"Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

" - Douglas Adams The road to success is always under construction. Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else's hands, but not you. A father's disappointment can be a very powerful tool. Michael Bergin

A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment. Carl Jung

Age does not diminish the extreme disappointment of having a scoop of ice cream fall from the cone. Jim Fiebig

Anytime you suffer a setback or disappointment, put your head down and plow ahead. Les Brown

Astronomers are greatly disappointed when, having traveled halfway around the world to see an eclipse, clouds prevent a sight of it; and yet a sense of relief accompanies the disappointment. Simon Newcomb

Aware that his disappointment has its source in a defective education, he looks with anxiety on his other daughters, whose minds, like lovely buds, are beginning to open. Where shall he find a genial soil in which he may place them to expand? Emma Willard

Burning desire to be or do something gives us staying power - a reason to get up every morning or to pick ourselves up and start in again after a disappointment. Marsha Sinetar

Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation. Eric Hoffer

Disappointment over nationalistic authoritarian regimes may have contributed to the fact that today religion offers a new and subjectively more convincing language for old political orientations. Jurgen Habermas

Disenchantment, whether it is a minor disappointment or a major shock, is the signal that things are moving into transition in our lives. William Throsby Bridges

Don't fall in love with politicians, they're all a disappointment. They can't help it, they just are. Peggy Noonan

Enthusiasm is followed by disappointment and even depression, and then by renewed enthusiasm. Murray Gell-Mann

First love is first love, first marriage is first marriage, disappointment is disappointment. Maximilian Schell

Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience
Disappointment is the common worm That feasts on all the fairest! C. B. LANGSTON, "Disappointment"

I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather.. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car. I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.
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Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer.
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Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
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We live in a society where pizza gets to your house before the police.
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Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake a whole relationship.
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The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list.
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Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
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If I agreed with you we'd both be wrong.

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Men have two emotions: Hungry and Horny. If you see him without an erection, make him a sandwich.
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We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

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War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

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Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

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Children: You spend the first 2 years of their life teaching them to walk and talk. Then you spend the next 16 years telling them to sit down and shut-up.
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Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly, and for the same reason.
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My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.

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Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd

better have a good hand.

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The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
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Evening news is where they begin with 'Good evening', and then proceed to tell you why it isn't.

Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity.

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If sex is a pain in the ass, then you're doing it wrong... To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research. If God is watching us, the least we can do is be entertaining. If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhea... does that mean that one enjoys it?

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If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of payments. Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire? A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.. Some people are like Slinkies ... not really good for anything, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down the stairs. Did you know that dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish? A bank is a place that will lend you money, if you can prove that you don't need it. I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted paychecks. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night. Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says "If an emergency, notify:" I put "DOCTOR". What's my mother going to do? I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian

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A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you. I saw a woman wearing a sweat shirt with "Guess" on it...so I said "Implants?" The shinbone is a device for finding furniture in a dark room.

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'Insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting the different results' Albert Einstein. 'If we always do what we've always done, we will get what we've always got.' Adam Urbanski 'One can never consent to creep when one feels the compulsion to soar'. Helen Keller 'Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.' Oliver Wendell Holmes Jnr 'Ten geographers who think the world is flat will tend to reinforce each others errors.Only a sailor can set them straight'. John Ralston Saul, 'Voltaire's Bastards'. 'The faithful witness, likeSocrates, Voltaire, and Swift and Christ himself, is at his best when he is questioning and clarifying and avoiding the specialists obsession with solution. He betrays society when he is silentHe is true to himself and to people when his clarity causes disquiet.' John Ralston Saul 'Voltaire's Bastards' 'Anecdotes, personal stories, reminiscences, like biblical parables, are the medium through which faith is restored. Stories are a form of poetry, and give us a saving image to personally relate to.' Peter Block Business Philosopher 'Wordsmiths who serve established powercastrate the public imagination by subjecting language to a complexity which renders it private. Elitism is always their aim.' John Ralston Paul, 'Voltaire's Bastards.' 'It is today we must create the world of the future.' Eleanor Roosevelt 'The human mind treats a new idea the way a body treats a strange problem it rejects it.' Sir Peter Medawar 'Some folks are wise, some are otherwise'. Tobies George Smollett To arrive at the simplest truth requires years of contemplation.' Isaac Newton 'Those who do nothing are never wrong.' Theodore de Bouville 'The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.' From the Go -Between 'We are natural mind changing entities until we are 10 or so. But as we get olderthen it is very hard to

change our minds'. Howard Gardner 'Fundamentalism is a kind of decision not to change your mind about somethingMany of us is fundamentalistsbecause it worked pretty well for us.' Howard Gardner 'Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail'. Ralph Waldo Emerson 'The world by and large has to be reinvented.' Charles Handy in 'Beyond Certainty'. 'There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.' Frederico Fellini Film Director 'Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge'. Winston Churchill 'There is nothing as useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.' Peter Drucker Business Philosopher. 'Don't try to innovate for the future. Innovate for the present.' Peter Drucker 'I believe that revolutionary chaos may yet crystallize into new life forms.' M Gorbachev 'Chaos breeds life, where order breeds habit,' Henry Brooks US Historian 'Is anybody alive out there?' Bruce Springsteen to the crowd. 'It is impossible to soar like an eagle if you are surrounded by turkeys' Anon 'Every actual state is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well.' Ralph Waldo Emerson 'Complexity creates confusion, simplicity focus.' Edward de Bono 'To simplify you have to clarify. Simplification is the new competitive advantage' Jack Trout 'Simplicity' 'Our life is frittered away by detail.. simplicity simplicity, simplicity.' Henry Thoreau 'We need to be the authors of our own life.' Peter Senge 'We have banished our artists to the fringe of society and tell them to eat cake. It is our artists who choose freedom over safety and use their talents to question and confront the culture.' Peter Block, Philosopher 'We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming'. Verner von Braun 'First define, then refine'. Bill Guild NZ Pioneer teacher 'Everything of importance has been said by someone who didn't invent it.' Alfred North Whitehead. 'A pessimist is a person who looks both ways before crossing a one way road.' L Peters Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.' Les Brown 'We can make the trains run on time but if they are not going where we want them to go, why bother?' Neil Postman 'Slow down you are going too fast'. Simon and Garfunkle 'You may feel like a voice in the wilderness, but it is your voice we are waiting to hearyou are the determining factor.' Neale Donald Walsh Author

'The first people had the questions, and they were free. The second people had answers, and they became enslaved.' Wind Eagle Modern Indian Medicine Woman 'Those who have most at stake in the old culture, or are most rigid in their beliefs, try to summon people back to the old ideas.' Marilyn Ferguson 'In the end we shall have had enough cynicism and skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live life more musically.' Vincent van Gogh 'Do not go where the path may lead; go where there is no path and leave a trail.' Ralph Waldo Emerson 'If we remain wedded to the way education is currently provided we cannot imagine other ways.. we need some imagination , some fantasy, some new ways of thinking - some magic in fact' Hedley Beare Prof of Educ Melbourne 'We must act as if our institutions are ours to create, our learning is ours to define, our leadership we seek is ours to become. Peter Block Philosopher 'Many of our schools are good schools if only this were 1965'. Louise Stoll and Dean Fink 'If we want to create a workplace that values idealism, human connection, and real, in depth learning, we will have to create it ourselves'. Peter Block 'It is a tragedy that, for most of us, school is not a place for deepening our sense of who we are and what we are committed to. If it were, think of the lasting changes it would have made.' Peter Senge 'All human beings are born with unique gifts. The healthy functioning of our community depends on its capacity to develop each gift.' Peter Senge 'The Learning School.' 'Parents and educatorsneed to establish a culture in which security and clarity of expectations are balanced with the encouragement of playfulness, inquisitiveness and self reliance.' Guy Claxton in 'Wise -Up' 'In high performing schoolsTeachers feel invigorated, challenged, professionally engaged, and empowered just because they are there.' Margaret Arbuckle US educator 'It is strange perhaps to realize that most people have a desire to love their organizations. They love the purpose of their school....They fall in love with the identity that is trying to be expressed. They connect to the founding vision.' Margaret Wheatley and Kellner Rogers 'The guiding principle being put forward is that schools must be self directing.' John Goodland 'As the world becomes more inter-connected organizations that will truly excel in the future will be ( those)... that discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn.' Peter Senge 'The Fifth Top of Page Vision, Values and School Culture 'Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land amongst the stars.' Les Brown 'You see things and say 'Why'? But I see things and say 'Why not?' G.B Shaw 'It is not so much about to see what no one has seen before but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody sees.' Schopenhauer 'Thinking School; Thinking Nation' Singapore Educational Vision 'Love is saying yes to belonging' David Steindle -Rast ( Theologist) 'We can no longer stand at the end of something we visualized in detail and plan backwards from that

future. Instead we must stand at the beginning, clear in our mind, with a willingness to be involved in discovery... it asks that we participate rather than plan.' Margaret Wheatley and Kellner -Rogers. 'New frameworks are like climbing a mountain - the larger view encompasses rather than rejects the more restricted view.' Einstein 'the void in our society has been produced by the absence of values... we have no widespread belief in the value of participation. The rational system has made us fear standing out in any serious way.' John Ralston Saul 'Voltaire's Bastards'. 'Principles are deep fundamental truths... lightly interwoven threads running with exactness, consistency, beauty and strength through the fabric of life.' Steven Covey 92 'Education without values, as useful as it is, seems to make a man more clever devil.' C S Lewis 'A clever arrangement of bad eggs will never make a good omelet.' C S Lewis 'The heart and soul of school culture is what people believe, the assumptions they make about how school works.' Thomas Sergiovanni 'It is what teachers think, what teachers do, and what teachers are at the level of the classroom that ultimately shapes the kind of learning that young people get.' Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan 'Positive images of the future are a powerful and magnetic force... They draw us on and energize us, give us courage and will to take on important initiatives. Negative images of the future also have a magnetism. They pull the spirit downward in the path of despair..' William James 'A belief is not a belief until you can visualize it, unless you can create a picture of it in your minds eye, especially if you have no doubts that reality can be - or is - possible.' Hedley Beare Aust Educationalist 'Something magical happens when you bring together a group of people from different disciplines with a common purpose.' Mark Stefik Palo Alto Research Centre Fellow 'If we believe something does not exist unless we measure it, then we put aside: love, feeling, intuition, art and philosophy.' Peter Block The Answer to How is Yes.' Every person in the organization must change inside their hearts and minds, so that they themselves become principle centred.' Stephen Covey Business Philosopher 'We may never fully appreciate the role that not pursuing a dream plays in limiting people to disappointing careers and regret filled lives... 'I used to be so gutsy'... 'What happened?.'' Anon 'I think I don't regret a single excess of my responsive youth, I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace.' Henry James Top of Page The Change Process In reality 'learning' and 'change' are synonymous. Change is not an issue if it makes sense to and is 'owned' by those involved, rather than being arbitrarily imposed. An appreciation that change is a continual process, involving confusion and difficulty, is vital for future learners. 'It is not change that kills it is the transitions'. 'Some people think you are strong when you hold on. Others think it is when you let go'. Sylvia Robinson 'Too many decisions about changes are made by people untouched by the change process.' Peter Block, Business philosopher. 'How many times have we brought in an outsider to tell us what we already knew .' Peter Block

'Why follow the steps of another to find out where our dreams will lead us.' Peter Block 'To see the future you have to travel on the rough edge of experience.' Harriet Rubin Fast Company writer 'Things do not change; we change.' Thoreau 'Most people (by the time they have become adults ) can't change their minds because their neural pathways have become set... the longer neural pathways have been running one way the harder it is to rewire them.' Howard Gardner 'To the blind all things are sudden.' Old saying. 'Coming, ready or not!' Childhood game 'What worked yesterday is the gilded cage of tomorrow.' Peter Block Business, Philosopher Author of 'The Answer to No is Yes' 'You can plan events, but if they go according to plan they are not events.' John Berger Art Critic 'You can't jump a chasm in two bounds.' Chinese saying 'As the prostitute said, 'It's not the job it's the stairs.'' Anon 'To travel hopefully is better than to arrive.' R L Stevenson 'In a world of infinite choice people are struggling to figure out what to do.' Ralph Waldo Emerson 'Nothing was ever achieved without enthusiasm.' Ralph Waldo Emerson 'Innovation never happens as planned.' Gifford Pinchot Environmentalist 'Form follows function' Louis Henry Sullivan Architect 'Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds.' Einstein 'If a torrent sweeps a man against a boulder, you must expect him to scream, and you need not be surprised if the scream is sometimes a new theory.' R L Stevenson 'The price of change is measured by our will and courage, our persistence, in the face of difficulty.' Peter Block Business Philosopher 'If you believe that saying no will get you shot, well, what a fine way to go.' Peter Block 'You must be the change you want to see in the world. If blood is to be spilled to do it. Let it be our own.'. Mahatma Gandhi 'It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.' W Edward Deming 'If life is like a stage I want better lighting.' Anon 'It is our belief that schools in the main are entering the twenty-first century with structures and more importantly, underlying assumptions which are nineteenth century in origins, or relating to the world of the 1950 or 1960s.' Bowring -Carr and Burnham West UK Educators 'To cope with a challenging world, any entity must develop the capacity of shifting and changing - of developing new skills and attitudes; in short the capacity of learning.' A De Guess: 'The Living Company'. 'You cannot carry out fundamental changes without a certain amount of madness. In any case it comes from non - conformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It

took madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen.' Thomas Sankarra African Congress. In schools the main problem is not the absence of innovations but the presence of too many disconnected... piecemeal, superficially adorned projects... We are over our heads'. Fullan 2001 'Every change you see hides something else we want to do.' Rene Magritte ( Artist) 'Familiarity reduces the greatness of things.' Seneca 4BC-65BC 'Nothing evades our attention as persistently as that which we take for granted... the decades roll on without even a suggestion that perhaps the whole matter must be rethought' Marion Brady US Educator 'You can't force commitment, what you can do... You nudge a little here, inspire a little there, and provide a role model. Your primary influence is the environment you create.' Peter Senge 'It doesn't happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time'. Margery Williams 'Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes along.' Samuel Butler 'Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get.' Forest Gump's Mother 'We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary egg. We must hatch or go bad.' C S Lewis 'Passion mutates into procedures, into rules and roles. Instead of purpose, we focus on policies. Instead of being free to create, we impose constraints that squeeze the life out of us.' Margaret Wheatley and Kellner Rogers 'The future cannot be determined. It can only be experienced as it occurring. Life doesn't know what it will be until it notices what it has become.' Margaret Wheatley and Kellner - Rogers 'Age is a high price to pay for maturity.' Anon 'In order to transform schools successfully, educators need to navigate the difficult space between letting go of old patterns and grabbing on to new ones.' Deal 1990 'There is no risk less way to the future, we must choose which set of risks we wish to run.' Jay Ogilvy 'I have a feeling we are not in Kansas anymore.' Dorothy/ Wizard of Oz 'Men are asleep, they must die before they awake.' The Koran 'Custom lies on us heavy as frost'. William Wordsworth 'It takes less energy to be free and flowing than locked up in stress ... we learn by releasing and letting go, not by adding on.' William Bates Editor 'The road is better than the inn.' Cervantes 'The goal of strategic planning is to produce a stream of wise decisions... it also accepts the possibility that the final product may not resemble what was initially intended'. Patterson, Purkey and Parker 'I may have not got where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.' Douglas Adams 'Evolution is the most popular way we have for dealing with change.' Seth Godin Business Philosopher 'Evolution favors the survival of the wisest.' Jonas Salk

'Life is what happens when you are making other plans' John Lennon 'People don't want to feel stuck, they want to be able to change.' M C Richards Poet 'It is necessary; therefore it is possible.' C A Borghese 'Plan to be better tomorrow than today, but don't plan to be finished'. Carol Ann Tomlinson US Educator 'Crossing this river is difficult: it means leaving behind some of your own ideas' Dick Raymond 'When you start to abandoning your old beliefs or values... you may be stuck at the threshold for two or three years. Before moving on, you have to clear away your cherished beliefs.' Dick Raymond 'Start with the spirit of the rule- bending it to shape best practice. If the system tightens up, go to the letter of the rule and efficiently do what is necessary with as little energy as possible in a way that minimizes impact.' Keith Goldhammer Author. 'Characteristics of successful Principals. 'If a things not worth doing do it badly and get on with the important things.' Bruce Hammonds ( adapted from G K Chesterton) 'If a thing is worth doing it is worth doing it badly.' G K Chesterton. 'Sometimes a thing worth doing is worth overdoing'. David Letterman TV Host Top of Page Leadership and Teamwork The imposed bureaucratic 'top down' changes have resulted in school being 'over managed and under led.' Now is the time for courageous leaders, at all level, to emerge and add their 'voices' to the debate. There are no experts with 'the answer' - we will have to invent the future ourselves together as we go along. Shared leadership... is less like a an orchestra, where the conductor is always in charge, and more like a jazz band, where leadership is passed around ... depending on what the music demands at the moment and who feels most moved by the spirit to express the music.' Schlechy 2001 'Leaders... will be explorers, adventurers, trailblazers... leaders of leaders... They will gather around them people who have the future in their bones.' Rowan Gibson 'Re Thinking the Future.' 'The key to leadership is having people willing to follow you if only out curiosity to see what's going to happen.' Marc Anderson Founder of Netscape 'Systems of schooling are over managed and under led'. Thomas Sergiovanni 'We need to decide whether to give full service or lip service.' Peter Block 'My friends, you never need to bow to no one' Gandalf to the Hobbits (In schools) 'There is an emphasis on doing things right rather on doing the right things.' Thomas Sergiovanni 'It is hard to remember that you came to drain the swamp when you are up to your backside in crocodiles.' Saying 'The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you hear what is sounding outside. And only he who listens can speak..' Dag Hammarskjold UN 'Comparison, a great teacher told me, is the cardinal sin of modern life. It traps us in a game we can't win. Once we define ourselves in terms of others we lose the freedom to shape our own lives.' Jim Collins,

Author 'Built to Last' 'Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.' Buddha 53 BC -483 BC 'Self doubt combined with dignity is central to competent leadership... ( a leader)is able to recognize when he... is on the wrong track and perhaps identify the error by giving in to the need for complete reevaluation.' John Ralston Saul 'Voltaire's Bastards. 'The essence of good strategy is what has always been - insecurity and uncertainty.' John Ralston Saul 'Voltaire's Bastards 'There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth - not going all the way, and not starting.' Buddna ' the challenge ( for leadership) is to initiate a conversation about what's purpose and what's just practice. Preserve the best, reinvent the rest'... Hold your company hostage, declare your vision in a public way... Make decisions right or wrong .There is nothing worse than waffling'. Keith Yamashira US Business Consultant 'Education can change culture but only in so far as educators are transformed.' Parent School Board USA 'My job is creating an environment where teachers continually learn'. US Innovative Principal 'The question of 'How?' - more than any other question - looks for answers outside of us. It is an individual expression of our doubt.' Peter Block Business Philosopher 'Choosing to act on what matters is the choice to live a passionate existence, which is anything but controlled and predictable.' Peter Block Author 'Stewardship.' 'Leadership is a personal quest you undertake, based on mission that troubles your heart.' Harriet Rubin. 'Fast Company' Writer 'We have all worked with people who are entirely lacking in energy or are the walking black holes of human existence; they suck energy out of whoever they walk into. So the litmus test for all of is, 'Do I generate more energy when I walk into a room or when I walk out of it?'' Steve Farber, President of Extreme Leadership 'I think it is important for leaders to answer the question 'What's exciting about the work I /we really do here?' ..to expand it out to the higher meaning and purpose... To really articulate what we really do here, and why this place is cool.'' Steve Farber , President 'Extreme Leadership'. 'Leadership is a scary thing. That's why few people want to stand up to the plate.'... 'There are many people who want to be matadors, only to find themselves in the ring with 2,000 pounds of bull bearing down on them, and then discover that what they really wanted was to wear tight pants and hear the crowd roar' Steve Farber. 'Good directors, playwrights and leaders are enablers who make it possible for others to succeed by providing the means and opportunities for actions.' Anon 'Faced with the choice of buckling under by complying or 'doing a bit of rule bending' successful leaders get on with the latter.' Thomas Sergiovanni 'To be a leader is to be awake and alert, to be dissatisfied at all times.' Peter Koestenbaum Philosopher 'Remember a dead fish can float downstream but it takes a live one to swim upstream'. W C Fields 'It is easier to follow the leader than to lead the follower.' Anon

'All bottlenecks occur at the top.' Anon 'Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.' Dr Suess 'Leaders are 'canny outlaws', system benders, creative and responsible rule benders. They have to succeed because... the deck is stacked against creative, imaginative and entrepreneurial teachers.' Thomas Sergiovanni 'Most of what institutional leadership does today comes from what they thought we wanted and needed yesterday.' Peter Block, Author 'The Answer to How is Yes'. 'Win small, win early, win often.' Gary Hamel Leadership 'guru'. 'Life shrinks or expands in proportion to ones courage.' Anais Nin 'In fact, leaders... that go from good to great start not with 'where' but with 'who'. They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats... first the people, then the direction'. Jim Collins 'We need to make hope practical and despair less convincing as a central contribution from adults to young people.' Jaon Kenwg 'The human being is a walking paradox. We want to be free, completely individual on one hand, and we want to belong on the other hand. We want to be part of a flock but at the same time, you want to be you,' Kjell and Jonas 'Leaders... appeal to the heart... with people's deepest, heartfelt hopes. What are these hopes? Humans have a fundamental longing to believe we are successful in what we do - our need to achieve. Educators are typically denied this sense of success. Bombarded with too many state, national, and district standards for students to master... teachers are often unclear as to what they are supposed to accomplish'. Rick Dufor 2004 'This is a dreary era. Those who know about education have no power; those who have the power know little or nothing about education' Marion Brady US Educator 'The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizen, to put down dissent.' H L Menken 'It is one of life's great ironies: schools are in the business of teaching and learning, yet they are terrible at learning from one another. If they ever discover how to do this, their future is assured.' Fullan 2001 'I will release you to be creatively crazy and wonderful for these students... We will do whatever it takes.' Lorraine Monro Author 'Nothings Impossible' 'Hire Rembrandt to do the painting and don't tell him how to paint.' Anon 'The leader lays down the melody line and encourages individual band members to improvise around them.' Bradley Porten US Educationalist 'If you are going to skate on thin ice, tap dance, and go down in style.' Bryce Courtenay 'Leaders need to have clear answer to the question 'What do we believe in? and be equally clear about... 'How do you translate your beliefs into actions?' Bowring Carr and Burnham West 'Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.' Anon

'Alice came to a fork in the road. 'Which one will I take?' she asked. 'Where do you want to go?' responded the Cheshire Cat. 'I don't know Alice answered. 'Then', said the cat, 'It doesn't matter.'' Alice in Wonderland 'Power can be taken, but not given. The process of taking is empowerment itself.' Gloria Steinem US Feminist ( We need) 'leadership that is tough enough to demand a great deal from everyone, and leadership that is tender enough to encourage the heart.' Thomas Sergiovanni Leadership for the Schoolhouse 'It is an injustice, a grave evil and disturbance of the right order for a large and higher organization to abrogate to itself functions which can be performed more efficiently by smaller and lower bodies.' Papal Encyclical 'make no little plans. They have no magic to stir man's blood... make big plans. Aim high in hope and work.' Daniel H Burnham 'It is time for us to release ourselves from simplistic and ineffective prescriptions; the time to dream is upon us.' Carl Glickman There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.' W C Fields 'The true leader senses and transforms the needs of followers.' James McGregor Burns If we want to help people change, I s important that we don't push or pull them - just walk together.' 'Aquarian Conspiracy.' 'A team is a mosaic' Charles Williams 'Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex and more violent. It takes a genius- and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction,' E E Schumacher 'The best leaders are like outstanding samurai warriors in the sense that they engage themselves fully in the tasks at hand without being distracted by what might go wrong. Warren Bennis called this 'The Wallenda Factor' - putting ones energy into walking life's various wires without concern for the outcome'. Farson and Keyes. 'Decisions of the head rather than the heart are then ones we come to regret.' Patricia Weenolsen Psychologist 'When we are doing something we're passionate about, failure becomes a non-issue... Pursuit of a dream rarely leads to regrets... Too many of those with unrealized aspirations have set them aside due to fear of failure' Farson and Keyes. 'Nothing happens until someone does something.' Steve Farke Leadership Guru No more prizes for building the ark .Prizes only for predicting rain.' Anon Leadership is needed to assemble a team of renegades- people with the right mix of passion and courage to be willing to do things that haven't been done before.' Scott Lutz, CEO 'Never look down to test the ground before taking the next step; only he who keeps his eye on the far horizon will find the right road.' Dag Hammarskjold UN Top of Page Teaching and Learning For too long schools have had to comply with endless bureaucratic top down edicts, confusing curriculums

and associated accountability demands which have taken the focus away from learning and teaching. As these imposed technocratic systems falter it is now time for creative teachers to also add their voices to the debate. 'It's about teaching and it's about time.' Book Title 'we know at lot more now than the 'last time around'- the 1960s and 1970s - about how to work for smart schools... ' 'The smart school finds it's foundation in a rich and evolving set of principles about human thinking and learning.' David Perkins, 'Smart Schools.'. 'education ultimately depends on what happens in classrooms... between teachers and learners. That is fundamental.'... 'I hope that teachers will discover the optimism and direction to combat the energy draining pressures and frustrations of most educational settings.' David Perkins, 'Smart Schools.' 'Do not confine your children to your own learning for they were born in another time.' Hebrew Proverb 'Every parent's deepest wish is that their children are self sufficient, happy, and able to live a full life.' Peter Block 'To be a teacher you must be a prophet - because you are trying to prepare people for a world thirty to fifty years into the future.' Gordon Brown MIT 'Smart people don't learn... because they have too much invested in proving what they know and avoiding being seen as not knowing.' Chris Agyris 'The excitement of learning separates youth from old age. As long as you are learning you're not old.' Rosalyn Sussman Yalow US Medical Physicist 'The world cannot afford to lose the talents of half it's people if we are to solve the many problems that beset us.' Rosalyn Sussman Yalow US Medical Physicist 'Old age is compulsory, wisdom is optional.' Anon 'You must learn day by day, year by year, to broaden your horizons. The more things you love, the more things you are interested in, the more you enjoy, the more you are indignant about.' Ethyl Barrymore Actress 'Teachers must be encouraged - I almost said 'freed', to pursue an education that strives for depth of understanding.' Howard Gardner 'teachers and administrators sleepwalk through their responsibilities, dulled and discouraged by the endless pressures and problems.' David Perkins 'Smart Schools.' 'Until recently, education has had it backwards, caring little for the teacher... and enormously about the content. Yet it is a gifted teacher who can infect a generation with the excitement of learning.' Aquarian Conspiracy 'Education must develop in youth the capabilities for engaging in intense concentrated involvement in an activity.' James Coleman 1977 'My education was a prolonged and concerted attack on my individuality' Neil Crofts Author Authenticity 'I was born exited' Mark Twain 'Learning is a matter of intensity not elapsed time.' Tom Peters , 'Re - Imagine' 'There is a road from the eye to the head that does not go through the intellect.' G K Chesterton

'We must give more attention to the interplay between the science of teaching - pedagogy - and the art of teaching... A teacher must be anchored in pedagogy and blend imagination, creativity and inspiration into the teaching learning process to ignite a passion for learning in student.' Peyton Williams, President ASCD 2003 'We can whenever and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children... we already know more than we need to know in order to do that.' Ron Edmonds Educator 'Having no alternative we were born creative.' Aquarian Conspiracy 'Human beings start out as butterflies and end up in cocoons.' Anon 'Unfortunately schools are no help because they teach us not to make connections... There should be a few people at least... pulling things together.' Edward Hall Anthropologist 'When Abraham Maslow asked a college class whether anyone had expectations of greatness, no one responded. 'Who else then', he replied dryly.' In 'Aquarian Conspiracy'. 'How can you do new math with an old math mind.' Charlie Brown /Peanuts 'The first problem for all of us, men and woman, is not to learn, but to unlearn.' Gloria Steinem US Feminist 'Teachers who do a bad job with old tools are likely to do a worse job with strange new tools.' Anon Educator 'The young child approaching a new subject or anew problem is like the scientist operating at the edge of his chosen field.' Jerome Bruner 'Good teaching is forever being on the cutting edge of a child's competence'. Jerome Bruner 86 'The teacher's role in discussion is to keep it going along fruitful lines - be moderating, guiding, correcting and arguing like one more students.' Mortimer Adler, The Paideia Proposal 'what a child can do today with assistance, she will be able to do by herself tomorrow'. Lev Vygotsky. 'The metaphor ( coaching) with sports is meant quite seriously... the coach stands back , observes the performance, and provides guidance. The coach applauds strengths, identifies weaknesses, points up principles, offers guiding and often inspiring imagery, and decides what kind of practice to emphasize.' David Perkins 'Smart Schools.' 'Expert tutors often do not help very much. They hang back letting the student manage as much as possible. And when things go awry, rather than help directly they raise questions: 'Could you explain this step again? How did you... ?' Mark Lepper Stanford Psychologist 'The difference between reform and transformation is as if we have been trying to attach wings to a caterpillar... it is high time we freed ourselves of attachment to old forms and eased the flight of the unfettered human mind.' 'Aquarian Conspiracy' 'No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in their mode of thought.' John Stuart Mills. 'Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.' Douglas Adams, Author 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy' 'To change your reality you have to change your inner thoughts.' David Bohm Physicist 'One of the saddest things about US education is that the wisdom of our most successful teachers is lost to

the profession when they retire.' John Dewey I discovered the brutally simple motivation behind the development of impositions of all systematic instructional programmes and tests - lack of trust that teachers can teach and students can learn.' Frank Smith 'Insult to Intelligence' 'The too soft teacher reinforces the learner's natural wish to retreat and stay safe... the teacher must know when to let the learner struggle... we must not be spared our learning. Risk brings its own rewards.' Aquarian Conspiracy 'In every story I have heard, good teachers share one trait: a strong sense of personal identity infuses their work'. Parker Palmer 'Courage to Teach'. 'All true thoughts have been thought through already a thousand times; but to make them truly yours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.' Goethe 'Time given to thought is the greatest timesaver of all'. Norman Cousins 'The trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming? Somerset Maughan 'Don't just do something, stand there.' Zen saying 'Some people are making such thorough plans for rainy days that they aren't enjoying today's sunshine.' William Feather US Author 'Only the mediocre are always at their best.' Somerset Maughan 'Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we were never able to do.' Peter Senge ' The biggest thing about being someone is imajunation. Before you can be something, you must imajun it.' Fifth Grader quoted by S Papert 'each individual brain is more like a unique and unimaginably dense rain forest, teeming with growth and decay. It is less like a programmed machine than an ecological habitat that mimics the evolution of life itself.' Prof Edleman Nobel Prize winner 'Learning is spontaneous, unpredictable, fun, passionate, dangerous.' Bowring - Carr and Burnham West UK Educators 'A child's attitude towards everything is an artist's attitude.' Willa Cather US Novelist 'Art should simplify.' Willa Cather US Novelist 'We don't have to make human beings smart. They are born smart. All we have to do is stop doing things that make them stupid.' John Holt 'Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves'. Piaget 'Morpheus: 'I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one who must walk through it' The Matrix (Film) 'School improvement is most surely and thoroughly achieved when teachers engage in frequent, continuous and increasingly concrete talk about teaching practices... capable of distinguishing one practice and it's virtue from another.' Judith Warren Little Education Researcher

Of a gifted teacher (she) 'has an unfailing heart and eye for magical classrooms and who loses sleep over any sliver of work at less than the highest quality'. Carol Ann Tomlinson 'The Differentiated Classroom ' The key is to replace a belief in 'experts' who 'deliver' knowledge of what good teaching is to workshops with communities of teachers who learn through ongoing collaboration and practice.' Dennis Sparks Nat Staff Dev Centre (US) 'The drive to learn is as strong as the sexual drive. It begins earlier and lasts longer' Edward T Hall ( Anthropologist) 'Out of the questions of students come most of the creative ideas and discoveries'. Ellen Langer 'To be a teacher you must be a prophet - because you are trying to prepare people for a world thirty to fifty years into the future.' Gordon Brown former Dean MIT 'Many children struggle in schools... because the way they are being taught is the way is incompatible with the way they learn.' Peter Senge 'If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it.' Mao Zedong 'A teacher's failure to create an intellectually reflective, engagement for learning is not simply malpractice but it is immoral particularly for students who cannot withdraw.' John Goodland Educator 'Most learning disabilities are actually teaching disabilities on the part of the school.' Retired Teacher I believe babies are born as innovative personalities... But our social processes work to stamp out exploration and questioning.' Jay Forrestor Prof MIT 'All human beings are born with unique gifts. The healthy functioning community depends on realizing the capacity to develop each gift'. Peter Senge 'Learning to use your intuition is learning to be your own teacher. Vaughan 'Being 'educated' means knowing how little I really know.' Carol T Lloyd 'As your island of knowledge grows, so does your shoreline of wonder.' Anon 'Good teaching is forever being on the cutting edge of a child competence'. Jerome Bruner 'Let the main object... to seek and to find a method of instruction, by which teachers may teach less, but learners learn more.' John Amos Comenius 'I cured the patient but he died' is as logical as saying 'I taught the pupil, but she did not learn.' Bowring -Carr and John Burnham West UK Educators 'The open teacher ... establishes rapport and resonance, sensing unspoken needs, conflicts, hopes and fears. Respecting the learners autonomy, the teacher spends more time helping to articulate the urgent questions than demanding the right answers.' Aquarian Conspiracy 'Progressive white teaches seem to say to their black students 'Let me help you find your voice. I promise not to criticize one note as you search for your song'. But the black teachers say 'I've heard your song loud and clear. Now I want to teach you to harmonize with the rest of the world.'' Delpit 'The Silenced Dialogue' 'teachers who respond to their children's message, and not to their mistakes, appeared to help their children more.' John Smith Warwick Elley NZ Educators 'The open teacher helps the learner discover patterns and connections, fosters strange new possibilities, and is a midwife to ideas.' Aquarian Conspiracy

'We trust the teacher who gives us stress, pain or drudgery when we need it. And we resent the teacher who... takes us into deep water when we are frightened of the shallow'. Aquarian Conspiracy 'Come to the edge', he said. They said, 'We are afraid' 'Come to the edge', he said They came He pushed them... and they flew. Guillaume Apollinaire Poet Before we choose our tools and techniques we must choose our dreams and values.' Anon 'If you want to make a mark you have to take a risk.' Terrance E Deal 'After the final no there comes a yes and on that yes the future of the world depends' Wallace Stevens 'Studies of high school gradates rarely find any correlation between recognition in high school and recognition thereafter... The term s are too different. What worked in high school seldom works later... Those not tested by setbacks when young may never learn how to rebound from defeat.' Farson and Keyes 'Whoever makes the Most Mistakes Wins.' 'Most schools do a remarkably poor job of recognizing and rewarding future achievers... The standards of success in school have very little to do with standards thereafter' Farson and Keyes 'Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins.' What did predict economic success was a willingness to take chances, most educational systems honor those who play it safe... The ones who do take chances have a hard time in school and are often penalized for their independent ways'. Farson and Keyes. 'We are creating a one size fits all system that needlessly brands many young people as failures, when they might thrive if offered a different education whose progress was measured differently. Paradoxically we're embracing standardized tests just when the economy is eliminating standardized jobs.' Robert Reich Former US Labor Secretary. 'There are two reasons why people learn one because someone said you can't and the other because someone said you can.' Howard Wilson Retired NZ Principal 'The learner's attitude is thus an essential factor to determine the direction of his learning, whether he shall learn to do or not learn to do.' William Kilpatrick, Prof of Education 1917 Top of Page Curriculum Schools have been trying to implement impossible curriculums based on a technocratic accountability model. The future demands students who retain a love of learning - students with their talents, dreams and passions developed. To achieve these demands a new appreciation of what a curriculum for the future should be. 'If we don't encourage others to find their own meaning, their own voice, we will never be able to sustain our own. Freedom comes from following you own voice not following another's' Peter Block 'There is, it seems, more concern about whether children learn the mechanics of reading and writing than grow to love reading and writing; learn about democracy than have practice in democracy; hear about knowledge... rather than gain experience in personally constructing knowledge... see the world narrowly, simple and ordered, rather than broad complex and uncertain'. Vitto Perrone, 'Letter to Teachers' 'There is something about the Procrustean bed about schools; some children are left disabled by being hacked about to fit the curriculum; some are stretched to take up the available space, others less malleable

are labeled as having special educational needs.' Chris Bowring-Carr and John Burnham West 'The constant need to move on, and to document progress, in normal schools means that education tends to be cut up into bite sized task..' Guy Claxton in 'Wise -Up' 'Teaching is impossible. If we simply add together all that is expected of a typical teacher... the sum makes greater demands than any individual can possibly fulfill'. Lee Shulman Stanford Univ 'If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?' Gloria Steinem US Feminist 'Could it be that the current education reforms have not yet fully dealt with what teaching and learning are all about? In a word, yes.' Peyton Williams ASCD President 2003 'We must beware of needless innovation, especially when guided by logic.' Winston Churchill 'How many students ... were rendered callous to ideas, and how many lost the impetus to learn because of the way in which learning was experienced by them?' John Dewey Many school focus too much on achievement... (they need) to create opportunities for young people develop their learning muscles and their learning stamina through working on real problems... to reflect on and manage their own learning.' Guy Claxton 'Do not teach too many subjects and what you teach, teach thoroughly.' Alfred North Whitehead 'You have to take enough time to get kids deeply involved in something they can think about in lots of different ways,' Howard Gardner 'The real process of education should be the process of learning to think through the application of real problems.' John Dewey 'All the arts are brothers, each one throwing a light unto the others.' Voltaire 'Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.' e e cummings us poet 'Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that does not mean we deserve to conquer the universe.' Kurt Vonnegut Jnr Author 'What we want to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.' G B Shaw 'The first people had questions, and they were free. The second people had answers, and they became enslaved.' Wind Eagle American Indian Chief 'Standardization, the great ally of mediocrity,y wins out over imagination.' Sergiovanni 'The problem is fundamental... It is as if a secret committee, now lost to history, has made a study of children and, having figured out what the greatest number were least disposed to declared that all of them should do it.' Tracey Kidder 'Everything depends on the quality of the experience which is had.' John Dewey 'The central problem of an education based on experience is to select the kind of present experiences that live fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experience.' John Dewey 'Of course schools should be accountable- but accountable for what?... I would like to see schools accountable for developing students who have a love of learning - who are continually growing in wisdom and in their ability to function effectively( and happily) in the world.' Judy Yero www.teachersmind.com 'We must not entrust the future of our children to habit.' Judy Yero

.Be careful what you give children, for sooner or later you are sure to get it back.' Barbara Kingsolver 'A teacher cannot build a community of learners unless the voices and lives of the students are an integral part of the curriculum.' Peterson 94 'The curriculum is to be thought of in terms activity and experience rather than knowledge to be acquired and facts to be stored.' Haddow Report UK 1931 'The main function of the school... lies in offering opportunities and an environment in which a child can explore freely, along many lines, and create in many media. In doing he will utilize his natural instinctive energies in the acquiring of skills and the building of interests.' Froebel Publication 1949 'Much of the material presented in schools strikes students as alien, if not pointless.' Howard Gardner 'the intuitive, the expressive, the un-measurable, the intensely personal have never found a satisfactory place in the curriculum, in assessment, in the publics esteem.' Hedley Beare Prof of Educ Melbourne ( Because) it is the intellect which dominates schooling ... the specifically soul making subjects- literature, drama, music, the visual arts- are progressively 'de-souled' as the child progresses through school' Dr Bernie Neville Aust Educator 'how we picture ourselves, the language we use about ourselves and our family, the stories we tell about ourselves or which we allow others to tell, whom we compare ourselves with, what we think we will become, how we define our own universe, these are the raw material from which we spin our web of personal mythology'. Hedley Beare Aust Educator 'Teaching which ignores the realities of children will be rejected as surely as any graft which attempts to ignore the body's immune system.' Howard Gardner 'Treat people as if they were what they might be, and you will help them become capable of being.' Goethe 'We should train ourselves not to ask 'How intelligent he/she is?' but 'Which intelligence doe he/she have most of?.' Charles Handy 'Thinking precedes literacy and numeracy but nowhere in the curriculum is that recognized.' Mc Gavin, Glasgow University 'We have to... immerse ourselves in interactive, real life, complex experiences out of which we can process new lives' Caine and Caine 97 'We should see schools as safe arenas for experimenting with life, for discovering our talents... for taking responsibity for tasks and others people, for learning how to learn... and for exploring our beliefs about life and society.' Charles Handy 'If we wish to present ourselves to the wider world as New Zealanders then we must be able to listen to our own voices, and trace our own footsteps; we must have our own heroes and heroines inspire us; we must persist with building our won culture with the ingredients close to hand and not import theses ingredients ready made from abroad'. The late Michael King NZ Historian. 'Nature is one. It is not divided into physics, chemistry, quantum mechanics.' Albert Szent-Gyorgi Top of Page Creativity We are leaving the Industrial Age and entering an Age of Ideas and Creativity , an age where individual and shared talent will be the most important assets. Schools as Tom Peter says in his wonderful book 'ReImagine': 'Are a thinly disguised conspiracy to quash creativity'. 'Talent', he says, 'is everything. And the

production of talent is significantly dependent on schools'. Or it ought to be. 'Creators love creations before they exist'. Robert Fritz 'I believe I experience creativity at every moment of my life.' Henri Bergson 'Some people see things as they are and ask 'why'? I see things as they have never been and ask 'why not'?' George Bernard Shaw 'Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.' Anon 'Life is creative. It makes it up as it goes along.' Margaret Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers Authors 'A Simpler Way' 'Creativity may have killed a few cats, but evolution certainly eliminated many more incurious ones.' Guy Claxton in 'Wise Up' 'Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself you bloody well better find a way that is going to be interesting.' Katherine Hepburn 'To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist today.' Samuel Beckett 'When error holds so much power, play disappears. Creativity ceases. Margaret Wheatley and Kellner Rogers 'Be a judge of children's creativity - but not too good a judge!' Elwyn S Richardson NZ Pioneer Educator Author 'In the Early World' Life is not neat, parsimonious, nor elegant. Life seeks order in a disorderly way.' Margaret Wheatley and Kellner Rogers 'To live a creative life we must lose our fear of being wrong.' Joseph Chillons Pearce 'Orville Wright did not have a pilots license: don't be afraid to bend, or break the rules'. Richard Tait Grand Pooh Bah , Cranium. 'Professionals built the Titanic - an amateur built the Ark.' Anon 'Although prepared for martyrdom, I prefer it to be postponed.' Winston Churchill 'When Michelangelo looked at the block of marble he was to carve he looked beyond the outside and saw the shape of the statue he was about to create. He could see the real beauty hidden within... ' Valerie Stewart, 'The David Factor'. 'The human imagination... has great difficulty in living within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy. It dreams like a dog in it's basket, of hares in the open.' John Berger Art Critic 'To invent something you have to be removed from the world. In order to have liberty to imagine something better, you need to step outside for a while.' Bruce Mau Designer 'There is no hope for any speculation that does not look absurd at first glance.' Niels Bohr Physicist. 'Every important idea in science sounds strange at first.' Thomas Kuhn Scientist 'Most of the rules in society tend to restrict creativity to a safe level.' Sting (Musician) 'Great thought reduced to practice become great art.' William Hazlett '...the artist treats intuition and nuance with respect and reminds us that a little madness resides in all of us.

Artists give voice to feelings, to conflict, to the prism of human experience,' Peter Block, Business Philosopher. 'Creativity is born of chaos, even if it is somewhat difficult to glimpse the possibilities in the midst of the confusion' Charles Handy 'You have to stand outside the box to see how the box can be re-designed.' Charles Handy 'Passion is born of vague hopes.' Charles Handy 'All truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Second it is opposed. Third it is accepted as being self evident.' Arthur Schopenhauer 'If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.' Thoreau 'Don't worry about people stealing your ideas/If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.' Howard Aitken I don't give a damn for any man who can spell a word only one way..' Mark Twain 'Marge, I can't wear a pink shirt to work. Everybody wears a white shirt. I'm not popular enough to wear white shirt.' Homer Simpson 'A hunch is creativity trying to tell you some thing' Frank Capra '..centres of creativity tend to at the intersections of different cultures, where beliefs, lifestyles and knowledge mingle and allow individuals to see new combinations of ideas with greater ease.' Mihaly Czikszentmihaly 'The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a creative mind to spot a wrong question.' Anthony Jay 'Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is?' Frank Scully 'Creative minds are rarely tidy.' Abbey Plaque 'innovators are seldom easy to be around. The most creative members of an organization can be irascible, annoying, touchy, intolerant, prickly, self aggrandizing. Their lack of tact offends coworkers. It also makes them willing to speak up when other hold their tongues. What comes out of their mouths is often quite valuable, if not always easy to hear.' Farson and Keyes, 'Whoever Makes the most Mistakes Wins.' 'If we learn to domesticate creativity- that is enhance it rather than deny it in our culture- we can increases the number of creative persons... as it was in the Renaissance, Elizabethan England, when civilization made great leaps forward.' John Gowan Educator. 'The creative person is overpowered, captive of and driven by a demon... They become our legendary heroes.' Carl Jung 'One of the marks of having a gift is to have the courage to use it.' Katherine Anne Porter US Novelist 'Human life itself may almost be pure chaos, but the work of the artist is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things that seem to be irreconcilable and put them together in a form to give them some kind of shape and meaning.' Katherine Anne Porter US Novelist Top of Page Powerful Learners

Students are born with a powerful desire to learn. Everything we do as parents and teachers must ensure that this powerful desire is kept alive. If there were to be one thing to be continually assessed it would be this desire... too many students leave with little to show for their time at school. Too many leave alienated and powerless. 'We are born trying to gain power over our environment. We live and die trying to figure out who we are; what life means; how to understand joy, pain, victory, and death; how we relate to each other; and why we are here. The disciplines we study- art music, literature, mathematics, science or philosophy- give us lenses... the skills... the power to use the understandings in meaningful ways.' Phenix 1986 'We should turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned.' John Holt 'In order for the brain to comprehend the heart must first listen.' David Perkins, 'Smart Schools.' 'To live our lives fully, to work whole heartedly, to refuse directly what we can't swallow, to accepts the mystery in all matters of meaning- this is the ultimate adventure.' Peter Block, Philosopher 'People see their own lives as stories; a lifelong story with a single hero or heroine... much contemporary unhappiness is due to the fact that people in high tech societies receive neither strong myths and stories from their culture nor the ability to construct their own... they lose the plot.' Guy Claxton in 'Wise -Up' 'Learning power comprises both literacy and numeracy, and is ultimately more fundamental than either of them.' Guy Claxton in 'Wise -Up' Underneath the visible problems with reading and writing lies the deeper problem of 'illearnacy': an acquired disabling of learning courage and learning initiative.' Guy Claxton in 'Wise-Up' 'One barrier... is the impoverishment of classroom language, the failure to cultivate a common vocabulary about inquiry, explanation, argument and problem solving. David Perkins 'Smart Schools.' 'Good questions work on us, we don't work on them. They are not a project to be completed but a doorway opening onto greater depth of understanding, actions that will take us into being more fully alive. Peter Block 'I will act as if what I do will make a difference.' William James 'An individual who stands out, or disagrees or takes risks is a danger to such systems and is effortlessly and, unconsciously sidelined.' John Ralston Saul 'Voltaire's Bastards.' 'Intelligence is knowing what to do when you don't know what to do.' Art Costa 'We have to learn to make our own way through a complex world without the benefit of an accepted trustworthy route map.' Guy Claxton in 'Wise -Up' 'Know how - can do'. 'Don't know how - but will give it a go.' Extended 'Place Makers Motto' by Bruce Hammonds 'It is amazing what ordinary people can do if they set out without preconceived notions.' Charles Kettering US Inventor 'When the going gets tough the tough get going!' Saying 'The germ of an idea doesn't make the sculpture that stands up... so the next stage is hard work' Csikszentmihalyi 'Nature of Insight'. 'It is what we think we know already that often prevents us from learning.' Calude Bernard, French Psychologist 1813-78

'Powerful learning strategies can most simply be thought of what we presently do for gifted and talented children. What works for them works just as well for 'at risk' students.' Henry M Levin Accelerated Schools Project. 'One in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.' Grateful Dead 'All learning begins when our comfortable ideas turn out to be inadequate.' John Dewey 'Wherever you are be there.' Ralph Waldo Emerson 'We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are.' Anais Nin Diarist 'Don't go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.' Ralph Waldo Emerson 'Destiny is not a matter of chance it is a matter of choice.' Anon 'Life is the path you beat while you walk it It's the walking that beats the path It is not the path that makes the walk'. Antonio Machardo Poet 'Eagles don't flock - you have to find them one at a time.' Ross Perot Businessman. 'I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.' Winston Churchill 'We must believe in ourselves as no one else will believe in us, we must match our expectations with the competence, courage and determination to succeed.' Rosalyn Sussman Yalow US Medical Physicist 'In order to act, you must be somewhat insane .A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.' Georges Clemenceau Premier of France 1917 'When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves he isn't a man of action.' Georges Clemenceau Premier of France 1917- 20 'You learn at your best when you have something you care about and can get pleasure in being engaged in.' Howard Gardner 'The drive to learn is as strong as the sexual drive. It begins earlier and lasts longer.' Edward Hall Anthropologist 'To be nobody - but - myself - in a world which is doing it's best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human can fight, and never stop fighting.' e e cumming us poet 'What gives people superiority at a task is true intention. That makes you attuned to everything.' Weiner Erhard 'If there is a way to do it better... find it!' Thomas Edison 'Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better'. Samuel Beckett 'You miss 100% of all the shots you never take,' Wayne Gretsky Ice Hockey Coach 'Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. You simply 'must do' things.' Ray Bradbury 'Getting the balance right between intuitive experimentation and conscious deliberation is vital. Think too little and you may be stuck with bad habits. Think too much and you may become paralyzed with self consciousness. Guy Claxton 'Wise Up' 'I have my faults but changing my tune is not one of them.' Samuel Beckett

'A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spend doing nothing.' George Bernard Shaw 'The major difference between the 'best' and the 'average' is that the 'best' get as much pleasure from practice as performance.' Ben Zander 'It takes a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.' Alfred North Whitehead. 'Education is knowing where to go to find out what you need to know; and its knowing how to use the information you get.' William Feather US Author 'Reason can answer questions, but imagination has to ask them.' Ralph Gerard 'Thinking is past experience guiding present actions.' William Kilpatrick Educator 1917 'The golden rule is that there are no golden rules' G B Shaw 'Te wao nui tane ( about giant NZ Kauri trees 'Standing out from the crowd') Maori saying 'People whose talents are not exploited become disenchanted and disruptive.' Sir Terrance Conran ( Decorator) 'Why don't we teach out children in school what they are? We should say to them, 'You are unique... you have the capacity for anything. You are a marvel.'' Charles Handy 'Talent comes with an individual name tag.' Charles Handy 'The mind aware of itself is a pilot... vastly freer than a passenger mind.' Marilyn Ferguson 'We have two strategies for coping; the way of avoidance or the way of attention.' Marilyn Ferguson 'You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.' Mark Twain 'To go faster you must slow down.' John Brunner Author 'Fear of knowing is very deeply a fear of doing.' Abraham Maslow 'It is not so important to have all the answers as to be hungry for them.' Carol Ann Tomlinson 'The Differentiated Classroom' 'If everyone is thinking alike then somebody is not thinking.' George S Paton 'In any work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts' Ralph Waldo Emerson. 'Plan to be better today, but don't ever plan to be finished' Carol Ann Tomlinson 'If poetry comes as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.' John Keats 'The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.' William James 'If necessity is the mother of invention what was papa doing?' Anon 'Fledgling skiers make the most progress when they are pushed outside their comfort zone, but not so far that they're sacred off the slopes altogether.' Ski Instructor 'Courage isn't lack of fear, after all, it's the ability to carry on despite the fear. General Omar Bradley called courage the 'capacity to carry on properly even when scared half to death.' Genuine risk takers not only have the guts to act in face of harrowing apprehension, they know how to harness fear's energy' Farson and Keyes, 'Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins.'

Fearing failure is not necessarily a bad thing. Excitement is the flip side of fear. Any ten year old on a skateboard knows that exhilaration is primarily fear transformed... Fear begins as a negative sensation but can end on a positive note in the form of excitement, elation, exhilaration, euphoria, even ecstasy. Enthusiasm is close cousin. So are intensity and concentration.' Farson and Keyes 'Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins. 'Winning and losing aren't all they're cracked up to be, but the trip to the destination is.' John Wooden UCLA Basketball Coach 'the Samurai were fierce warriors. What is less known is how much of their thoughts were based on achieving victory by avoiding thoughts of victory. They knew that focusing on the outcome of a contest made defeat more likely... to achieve victory by becoming fully absorbed in the process that would lead them there.' Farson and Keyes 'Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins. Winning is not everything - but making the effort to win was... If you can't accept losing, you can't win' Vince Lombardi Basketball coach. 'By not trying too hard, we avoid learning what our true potential is, and having to fulfill it. Doing our best can be deeply threatening. It forces us to consider what we're actually capable of accomplishing. Once we learn the lesson we can't unlearn it. Our true potential becomes a shining light we can follow...' Farson and Keyes 'Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins'. 'An exaggerated fear of losing is the ugly sibling of an over emphasis on winning. Both cloud the mind.... The players most urged to victory by mothers and fathers proved to be the most cautious. Those whose parents cheered but didn't push them were then ones most likely to take chances -and win'. Farson and Keynes 'Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins.' 'I worry that whoever thought up the term 'quality control' thought if we didn't control it, it would get out of hand.' Lily Tomlin Singer 'Looking at students work brings you face to face with your values.' Daniel Barron US Nat Reform Faculty. 'To attract joy and create more success, try doing less but doing it with more enthusiasm.' Phillip Humbert www.philliphumbert.com 'A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men.' Roald Dahl ( Author) 'To develop a complete mind: study the science of art; study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.' Leonardo da Vinci 'Most advances in science comes from when a person for one reason or another is forced to change fields.' Peter Burdon 'We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as in insoluble problems. John W Gardner 'Imagination is more important than knowledge.' Albert Einstein 'Life is a series of lessons that have to be understood.' Thomas Carlyle 'A fear of foolishness keeps us from painting the pictures we would like to paint, composing the poems, courting the lovers, making the friends, pursuing the jobs, starting the businesses. Those who know this, can confront and transcend their fear of ridicule, are usually in a strong position... Every path breaker has looked foolish, and been humiliated, yet society depends on them utterly... Only those who are willing to risk looking foolish can invent a breakthrough.' Farson and Keyes 'Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins' 'The best work we do is on the verge of embarrassing us, always.' Arthur Miller Playwright.

'A fear of foolishness can never be conquered completely. Nor should it be... Deep down shyness is a secret most charismatic people have.' Farson and Keyes 'We are all afraid. That's the thing that unites all truly successful people: fear, fear of failing, fear of criticism, fear of letting down the tea in some way. That why they try so hard, that's why they pay attention to detail and try to get every possible duck in a row. It's fear'. Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's Speech Writer. Ana te toka te moana Live like a rock in the sea He akinga na nga tai washed by the tides Maori saying 'It is not the biggest, the brightest or the best that will survive, but those who adapt the quickest.' Charles Darwin 'The secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and a thousand things well.' Henry Walpole 'I have learnt to say the word impossible with great caution.' Verner von Braun

"The objective of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives." Robert Maynard Hutchins