Andy Hargreaves Quotes

Schools often get the teachers they deserve!

Teaching is an emotional practice: it activates, colors & expresses people's feelings.

On data: We are the drivers, not the driven.

One or two bad teachers is a problem with the teachers. A school with many bad teachers is a problem of leadership.

The economists who have put the spotlight on teacher quality are the ones who most misunderstand it.

Teaching is not the oldest profession. But it is certainly among the loneliest.

On being: Arrogance is not the prerogative of the gifted.

On school culture: It's hard to eat something you've had a relationship with.

A successful school has to engage all the people, all the powers, and all the capacities within it.

Schools that cannot tolerate interesting & enthusiastic eccentrics who work better alone than together are devoid of flexibility & spirit

The Common Curriculum can easily become the karaoke curriculum, where everyone just follows the bouncing ball of the script.

Blame and betrayal are the emotional enemies of improvement.

Evaluation schemes that implicate 100% of the staff to detect a small % of incompetents are a waste of time.

We must never return to the Julie Andrews curriculum where we teach "a few of my favorite things"!

A first class system of early childhood education is the hallmark of a caring and civilized society.

Service to others should be one of the most basic purposes of family life and schooling.

When the purge of teacher individualism is unrestrained, eccentricity, initiative and individuality become the casualties.

Trust processes as well as people.

Physically, teachers are often alone in their own classrooms with no other adults for company. Psychologically, they never are.

Implementation of technological change must involve critics as well as advocates.

If we're all on the same page, no one's reading the whole book.

Excellence is the asymptotic state that never quite reaches perfection.

You cannot switch teachers on and off as if they were PowerPoint presentations.

We should test prudently; not profligately.

On assessment: measure what you value instead of valuing only what you can measure.

Alberta funds almost all its schools and districts to design and evaluate their own innovations. Teachers are the drivers of change, not the driven.

Deadwood did not kill itself!

It's time for the US to widen its circle of learning, not to circle its wagons against hostile ideas in education reform.

Change is easy to propose, hard to implement, and especially hard to sustain.

As we seek to eliminate individualism in teaching, we should not eradicate individuality with it.

Adolescence is about digging out the iron inside irony.

Don't raise the bar and narrow the gap, but narrow the gap to raise the bar.

The quality & morale of teachers is absolutely central to the well being of students and their learning.

Too many professional development initiatives are done to teachers - not for, with or by them.

Standardized personalization=universal right to meaningful learning. Personalized standardization=flexible access to mandated learning.

Teachers are always emotional: by default if they bore us, and by design when they excite us.

We need standards with flexibility, not standardization with force if we are to get the best from our teachers.

Leadership is the cigarette that's smoked once the change has been consummated.

We will not achieve high performance in education if we replace teachers with machines or turn teachers into machines.

All teachers are already leaders. It's in the nature of teaching.

Time is the enemy of freedom.

Economic necessity should be the mother of educational invention

Mentors turn into tormentors if they believe they are always right.

Strong professional communities risk and sometimes relish conflict.

The bags that teachers carry home symbolize their guilt about the endless care they have to give.

Lateral trust among colleagues is as important as vertical trust within the hierarchy.

We learn more from people who are different from us than ones who are the same.

Teaching is a never-ending story. The work is never over; the job is never done.

On teacher education: induction into current mandates must not turn into seduction away from best practice.

Teachers create and transform energy. They are the dynamos of educational change.

Sustainable leadership does no harm to and actively improves the surrounding environment.

Culture is the possibility and impossibility that bacon and fruit can appear on the same plate.

The teacher has more power than the Minister.

Teachers who don't pull their weight drag down the profession and their colleagues with it.

The most important emotion in classrooms is surprise.

Walking makes us take problems in our stride.

Students become good learners when they are in the classes of teachers who are good learners.

High performance leaders capitalize on crises to galvanize the motivation and actions of people in the organization.

Students and their families carry more responsibility for student success in the East.

There is no morality without temptation; otherwise it is just lack of opportunity.

It is those who have the distinction of privilege who set the standards of disgust with failure.

Education leaders must have the will at times to release leadership to the teachers the parents and the students.

There is no algorithm for creativity.

Teaching is a passionate profession.

If one foot is in a bucket of steam, and the other is in a bucket of ice, you are not, on average, comfortable.

Arrogance is the conjoined twin of ignorance.

You cannot understand the teacher or their teaching without understanding the person the teacher is.

Courageous leadership is not fearless leadership. What makes you a leader is how you deal with your fears.

Every learner has special needs.

We must use collegiality not to level people down but to bring together their strength and creativity.

When creativity is the goal, schools must have their own platforms to network and innovate.

Students are often the last to know about change that is occurring in their own school system.

What we want for our students we should want for our teachers: learning, challenge, support, and respect.

It is not the time to put school districts up for auction. Now is the time to galvanize them into action.

On learning: if you really want alignment, go to a chiropractor.

Your most memorable students are in your first classes and your last classes: make your last years the finest of your career.

High performance leaders create an inspiring future by connecting with a classic and honorable past.

It's important to be innovative when times are prosperous. It's essential to be innovative when they are not.

High performance leaders know they have to breathe out when they are coming up for air.

The rules of the world are changing. It is time for the rules of teaching and teachers' work to change with them.

Schools cannot shut their gates and leave the outside world on the doorstep.

In collaborative cultures, failure and uncertainty are not protected but shared and discussed to gain support.

In healthy individuals, emotions don't distort rationality, they enhance it!

Educational reforms are like ripe fruit. They rarely travel well.

Too often, shared visions really mean, "I have a vision; you share it!"

Human growth is not like rhubarb. It can be nurtured and encouraged but it cannot be forced.

Pompous asses knows how to put the moan in sanctimonious.

A brainscan cannot interpret itself and neither can a data dashboard in education.

Without optimism & self-belief among teachers, classrooms become wastelands of boredom & routine and schools deserts of lost opportunity.

Improvement is about doing something better; innovation is about doing something new.

On technology: The teacher is mightier than the mouse.

Capacity building originally meant helping people to help themselves. Now it means required training to deliver imposed policies.

Although everyone wants to change the teacher, it's time for the agents of educational reform to change themselves.

Professional trust is a process, not a state.

On government & unions: the only thing worse than blind trust is blind mistrust.

Every solution has a problem.

High performing organizations have cultures of creativity and risk. They encourage workers to innovate and play.

Leadership is often the afterthought of educational change.

Teachers still command great respect in the families and societies of many Asian cultures.