Teaching children to read was one thing; keeping them interested in reading was something else.

There isn't a certain time we should set aside to talk about God. God is part of our every waking moment

Don't try to fix the students, fix ourselves first. The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior. When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed.

One of the things that even wealthy children need is an education, and I think the problems I saw really have nothing to do with economics. So I was unhappy with what my own children were getting even in the better schools, and then I was seeing so many children here recruited for failure.

There is a brilliant child locked inside every student.

One night my son was downstairs studying, and he had been up so late all that week, and my husband said, "I feel so sorry for him." I said, "Look, if he's going to become a surgeon" - he is studying to be a doctor - "he's going to have his hard times. I feel sorry for him too, but if he lives in this world he's going to have more hard times. He's going to stay up some more nights." I think we can't shield them from the hard times, even though we'd like to. I say to the children that I teach and to my own - I can't test the ground for you and tell you that's a safe step there.

Everything works when the teacher works. It's as easy as that, and as hard.