I have great faith in 'ordinary parents.' Who has a child's welfare more at heart than his ordinary parent? It's been my experience that when parents are given the skills to be more helpful, not only are they able to use these skills, but they infuse them with a warmth and a style that is uniquely their own.

To be himself, one neeeds to be free from the pressure of evaluative praise

I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my personal approach that creates the climate. It's my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess tremendous power to make a student's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a student humanized or de-humanized.

If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.

Misbehavior and punishment are not opposites that cancel each other - on the contrary they breed and reinforce each other.

Teenagers crave independence. The more self-suf-ficient we make them feel, the less hostile they are toward us.

Many teenagers are tormented by terrors they deem private and personal. They do not know that their anxieties and doubts are universal.