I can't go back. The past won't go away in this family.
Frank MccourtRead
I worked in a number of high schools in New York, and I wound up at Stuyvesant High School, which is known nationally for producing brilliant scientists and mathematicians, but I had writing classes. I thought I was teaching. They thought I was teaching, but I was learning.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Teaching can lead to profound personal growth and understanding.
This quote highlights the reciprocal nature of teaching and learning, where the educator gains as much insight and understanding from the experience as the students do. Frank McCourt reflects on his time at Stuyvesant High School, emphasizing that despite his role as a teacher, he found himself continuously learning from his students and the process of education.
Themes
EducationTeachingLearningGrowthExperience
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in an educational conference to inspire teachers about the value of their work.
More from Frank Mccourt
All quotes →Sit and quiet yourself. Luxuriate in a certain memory and the details will come. Let the images flow. You'll be amazed at what will come out on paper. I'm still learning what it is about the past that I want to write. I don't worry about it. It will emerge. It will insist on being told.
Frank MccourtRead
Kids all want to look cool, as if knowledge is a great burden, but they're always looking around. They remember.
Frank MccourtRead
That's what kept us going - a sense of absurdity, rather than humor.
Frank MccourtRead
A mother's love is a blessing No matter where you roam. Keep her while you have her, You'll miss her when she's gone -- Angela's Ashes.
Frank MccourtRead
You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.
Frank MccourtRead
Similar quotes
But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can't acquire knowledge.
Ayaan Hirsi AliRead
A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
Alan BennettRead
Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return.
Carlos Ruiz ZafonRead
Wear your learning like your watch, in a private pocket; and do not pull it out, and strike it, merely to show that you have one.
Philip Stanhope, 4Th Earl Of ChesterfieldRead
A library is a place where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity.
Germaine GreerRead
You can get so well educated in America that your thoughts become detached from common sense. You can get so complicated in your thinking that the obvious isn't real to you anymore.
Peggy NoonanRead