. > The former are given the imaginative range to mobilize ideas for economic growth; the latter are provided with the discipline to do the narrow tasks the first group will prescribe.

By Susan Bearden on SchneiderB.com [|School Social Media Use-A Lesson in Digital Footprints] The reality is, even if students are not posting pictures and videos of themselves online, their friends are. So are parents who videotape school events and post these pictures and videos on youtube, flickr, etc. Schools can’t regulate that.

Read more: [|http://www.SchneiderB.com/school-social-media-use-a-lesson-in-digital-footprints/#ixzz1z0IDULjQ]

Under Creative Commons License: [|Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike]

From a comment on Larry Ferlazzo's post from Jan 12, 2011: [|Best Posts & Articles on Why Schools Should Not Be Run Like Businesses] Comment by Mike Jacobson on 15 Jan 2011 at 10:57 am [|2] To all of those experts out there: The business world is always trying to hold the world of education to their standards. As educators we believe that it is time to hold businesses to the same standards that we are responsible for upholding. So from this moment on, this is what we expect from the business world! We would like your business to be held accountable for the success of other businesses that purchase your product. When you are selling your product to other businesses we demand that you are accommodating the needs of your customers so that you can meet the demands that each of your customers have. We would like you to design your sales presentations to fit the needs of nonreaders, visual buyers, auditory buyers, kinesthetic buyers, deaf people, blind people, people in wheel chairs, people with all physical and mental handicaps, people that speak every other language other than English. We would like to base your pay and your compensation on how successful the people that use your product are! It is your job to prove your success with real sales data and numbers. We would like you to find a way to sell your product to all customers regardless of their income, their intelligence, and how successful they are in using your product. And we are mandating that you must do this for all of the above mentioned people and make it against the law if you do not fulfill these conditions. We would also like to hold you accountable for selling your product to people that have no use for your product, and that have told you right up front that they have no use for your product. And we mandate that you must make up your sales presentation to all customers that do not show up to your sales meeting regardless of the excuse such as family emergencies, personal health issues, or any other reason even including that they just didn’t feel like it! We demand that you must try to sell your product to other companies even if the boss of their company thinks that you are a complete joke and have no value to anyone! We also demand that you try to sell your product to customers that have unrealistic expectations as to how your product should work or actually does work. We demand that you must consider the input of your customers even if they tell you how to run your company and you know their ideas are bad ideas! We demand that you have no choice who you can sell your product to. We say that it will be OK if the public distorts the truth about how your company works and that it is OK to put these distortions all over the media in anyway that the public chooses and they may release these opinions for every one to see. There shall be no connection to reality when it comes to spreading opinions and it should make no difference how inaccurate these opinions are because that is the freedom of speech and it is exactly what our forefathers would have wanted! If someone with no knowledge of how your product actually works or is produced, you must let their opinion take priority over what you know as an expert on your product even if you have been building and selling your product for more than 20 years! We demand that you must try to sell your product to customers that are not even having their basic needs met. You must try to sell your product to starving people, people with no shelter, and to people living in horrific living conditions. We demand that you sell your product to people that are abusive, that are criminals, that could care less about anything but drugs and alcohol! Your performance rating on all of the above conditions will depend on how you well you meet all of the above stated conditions! And lastly your pay will be determined by your success! In addition, any additional costs that may be incurred meeting these conditions shall not be reimbursed, you must take it out of the company budget! This is the world as an educator sees it and maybe people would have compassion for educators if they could see the world through the eyes of a teacher! A concerned teacher in 2011!

Too often we make school projects/assignment "monumental" --assign as many problems as we can-- instead of making it "substantial"--something students will care about and connect to their own experiences. Gary Stager Educon 2011 January

How come the business community is so supportive of increasing regulation in the educational system and against increased regulation of banking, while pretending that schools would be better if only they were more like "us" (bankers)? Deborah Meier **[|Dec 16, 2010 Bridging Differences]**

When we manage by programs, we are more concerned about doing things right than doing the right thing. --Phil Schlecty

What is the **worst consequence** of your **best idea**? **[|Chris Lehmann]** TLTechForum 2010


 * This** is an amazingly powerful poem by **Bill Schechter,** accessed through **[|SN Beach's blog]** on 7-22-10.

[|Chris Lehmann], principal of Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy, at ISTE 2010. This quote is @ about 19 minutes: **I want SLA kids to be thoughtful, wise, passionate and kind. If we do that, if our kids are that, then we will get the society we need. I want my kids to be not only competitive in the global marketplace...[but] I want them to be wonderful citizens. I want them to be amazing husbands and wives. I want them to be great neighbors. I want them to be good people.** **And I think we have to create schools that talk about that as opposed to just the global marketplace.**

**If we shoot for citizen, we will get the workforce we need, but if we shoot for workforce, there's no guarantee we'll get the citizen we need.**

[|David Warlick] But we continue to think and talk in technology. I continue to think about that brand new Macbook Pro riding more gently from my shoulder at my first 2010 conference. But I need to shun the language of tech and think more in the language of digital information, networked information, in the language of information-abundance. It’s this language that we should be using in our conversations and our presentations.

We can only teach students to be safe in 'this world' if we are in it with them.--@jutecht

We have network policies that treat teachers and students as imbeciles or felons.-Gary Stager (at NECC's 2009 Tuesday Keynote Debate and Dialogue: //What Do You Think? Bricks and Mortar Schools are Detrimental to the Future of Education//)

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls & looks like work~Edison

Politics/Current Events
Diane Ravitch: On the event of teachers protesting the Republican attempt in WI to dismantle public employees' unions. From this blog post: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2011/02/dear_diane_i_am_trying.html It's the beginning of a nationwide response to the well-funded campaign to eliminate public-employee unions (the private ones have already been destroyed, along with our manufacturing industries). It's part of a general orchestrated drive to the bottom, basing itself on their hope that if they can appeal to our worst instincts they can divide us: the desperation of those a step above, still hanging on to their jobs.

t's amazing, given that the legislators themselves (Republicans included) haven't turned down their healthcare packages or cut their wages or the pensions that come with their jobs. And the real criminals—those who stole our pensions through fraudulent investments in junk stocks and bonds—are hardly feeling enough to pay their fair share of taxes. They have less and less of a stake in the American economy since money travels easily from shore to shore.


 * A politician thinks of the next election - a statesman, of the next generation. -James Freeman Clarke**

**Life / Personal**
“Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That's how the light gets in.” --Leonard Cohen

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities. Huxley

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could do.

Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can.

Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely,

and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” ― [|Eleanor Roosevelt]

My alarm clock is clearly jealous of my amazing relationship with my bed. Tweeteed by Lahtinen April 20, 2012

Cherish your own oddness! Bruce Coville #WEMTA12

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” Marcel Proust (via [|clavicola]) (via [|teachingliteracy])

about A Parker (may0r): She looks like her name should be Billie Jean Clinton. Since we like all three of those people, I think that's a good thing!
 * Chuck:**

About broccoli with long stalks: I hate this stuff. I like the tops, they're delicious, but the long parts? It just like eating a plate of Frankenstein meat!



You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building their nests in your hair.
 * Chinese proverb:**

When you are going through hell, keep going.
 * Winston Churchill:**

Respect those you wish to silence.
 * [|Michael Fullan]:**

Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. Oscar Wilde

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked. “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” “How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice. “You must be,” said the Cat, “otherwise you wouldn’t have come here.” Alice's Adventures in Wonderland--Lewis Carroll

from an online chat with The Girl, September 2009, beginning of sophomore yr in college: TMC: yeah i think classes are going to be ok (: we started actual content today in short stories and what the prof lacks in entertainment the classmate make up for  its primarly a discusion class  and frankly  i still kinda find it a novelty to have intellectual conversations with people my own age lol  we haven't gotten anything back yet. I've only turned in one thing. It was a bio thingy in art appreciation (: Jamie: I love that. It's an exciting time, isn't it? TMC: yeah it is (: Jamie:  You're just beginning to see how engaging a place the world really is.  very cool, my girl.  TMC  people my age can carry on intelligent conversation  its great!  haha its true (:

I feel normal now. Kind of like an adult. I have a job I hate, that I don't really think I'm getting paid enough for, and I suspect that they're taking advantage of me. I'm like a normal adult...and it's vaguely dissatisfying. -Taylor, age 18, after a long day at her first real job 

Life is a tangle of Twisting paths. Some short. Some long. There are dead ends. And there are choices. And wrong turns. And detours, And yield signs, And instruction booklets, And star maps, And happiness, And loneliness. And friends. And sisters. And love. And poetry. Life is a maze. You are a maze. Amazed. And amazing. --from //A.Maze Me// by Naomi Shihab Nye

Intelligent Design is not just bad science, or anti-science. It is deeply, profoundly non-science.
 * Professor Michael Ruse from Talahasse @ ALA Convention, 2006**

**From SHSU Children's Book Conference 2002**
//on the pleasure of story// Our culture's foundation was one of religious fanatics and criminals...we do bad things, but we feel really guilty about them!
 * Bruce Coville:**

on //what I had that kids don't have now// Time to myself, for my imagination to fill in the stories of life.

Sometimes I write a fairy tale because it's the best way to tell the truth.

We writers write by the light of every book we ever read.
 * Richard Peck**

All fiction is about change...unless you write short stories for //The New Yorker.//

People don't change when they're winning.

A story for young people is //always// about looking towards //their// future...and finding it.

Parents never know what they're doing. My mother read to me before I could read for myself. She had no plan to create a writer--she simply didn't want to send an ignoramus to school!

I never won a fight with my parents...so I didn't have to look any further for a hero.

You'd better be able to read, because there are times in life when a book is there for you...and no one else is. You'd better be able to write, because there are times in life when writing will take you to a better place--a place you'll need to go.