Andy Hargreaves Quotes

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

There is no algorithm for creativity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Every learner has special needs.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blame and betrayal are the emotional enemies of improvement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Trust processes as well as people.

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