On Scholastic Teachers’ Facebook page, many teachers shared a credo or motto:  🙂

• “A hundred years from now, it won’t matter the kind of car you drove, the house you lived in, and how much money was in your bank account…but the world may be different because you were important in the life of a child.”
• “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” – Dr. Seuss
• “A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.” – Robert Heinlein
• “All children want to be good and learn… We have to teach the children we have, not the children we want to have!”
• “Always assume positive intent.”
• “Anything is possible.” – Kevin Garnet
• “Be respectful & listen.”
• “Be the best YOU can be!”
• “Be the change you want to see in the world.” — Gandhi.
• “Be true to yourself.”
• “Bloom where you are planted, and take nothing there for granted.”
• “Bloom where you are planted.”
• “Children are like roses – the last bloom is no less beautiful than the first.”
• “Children don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
• “Children learn what they live.”
• “Coexist.”
• “Continue to do what u r doing and continue to get what u r getting.”
• “Do or do not, there is no try.” – Yoda
• “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are…” – Teddy Roosevelt
• “Do what you have to do so that you can do what you want to do.”
• “Don’t be the leaf if you can be the tree.”
• “Don’t reinvent the wheel, just bedazzle it!”
• “Dream. Imagine. Believe!”
• “Education is not the filling of buckets but the lighting of fires.”
• “Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.” – Paulo Freire
• “Everyone deserves to be spoiled.”
• “Failure is not an option.”
• “For the best results, follow instructions!”
• “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.”
• “Give peace a chance.”
• “Good teachers know what to teach. Great teachers know who they’re teaching.”
• “I am the teacher I would want at the front of the classroom of my own sons and daughter.”
• “I resolve to bring joy to my classroom, every day.”
• “If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.” – Ignacio Estrada
• “If it’s not fun, don’t do it! If you must do it, make it fun!”
• “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up somewhere else.”
• “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”
• “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
• “I’m not here to make money; I’m here to make a difference.”
• “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” – Albert Einstein
• “In this classroom every student is a teacher, every teacher is a student.”
• “It only takes a spark to get the mind moving.”
• “It’s always an adventure!”
• “Kids need to know I truly care about them before I can teach them anything.”
• “KISS: Keep it simple, stupid.”
• “Knowledge is gained by learning, skill by practice.”
• “Knowledge is POWER!” – School House Rock
• “Learn today for tomorrow”
• “Learning is DOING”
• “Love what you do and do what you love.”
• “Make an impact by empowering others!”
• “N.E.D.- Never give up, Encourage others, Do your best.”
• “Never Give Up.”
• “Practice makes . . . progress! (Who’s perfect???)”
• “Prior preparation prevents a pitifully poor performance. “
• “Proper preparation prevents poor performance.”
• “Resolve to be the change you wish to see in the world. – Gandhi
• “Respect is mutual and needs to be earned by everyone.”
• “Set a good example.”
• “Shoot for the moon. If you miss, you will still land amongst the stars.”
• “Teach the whole child.”
• “Teaching Our Nation’s Future.”
• “The good you do will come back to you, but the bad you do will be sad for you.”
• “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William Arthur Ward
• “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” – John Powell
• “There are no rules here, we’re trying to accomplish something” – Thomas Edison
• “There is no failure except in no longer trying.”
• “There is no such thing as a successful one size fits all approach to education.”
• “They might not remember what you taught them, but they’ll always remember how you treated them!”
• “Those who can, do. Those who can do more, teach.”
• “To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world.”
• “Touch the heart to teach the mind.”
• “Triumph is try with a little umph.”
• “Try and fail but never fail to try”
• “When I grow up, I’m quitting teaching.” Helps me to remember that the day I stop loving what I’m doing, I better move on.
• “When you fail to prepare, be prepared to fail. “
• “Work smarter, not harder.”
• “YOGOWYPI… You only get out what you put in.”
• “You CAN do it.”
• “You can easily count the seeds in an apple, but you may never be able to count the apples in a single seed.”
• “You don’t have to be THE best, you just have to be YOUR best. “
• “You don’t have to like everyone but you have to be nice to everyone.”
• “You don’t have to like everyone but you have to be nice to everyone.”
• “You have two ears and one mouth. This means you should listen twice as much as you should talk”
• “You must know about better so that you can achieve Better!”
• “You never know what you can do until you try!”
• “You only fail when you fail to try.”
• The golden rule: “Treat others as you would like to be treated.”

• “As I walked along the seashore,
  this young boy greeted me.
  He was tossing stranded starfish
  back to the deep blue sea.I said, “Tell me why you bother,
  why waste your time this way?
  There’s a million stranded starfish,
  does it matter anyway?”And he said, “It matters to this one,
  It deserves a chance to grow.
  It matters to this one,
  I can’t save them all, I know.But it matters to this one,
  I’ll return it to the sea.
  It matters to this one,
  and it matters to me.”I walked into the classroom.
  The teacher greeted me.
  She was helping Johnny study,
  he was struggling-I could see.I said, “Tell me why you bother,
  why waste your time this way?
  Johnny’s only one of millions,
  does it matter anyway?”And she said, “It matters to this one,
  He deserves a chance to grow.
  It matters to this one,
  I’ll help him be what he can be.It matters to this one,
  and it matters to me.”