Passion for Teaching Quotes

These passion for teaching quotes help connect you with your “why” of teaching.

After 20 years in the classroom, there are a lot of blurs when you look back… key events on the calendar merge and become one, as do whole classes, even years.

But despite this, there are moments that stand out.

I have a handful of memories that I cherish – memories that serve to put a smile on my face and appreciation in my heart, and most of all, keep my passion for teaching alive.

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One of those favorite memories was the time I was teaching a class of 14 year olds who had been put into this particular class because their learning was compromised and their behavior was poor.

I was teaching them grammar, which is never that easy for anyone.

Suddenly, as I tried a new way of explaining what a subject was in a sentence, Toby leapt up out of his seat. “I get it!” he yelled out.

That moment revealed two fundamental truths that have stayed with me ever since: all students want to learn and all students feel the joy of learning.

Unfortunately for many reasons they might not have those wants and feelings fulfilled and so they act out instead.

Seeing that light go on in a child’s eyes is what gives me my passion for teaching.

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For others it might be their subject, or that moment when a student takes what you’ve taught them and makes it bigger and better.

Having a passion for teaching is fundamental to having joy in your work. These passion for teaching quotes illustrate the different ways in which passion can be found and its importance in the classroom.

You might find your “why” in them!

Passion for teaching quotes

Great teachers emanate out of knowledge, passion and compassion. – A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

I wasn’t born to ‘just teach’. I was born to inspire others. To change people. And to never give up- even when faced with challenges that seem impossible. – Anonymous

I’ll always choose a teacher with enthusiasm and weak technique over one with brilliant strategies but who is just punching the clock. Why? An enthusiastic teacher can learn technique, but it is almost impossible to light a fire inside the charred heart of a burned-out teacher. – Dave Burgess

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, the excitement, and the mystery of the world we live in. – Rachel Carson 

Great teachers had great personalities and the greatest teachers had outrageous personalities. I did not like decorum or rectitude in a classroom; I preferred a highly oxygenated atmosphere, a climate of intemperance, rhetoric, and feverish melodrama. And I wanted my teachers to make me smart. A great teacher is my adversary, my conqueror, commissioned to chastise me. He leaves me tame and grateful for the new language he has purloined from other kings whose granaries are filled and whose libraries are famous. He tells me that teaching is the art of theft: of knowing what to steal and from whom. Bad teachers do not touch me; the great ones never leave me. They ride with me during all my days, and I pass on to others what they have imparted to me. I exchange their handy gifts with strangers on trains, and I pretend the gifts are mine. I steal from the great teachers. And the truly wonderful thing about them is they would applaud my theft, laugh at the thought of it, realizing they had taught me their larcenous skills well. – Pat Conroy

The main reason I became a teacher is that I like being the first one to introduce kids to words and music and people and numbers and concepts and idea that they have never heard about or thought about before. I like being the first one to tell them about Long John Silver and negative numbers and Beethoven and alliteration and “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” and similes and right angles and Ebenezer Scrooge… Just think about what you know today. You read. You write. You work with numbers. You solve problems. We take all these things for granted. But of course you haven’t always read. You haven’t always known how to write. You weren’t born knowing how to subtract 199 from 600. Someone showed you. There was a moment when you moved from not knowing to knowing, from not understanding to understanding. That’s why I became a teacher. – Phillip Done

In all of my teaching, I think about what I find fascinating and what I would love to learn more about. I use my teaching to grow, and that makes me, even after all these years, a fresh and eager teacher. – Carol Dweck

What salt is to food, passion is to teaching. – Kavita Bhupta Ghosh

So how do you go about teaching them something new? By mixing what they know with what they don’t know. Then, when they see vaguely in their fog something they recognize, they think, ‘Ah, I know that.’ And then it’s just one more step to, ‘Ah, I know the whole thing.’ And their mind thrusts forward into the unknown and they begin to recognize what they didn’t know before and they increase their powers of understanding. – Françoise Gilot

Teachers have three loves: love of learning, love of learners, and the love of bringing the first two loves together. – Scott Hayden

I believe that education is all about being excited about something. Seeing passion and enthusiasm helps push an educational message. – Steve Irwin

A key to keep growing as an educator is to keep company mainly with teachers who uplift you, whose presence inspires you and whose dedication drives you – Robert John Meehan

Sometimes I think that wisdoms slip from my mind like drool from the lips of an idiot… Where’s all this stuff coming from? Is it any good? Any good in, you know, the wisdom sense? Who am I to spout this stuff anyway? Well, here’s the thing. You too can find yourself shedding wisdom like cat hair if you only allow yourself the liberty of introspection. Think about what you alone know that no one else does. That one neat wonderful profound insight. It is fully yours. No one else on this planet of about six billion people understands it like you do. Now, see if you can share it with someone. Bestow it, a gift of yourself. Wisdom is like gossip. Except it’s the good kind. – Vera Nazarian

Teaching is not a profession; it’s a passion. Without your passion and dedication, our children’s future would resemble a sunset instead of a sunrise. Your days are long and often difficult. Thrive on your passion, and enhance our world’s tomorrow. – Linda A. Podojil

By doing what you love you inspire and awaken the hearts of others – Satsuki Shibuya

If these passion for teaching quotes have achieved their purpose, you have a smile on your face and a memory in your heart of that moment when everything that is awesome about teaching came together and you had real impact!

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