Each time I visit such a classroom, where the teacher is more interested in creating a democratic community than in maintaining her position of autho….

The difference between a good educator and a great educator is that the former figures out how to work within the constraints of traditional policies….

Don't let anyone tell you that standardized tests are not accurate measures. The truth of the matter is they offer a remarkably precise method for ga….

Children learn how to make good decisions by making decisions, not by following directions..

In a word, learning is decontextualized. We break ideas down into tiny pieces that bear no relation to the whole. We give students a brick of informa….

If a child is off-task...mayb e the problem is not the child...maybe it's the task..

Children, after all, are not just adults-in-the-making. They are people whose current needs and rights and experiences must be taken seriously..

Those who know they're valued irrespective of their accomplishments often end up accomplishing quite a lot. It's the experience of being accepted wit….

Whoever said there's no such thing as a stupid question never looked carefully at a standardized test..

Social psychology has found the more you reward people for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the….

If I offered you a thousand dollars to take off your shoes, you'd very likely accept--and then I could triumphantly announce that 'rewards work.' But….

Saying you taught it but the student didn't learn it is like saying you sold it but the customer didn't buy it..

In outstanding classrooms, teachers do more listening than talking, and students do more talking than listening. Terrific teachers often have teeth ….

Punishments and rewards are two sides of the same coin and that coin doesn't buy you much..

Educational success should be measured by how strong your desire is to keep learning..

If unconditional love and genuine enthusiasm are present, praise isn't necessary. If they're absent, praise won't help..

We can't value only what is easy to measure; measurable outcomes may be the least important results of learning..

How we feel about our kids isn't as important as how they experience those feelings and how they regard the way we treat them..

Punishment and reward proceed from basically the same psychological model, one that conceives of motivation as nothing more than the manipulation of ….

If children feel safe, they can take risks, ask questions, make mistakes, learn to trust, share their feelings, and grow..

Educators remind us that what counts in a classroom is not what the teacher teaches; it’s what the learner learns..