"A teacher is a person who never says anything once"
About this Quote
Teaching, Nemerov suggests, is the art of strategic repetition dressed up as revelation. “A teacher is a person who never says anything once” lands like a wry compliment and a gentle jab: educators aren’t just conveyors of facts, they’re professional re-framers, returning to the same idea from new angles until it finally takes root in someone else’s mind.
The line works because it compresses an entire classroom reality into a single, slightly absurd absolute. “Never” and “once” exaggerate the point to comic effect, but the exaggeration carries truth: learning is slow, uneven, and social. Students arrive with different backgrounds, moods, and defenses; the teacher’s job is to keep speaking into that shifting weather. Repetition becomes care. It’s also survival. Anyone who’s taught knows the surreal experience of offering what feels like a perfectly clear explanation, only to watch it dissolve on contact. So you say it again. And again. In different words. With a story. With an example. With a metaphor you hope won’t embarrass you later.
As a poet, Nemerov is tuned to how meaning changes with placement and cadence. The subtext is that pedagogy is closer to poetry than we admit: the same content can be re-issued endlessly, and each iteration can land differently. There’s also a small warning inside the joke. Repetition can be devotion, but it can also slide into rote performance. The best teachers, like good poets, repeat without merely repeating.
The line works because it compresses an entire classroom reality into a single, slightly absurd absolute. “Never” and “once” exaggerate the point to comic effect, but the exaggeration carries truth: learning is slow, uneven, and social. Students arrive with different backgrounds, moods, and defenses; the teacher’s job is to keep speaking into that shifting weather. Repetition becomes care. It’s also survival. Anyone who’s taught knows the surreal experience of offering what feels like a perfectly clear explanation, only to watch it dissolve on contact. So you say it again. And again. In different words. With a story. With an example. With a metaphor you hope won’t embarrass you later.
As a poet, Nemerov is tuned to how meaning changes with placement and cadence. The subtext is that pedagogy is closer to poetry than we admit: the same content can be re-issued endlessly, and each iteration can land differently. There’s also a small warning inside the joke. Repetition can be devotion, but it can also slide into rote performance. The best teachers, like good poets, repeat without merely repeating.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teaching |
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