Andy Hargreaves Quotes

Leadership is often the afterthought of educational change.

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

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

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

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

Arrogance is the conjoined twin of ignorance.

On technology: The teacher is mightier than the mouse.

Every solution has a problem.

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.

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

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

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

Walking makes us take problems in our stride.

On data: We are the drivers, not the driven.

The teacher has more power than the Minister.

Teaching is a passionate profession.

The most important emotion in classrooms is surprise.

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

Culture is the possibility and impossibility that bacon and fruit can appear on the same plate.

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

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

Time is the enemy of freedom.

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

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

In healthy individuals, emotions don't distort rationality, they enhance it!

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

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

On government & unions: the only thing worse than blind trust is blind mistrust.

Teachers still command great respect in the families and societies of many Asian cultures.

Students and their families carry more responsibility for student success in the East.

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

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

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

Total teachers aren't perfect teachers.

Strong professional communities risk and sometimes relish conflict.

Economic necessity should be the mother of educational invention

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

Professional trust is a process, not a state.

The economists who have put the spotlight on teacher quality are the ones who most misunderstand it.

We should test prudently; not profligately.

Educational reforms are like ripe fruit. They rarely travel well.

When creativity is the goal, schools must have their own platforms to network and innovate.

Leadership is the cigarette that's smoked once the change has been consummated.

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.

Excellence is the asymptotic state that never quite reaches perfection.