Top 108 Quotes & Sayings by Andy Hargreaves

In high performing countries, principals are working with highly qualified teachers who come from the top tiers of the graduation range, who have been rigorously prepared in universities and through supervised practice in schools, and who remain in education for all of their careers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trust processes as well as people.

Every learner has special needs.

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

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

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

Leadership is often the afterthought of educational change.

Blame and betrayal are the emotional enemies of improvement.

Adolescence is about digging out the iron inside irony.

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

Every solution has a problem.

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

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

Deadwood did not kill itself!

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On technology: The teacher is mightier than the mouse.

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

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

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

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

There is no algorithm for creativity.

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

Arrogance is the conjoined twin of ignorance.

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

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

Teachers who believe they can make a real difference in their students lives REALLY do.

We disagree with the assertion that great teachers can be replaced by online alternatives. The futuristic claim that technology will triumph over teachers ignores all the social and relational dimensions of teaching and learning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pompous asses knows how to put the moan in sanctimonious.

Sustainable leadership does not compromise the future by expanding and accelerating too quickly in the present.

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

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

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

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

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