Best Teaching Writing Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“I don't know which is worse—to have a bad teacher or no teacher at all. In any case, I believe the teacher's work should be largely negative. He can't put the gift into you, but if he finds it there, he can try to keep it from going in an obviously wrong direction. We can learn how not to write, but this is a discipline that does not simply concern writing itself but concerns the whole intellectual life. A mind cleared of false emotion and false sentiment and egocentricity is going to have at least those roadblocks removed from its path. If you don't think cheaply, then there at least won't be the quality of cheapness in your writing, even though you may not be able to write well. The teacher can try to weed out what is positively bad, and this should be the aim of the whole college. Any discipline can help your writing: logic, mathematics, theology, and of course and particularly drawing. Anything that helps you to see, anything that makes you look. The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that doesn't require his attention.”

Education Discipline Perception Observation Guidance Writing Process Teaching Writing Writing Class

Book:Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

Source: Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

“I sometimes tell my students to do a writing exercise that’s just something on their desk. An object they’ve had with them for a while, a photograph, a stone from the ocean, a shell. I tell them just to explore it, interrogate it, just turn it over in your head and see what might happen. And the most amazing thing happens: they really find they love those objects, and can write about them for a long time. That they carried that black stone home from a day with their father just weeks before he died, that the small elephant was a gift from a friend on a day of heartbreak. We start talking about those objects and soon it feels like our whole life is full of small stories to be grateful for. So many small things we pass all the time without holding them up to the light.”

Love Writing Poetry Teaching Objects Gratitude Meaning Teaching Writing Close Looking

Author:Ada Limon

“...[T]he teaching of writing is fraught with difficulties. Teaching well, in my experience and that of my students, can be very time-consuming, demanding, frustrating, and, given institutional constraints, sometimes infuriating. It demands the recognition that, in Burns's words, 'The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglay.' At the same time, composition lies at the heart of education. When students make gains as writers, the gains are likely to affect other educational endeavors. And for teachers, the joy of seeing students create some new part of themselves, and do it well, washes the difficulties to insignificance and provides the impetus to try, like the Bruce's unrelenting spider, again, and again, and again.”

Writing Teaching Writing

Book:Teaching Writing as Reflective Practice

Source: Teaching Writing as Reflective Practice

“If success in selling is my primary interest, I am not primarily a writer, but a salesperson. If I teach success in selling as the writer's primary objective, I am not teaching writing; I'm teaching, or pretending to teach, the production and marketing of a commodity.”

Ifs Writing Interest Teach Teaching Marketing Productions Objectives Selling Primaries Pretending Commodity Salesperson Teaching Writing

Book:The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

Source: The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

“Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.”

Inspirational Three Education Teach Learning Teacher Teaching Pure Educational Theatre Preparation Novelists Fourth Thank You Educator Great Teacher Good Teacher Best Teacher Teaching Children Great Education Good Education Teaching And Learning Education And Teachers Schools And Education Great Educational Teaching And Education Teachers And Teaching Teaching Education Teacher Student Teaching Learning Children Learning Inspirational Teacher Teacher And Student Inspirational Education Great Teaching Quality Education Being A Teacher Good Teaching Children Education Students And Education Good Students Teacher Appreciation Children And Education Good School Philosophy Of Education Art Teacher Teaching Students Thanking Teachers Teachers Learning From Students Teaching Kids Schools And Teachers Teaching Art Teacher Appreciation Week Teachers From Kids Primary Education Teaching Writing

Author:Gail Godwin

“At DePauw, I was teaching writing and fiction. The things I wanted to teach, more than anything else, were form and theory of the novel, of narrative. I liked those classes.”

Writing Wanted Form Fiction Class Teach Novel Teaching Theory Narrative Teaching Writing

Author:Nic Pizzolatto

“Teaching English and teaching Writing are two separate things.”

Writing Two Teaching Teaching English Teaching Writing

Author:Vanna Bonta

“Teaching writing is a hustle.”

Writing Teaching Hustle Teaching Writing

Author:Cormac McCarthy

“Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry.”

Way Writing Years Important Teaching Excitement Teaching Writing

Author:Robert Morgan

“Over time I learned that there are two very different satisfactions that you can have in your life. One is the satisfaction of becoming skilled at something. It almost doesn't matter what the terrain is. There is a deep, soul-feeding resonance in mastery itself, whether in teaching, writing a complicated software program, coaching a baseball team, or marshalling a group of people to start a new business.”

“Before I got my present job, I spent many years teaching writing part-time, so-called, at community colleges and universities. It's academia's version of migrant labor.”

Writing Years Jobs Community Teaching College Labor University Versions Academia Migrants Part Time Colleges And Universities Community College Teaching Writing

Author:Debra Dean

“In general, teaching writing makes me a far better reader because there's so many ways to write a good sentence or a good story, and as a teacher I'm obliged to consider them all, rather than staying in the safety of my own tendencies.”

Way Writing Stories My Own Teacher Teaching Reader Safety Sentences Tendencies Staying Obliged Good Story Teaching Writing

Author:Leni Zumas

“In teaching writing, I'm learning new things about writing.”

Writing Teaching New Things Learning New Learning New Things Teaching Writing

Author:David B. Coe

“Teaching writing puts you on the point of a pin in terms of what you want your own writing to be.”

Want Writing Term Teaching What You Want Pins Teaching Writing

Author:Jane Alison

“Because I don't have to be careful of people's feelings when I teach literature, and I do when I'm teaching writing.”

People Writing Feelings Literature Teach Teaching Careful Be Careful Teaching Writing

Author:Tobias Wolff

“I loved teaching. It was my world. I only left because I was overwhelmed with three careers - teaching, writing, and my family.”

World Writing Three Left Careers Teaching My Family Overwhelmed Teaching Writing

Author:Patricia Reilly Giff