Inside you’ll find literacy quotes to strengthen your teaching resolve. Sometimes an encouraging word from a fellow educator is what we need to remember our why. Literacy matters, and teachers have the privilege of building life-long learners. Don’t forget your why!
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With a tidy classroom, best laid plans, you head off into a new school year with wide eyes and an open heart… and then October hits. Am I right?
October, the month in which every meeting must occur, all beginning of year paperwork is due, and children are fed sugar and food dye via Halloween. It’s the changing point where teachers bow their weary heads and go from Pinterest planned classrooms to middle of the jungle survival mode.
Normally I’m on here to share my favorite activities, protocols, and literacy resources, but today I wanted to pause and pass on something just as important – encouragement.
Anyone who teaches is a literacy teacher. You have a hand in shaping the writing and reading future of our country. Survival mode or not, that is valuable motivation. We must fight the nagging temptation to let our never-ending responsibilities override the great opportunity we have in teaching. I need to preach this to my own heart! Discouraged and tired teacher, these encouraging literacy quotes are for you.
Because literacy is Power…
The ever changing face of society requires students who collaborate, innovate, and are equipped with a growth mindset. What better way to broaden their horizons than literacy? A childhood friend once mentioned that he felt reading was a superpower. Through reading, he could learn about anything. Don’t forget the immensity behind empowering a child to read and write!
When you’re teaching kids to write, you’re teaching them to think. Writing is the window through which all thinking starts.”
-Sheryl Block
The fire of literacy is created by the sparks between a child, a book, and the person reading.
– Mem Fox
The relationship between thought and word is a living process, thought is born through words. A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and thought unembodied in words remains a shadow.”
– Lev Vygotsky
All the reading she had done had given her a view of life that they had never seen.”
– Roald Dahl, Matilda
Because Literacy is the Ultimate Social Emotional Learning
The best way to encourage our students to adopt compassion, a growth mindset, and grit, is through social emotional learning. Digital age students need extra social learning because their default mode is screen time, not face to face communication. Reading opens doors to the human experience, which produces:compassion, understanding, and insight. We all need more of that.
If you’re looking for a way to build growth mindset in 2019, check out my New Year’s Growth Mindset foldable on Teacher’s Pay Teachers. It’s created to help students reflect on their experiences and set goal for the future.
Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul. When we are caught up in a good book we are held, spellbound, by another’s perspective.”
– Joyce Carol Oates
The only real job of a teacher, especially a writing teacher, is to help students find themselves.”
– Derrick Jensen
You are not teaching reading and writing, you are teaching people who read and write.”
– Peter Johnston
I am part of everything I have read.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
Check out my favorite books to teach social emotional learning:
Because Literacy Begets Literacy…
Reading and writing are intertwined. The more you get to know one, the deeper you understand the other. It’s cyclical! As a teacher, you have the beautiful opportunity to foster a heart for lifelong learning in your students. An added bonus? You get to experiment with your own writing style. When you model the learning for your students, you grow and learn too.
If you’re hesitant to write with your students, check out my previous post on the personal narrative writing process.
Literacy is the act of writing. Reading is breathing in and writing is breathing out.”
– Pam Allyn (FACE Summit 2013)
The desire to write grows with writing.”
– Desiderius Erasmus
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.”
– Leni Zumas
Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry. –
– Robert Morgan
While you’re busy filling out ARD paperwork, grading, emailing parents, sitting through meetings, etc.. etc.. take a deep breath, and remember the power that you hold in your hands. Teaching isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s for those who, with courage, go to work day after day to make a difference in the lives they come into contact with.
When you’re tempted to undervalue your time and efforts, read these literacy quotes and remember: “A healthy attitude is contagious , but don’t wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.” Tom Stoppard
Chin up, eyes forward, and teach on.
If you’re looking for ways to incorporate social emotional learning into your classroom, check out my 2019 growth mindset foldable on Teachers Pay Teachers.