Inspiring Words: A Curated Collection of Quotes for Special Education Teachers

"Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world."

- Malala Yousafzai

"Inclusion is not a strategy to help people fit into the systems and structures which exist in our societies; it is about transforming those systems and structures to make it better for everyone."

- Diane Richler

"Every child deserves a champion, a grownup who never gives up on them, who recognizes the value of relationships and urges that they develop into their full potential."

- Rita Pierson

"Every student can learn, just not on the same day or in the same way."

- George Evans

"Inclusion is not a tactic to help people fit into the systems and structures that exist in our communities; it is about improving those systems and structures to make life better for everyone."

- Diane Richler

"A teacher touches eternity; they can never tell where their effect finishes."

- Henry Adams

"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."

- William A. Ward

"If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn."

- Ignacio Estrada

"A good teacher is like a candle, it consumes itself to light the way for others."

- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

"Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself."

- John Dewey

"Teach people how to think, not what to think."

- Sidney Sugarman

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."

- W.B. Yeats

"The future of the world is in my classroom right now."

- Ivan Welton Fitzwater

"Teachers who love teaching teach youngsters to love learning."

- Robert John Meehan

"Special education is not a place. It's a service."

- Loretta Claiborne

"Inclusive education is not a privilege. It is a fundamental human right."

- Ban Ki-moon

"We need to give every individual the opportunity to reach their full potential, regardless of their background or circumstance."

- Cory Booker

"Inclusive education seeks to address the learning needs of all children, with a specific focus on those who are vulnerable to marginalization and exclusion. The goal is to promote opportunities for all children to participate and be treated equally."

- Andie Fong Toy

"It shouldn’t matter how slowly a child learns. What matters is that we encourage them to never stop trying."

- Robert John Meehan

"When inclusive education is fully embraced, we abandon the idea that children have to become ‘normal’ in order to contribute to the world. We begin to look beyond typical ways of becoming valued members of the community, and in doing so, begin to realize the achievable goal of providing all children with an authentic sense of belonging."

- Norman Kunc

"Fairness does not mean everyone gets the same. Fairness means everyone gets what they need."

- Rick Riordan

"The secret in education lies in respecting the student."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength."

- Maya Angelou

"I touch the future. I teach."

- Christa McAuliffe

"Teachers can change lives with the right mix of chalk and challenges."

- Joyce Meyer

"One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world."

- Malala Yousafzai

"The influence of teachers extends beyond the classroom, well into the future."

- F. Sionil Jose

"Teaching is a very noble profession that shapes the character, caliber, and future of an individual. If people remember me as a good teacher, that will be the biggest honor for me."

- P. J. Abdul Kalam

"A gifted teacher is not only prepared to meet the needs of today’s child but is also prepared to foresee the hopes and dreams in every child’s future."

- Robert John Meehan

"Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today."

- Malcolm X

"Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace."

- Confucius

"The dream begins, most of the time, with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you on to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called truth."

- Dan Rather

"Children must be taught how to think, not what to think."

- Margaret Mead

"Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students."

- Solomon Ortiz

"When educating the minds of our youth, we must not forget to educate their hearts."

- Dalai Lama

"They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel."

- Carl W. Buechner

"It is the teacher that makes the difference. Not the classroom."

- Michael Morpurgo

"Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the education system."

- Sidney Hook

"Great teachers empathize with kids, respect them, and believe that each one has something special that can be built upon."

- Ann Lieberman

"Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them."

- Lady Bird Johnson

"If you have to put someone on a pedestal, put teachers. They are society’s heroes."

- Guy Kawasaki

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."

- Henry Adams

"The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts."

- C. S. Lewis

"To this end, the greatest asset of a school is the personality of the teacher."

- John Strachan

"A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning."

- Brad Henry

"Teachers, I believe, are the most responsible and important members of society because their professional efforts affect the fate of the earth."

- Helen Caldicott

"Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges."

- Joyce Meyer

"What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches."

- Karl Menninger

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."

- Albert Einstein

"Give me a fish, and I eat for a day. Teach me to fish, and I eat for a lifetime."

- Chinese Proverb

"A good teacher is like a candle – it consumes itself to light the way for others."

- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

"A teacher is a compass that activates the magnets of curiosity, knowledge, and wisdom in the pupils."

- Ever Garrison

"I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well."

- Alexander the Great

"What most Special Education teachers are really angels disguised as extraordinary humans."

- Joe Martin

"Children with special needs are unique individuals."

- Neena Dash

"Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or in the same way."

- John Evans

"In special education, there’s too much emphasis placed on the deficit and not enough on the strength."

- Temple Grandin

"All children with special needs have a right to be part of a family, a community and society."

- Angela Dare

"Sometimes even the greatest joys bring challenge, and children with special needs inspire a very, very special love."

- Sarah Palin

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

- Nelson Mandela

"Great education is a combination of a supporting environment, dedicated teachers, and students who take joy in learning."

- Hermann J Steinherr

"The highest result of education is tolerance."

- Helen Keller

"The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said."

- Peter Drucker

"The most valuable resource that all teachers have is each other. Without collaboration, our growth is limited to our perspectives."

- Robert John Meehan

"[Kids] don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are."

- Jim Henson

"Teaching is the greatest act of optimism."

- Colleen Wilcox

"Great education is a combination of a supporting environment, dedicated teachers and students who take joy in learning."

- Hermann J Steinherr

"Those who know do. Those that understand, teach."

- Aristotle

"Education is a shared commitment between dedicated teachers, motivated students and enthusiastic parents with high expectations."

- Bob Beauprez

"Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants."

- John W. Gardner

"In every child who is born, under no matter what circumstances, and of no matter what parents, the potentiality of the human race is born again."

- James Agee

"When we listen and celebrate what is both common and different, we become wiser, more inclusive, and better as an organization."

- Pat Wadors

"To teach is to learn twice."

- Joseph Joubert

"Teaching youngsters to count is wonderful, but teaching them what counts is best."

- Bob Talbert

"I cannot teach anyone anything; I can only cause them to think."

- Socrates

"All of the children of silence must be taught to sing their own song."

- Thomas Gallaudet

"When you judge someone based on a diagnosis, you miss out on their abilities, beauty, and uniqueness."

- Sevenly.org

"For those with learning disabilities, today's tools for differentiation no longer hold the stigma they used to nor highlight disabilities, but provide opportunities to find success in the classroom."

- Sharon LePage Plante

"No child left behind requires states and school districts to ensure that all students are learning and are reaching their highest potential. Special education students should not be left out of this accountability."

- Dianne Feinstein

"The great end of education is to discipline rather than to furnish the mind; to train it to use its own powers rather than to fill it with the accumulation of others."

- Tryon Edwards

"Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best."

- Bob Talbert

"A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary."

- Thomas Carruthers

"Your heart is slightly bigger than the average human heart, but that’s because you’re a teacher."

- Aaron Bacall

"Parenting a child with special needs will be the greatest challenge of your life, and if you make good choices, it may also prove one of the most rewarding."

- Judy Winter

"I am not a teacher, but an awakener."

- Robert Frost

"Nine-tenths of education is encouragement."

- Anatole France

"The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery."

- Mark van Doren

"The best teacher of children, in brief, is one who is essentially childlike."

- H. L. Mencken

"I decided to study special education and fell in love with working with individuals with autism. That’s what I planned to do with my life."

- Clay Aiken

"In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn."

- Phil Collins

"The gap between the abilities and capacities of children related to their learning, adjustment and development found at the time of their birth, may further be widened by the nature of the environmental difference encountered by them in their nourishment and education."

- S. K. Mangal

"When you listen and celebrate what is both common and different, we become wiser, more inclusive, and better as an organization."

- Pat Wadors

"A good special education teacher is hard to find and even harder to hang on to."

- Lourdes Garcia-Navarro

"Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers."

- Josef Albers

"Teachers are people who start things they never see finished, and for which they never get thanks until it is too late."

- Max Forman

"The best way to predict the future is to create it."

- Peter Drucker

"Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher."

- Japanese Proverb

"If you can read this, thank a teacher."

- American Proverb

"Educators are the only people who lose sleep over other people’s kids."

- Nicholas A. Ferroni

"The older I got, the smarter my teachers became."

- Ally Carter

"Being a new teacher is like trying to fly an airplane while building it."

- Rick Smith

"Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theater."

- Gail Godwin

"Being a teacher is a lot like being a rock star."

- Heidi McDonald

"The only disability in life is a bad attitude."

- Scott Hamilton

"A family is a place where thoughts interact with one another."

- Buddha

"The power of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its allegiance to one another."

- Mario Puzo

"Families are the compass that directs us, the inspiration to attain tremendous heights, and our solace when we sometimes fall."

- Brad Henry

"The family is the first and most fundamental cell of human society."

- Pope John XXIII

"A happy family is merely an earlier heaven."

- George Bernard Shaw

"There is no such thing as a child who hates to read; there are only children who have not found the right book."

- Frank Serafini

"Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care."

- Anonymous

"Special Education is a service, not a place!"

- Anonymous

"A teacher presents the past, reveals the present, and creates the future."

"Only a special person can hear what a child cannot say."

"No Child Left Behind requires states and school districts to ensure that all students are learning and are reaching their highest potential. Special Education students should not be left out of these accountability mechanisms."

"See the able, not the label."

"To survive as a teacher you need 3 bones: a wishbone, a backbone, and a funny bone."

"Don’t tell me the sky is the limit when I know there are footprints on the moon."

"Every student can learn, just now on the same day or in the same way."

"Don’t underestimate me. I know more than I say, I think more than I speak, and I notice more than you realize."

"Our job is to teach the kids we have. Not the ones we used to have. Not the ones we would like to have. The ones we have right now…all of them."

"Teacher: A person who helps you solve problems you’d never have without them."

"A child with special needs.. requires love, requires guidance, requires encouragement, requires positive influences, requires a life teacher… JUST LIKE ALL OTHER CHILDREN."

"It takes a big heart to help shape little minds."

- Unknown

"Fair isn’t everybody getting the same thing…Fair is everybody getting what they need in order to be successful."

"Good teachers are the ones who can challenge young minds without losing their own."

"The influence of a good teacher can never be erased."

"If you desire to make a difference in the world, you must be different from the world."

"Teaching: the only profession where you steal things from home and bring them to work."

"Teaching is a walk in the park. If that park is Jurassic park."

"There are three good reasons to be a teacher –June, July, and August."