Teachers-- Inspirational sayings in your classroom, what's on your walls? (med school, employment)

[jps-teacher]

Originally Posted by CA4Now

These quotes are all a direct lift from the e-mail that circulated (years ago, BTW) from Bill Gates' speech to college graduates. I don't know what a teacher of fourth graders could be thinking.

No, Bill Gates never gave that speech. While he has given many speeches to many college graduates, these are not his words (courtesy of Snopes.com):

This list is the work of Charles J. Sykes, author of the 1996 book [i]Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write, Or Add.[i] (The list has appeared in newspapers, although not necessarily in this book. It does, however, form the meat of his 2007 book 50 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School: Real-World Antidotes to Feel-Good Education.) Many versions omit the last three rules:

Rule No. 12: Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time you're out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That's what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for "expressing yourself" with purple hair and/or pierced body parts.
Rule No. 13: You are not immortal. (See Rule rule #12) If you are under the impression that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously haven't seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.
Rule No. 14: Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school's a bother, and life is depressing. But someday you'll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid. Maybe you should start now. You're welcome.

[jps-teacher]

I wish to note that I do not endorse Mr. Syke's rules, at least not remotely in their entirety. I just happened to know that Mr. Gates never said it, just as Mr. Ellison never spoke at the Yale graduation and never told the graduating seniors that they were failures.

I happen to still think purple hair can be really cool, and the day I look back on childhood (or my teen years) as "good old days" will probably be a day that I wish I were dead. I freely grant that I may well end up preferring 5-20 over 90-105 or something, purely on a daily pain basis, but it will not be out of some fantasy that those years were particularly good.

Better than dying, it probably was. Wonderful it most assuredly wasn't.

[cpg35223]

How about this one?

"March in lockstep. Cross things off your To-Do list. Do not question authority. Do this for twelve years, and you'll be educated!"

[newflowers]

In my classroom, I have two handmade "inspirational" posters - Never speak defeat (a quote from a pastor at a church I attended back when I attended church), and Yes, you can! (a quote from me when my students whine about how they can't finish their work). All other "things" on the wall are content area related (ELA) and those I put up before school begins and leave them there because I'd rather focus on preparing to teach and teaching that decorating the room.

[DoveDiva]

Off the top of my head, the two posters in my class that my students pay the most attention to are the following:

1. "If at first you don't succeed, you aren't alone." It then tells how 4 past presidents failed at something, fixed their mistakes, and then went on to become president.

2. "If you didn't get the grade you wanted, chances are I didn't get the work I wanted."

[IRISHCHIC]

That is the most horrible thing i have ever heard. That teacher is sad if that is whats shes got to say to her kids. I have a educational backround in education and teachers like that don't deserve to be teaching anymore. Obviously she hates her life and should find a new line of work. Get someone in there that really wants to educate what will be our future america

[stepka]

My favorite quotes for classrooms usually come from Mark Twain:

Mark Twain: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream."

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them. Mark Twain

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter--’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning. Mark Twain

I plan to use these in my future middle school English classroom. As for that first quote--we used it in our travel blog when we went on a round-the-world trip last year--with children. Now I feel like no matter what happens--at least we got to do that.

[stepka]

Originally Posted by cpg35223

How about this one?

"March in lockstep. Cross things off your To-Do list. Do not question authority. Do this for twelve years, and you'll be educated!"

That's not education--that's being programmed. A good teacher teaches you to ask the right questions--not give the right answers.

[skoro]

"Education is what remains after you've forgotten what you learned in school."

Albert Einstein

[newflowers]

[quote=DoveDiva;5973465]Off the top of my head, the two posters in my class that my students pay the most attention to are the following:

1. "If at first you don't succeed, you aren't alone." It then tells how 4 past presidents failed at something, fixed their mistakes, and then went on to become president.

2. "If you didn't get the grade you wanted, chances are I didn't get the work I wanted."[/QUOTE]

LOVE IT!!!