Andy Hargreaves Quotes

Pompous asses knows how to put the moan in sanctimonious.

There is no algorithm for creativity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Singapore gives 10% "white space" time to all of its teachers to come up with their own innovations outside of the official curriculum. This encourages teachers to turn to their colleagues for inspiration and ideas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Finland, within very broad government guidelines, teachers create their own curricula together across schools in every community and district. They don't confine collaboration to their own individual schools and to just implementing other people's ideas.

Every learner has special needs.

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

There is a new science of complexity which says that the link between cause and effect is increasingly difficult to trace; that change (planned or otherwise) unfolds in non-linear ways; that paradoxes and contradictions abound; and that creative solutions arise out of diversity, uncertainty and chaos.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leadership is often the afterthought of educational change.

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

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

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

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

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

Teaching is a passionate profession.

The most important emotion in classrooms is surprise.

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

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

Deadwood did not kill itself!

Schools often get the teachers they deserve!

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

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

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