Andy Hargreaves Quotes

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

As we seek to eliminate individualism in teaching, we should not eradicate individuality with it.

Economic necessity should be the mother of educational invention

It's time for the US to widen its circle of learning, not to circle its wagons against hostile ideas in education reform.

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

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

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

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

Excellence is the asymptotic state that never quite reaches perfection.

Every learner has special needs.

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

Physically, teachers are often alone in their own classrooms with no other adults for company. Psychologically, they never are.

In collaborative cultures, failure and uncertainty are not protected but shared and discussed to gain support.

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

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

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

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

If we're all on the same page, no one's reading the whole book.

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

Deadwood did not kill itself!

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

Walking makes us take problems in our stride.

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

We learn more from people who are different from us than ones who are the same.

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

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

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

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

When the purge of teacher individualism is unrestrained, eccentricity, initiative and individuality become the casualties.

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

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

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

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

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

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

You cannot understand the teacher or their teaching without understanding the person the teacher is.

Your most memorable students are in your first classes and your last classes: make your last years the finest of your career.

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

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

Teachers who don't pull their weight drag down the profession and their colleagues with it.

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

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

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

Implementation of technological change must involve critics as well as advocates.

On technology: The teacher is mightier than the mouse.

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

Time is the enemy of freedom.

Students become good learners when they are in the classes of teachers who are good learners.