Looking back across my timeline through school, and indeed in the early days of teaching, I see one good thing about being filled with insecurities. Knowing that I had everything to gain, I seemed to seek out mentors.

Shirley McPhillips

I've come to believe there are only two things you need in any new teaching situation to succeed--humility and inquiry.

Lisa Delpit

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Maya Angelou

Dreams sometimes do come true. But not without something that looks a lot like hard work.

Sylvia Ashton Warner

Staff development should not be perceived as something we do unto the weaker teacher or reserve for inexperienced staff members. All staff members, including principals, consultants, and teacher mentors, should be able to announce, "This is my year to study ------." There needs to be a genuine feeling that no one has arrived. Everyone needs to be swept up by the deeply engrained value placed on adult learning.

Shelley Harwayne

Slowly, by turning from what we learn with others to what we learn alone, we begin to have a sense of the speed of our learning, the first few chapters of our own eccentric life story. Where do we practice it? Where may our story happen best? When we leave the lively hive of this school, what larger hive do we seek?

Kim Stafford

When you get conflicting reactions, block your impulse to figure out which reactions are right. Eat like an owl: take in everything and trust your innards to digest what's useful and discard what's not.

Peter Elbow

In every art beginners must start with models of those who have practiced the same art before them. And it is not only a matter of looking at the drawings, paintings, musical compositions, and poems that have been and are being created; it is a matter of being drawn into the individual work of art, of realizing that it has been made by a real human being, and trying to discover the secret of its creation.

Ruth Whitman