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.

People have to live by rules in the world. Why do we pretend in school that they don't?

I cannot change the world, but I do not have to conform.

I believe the more difficult a child is, the more I want that child. But I won't take a child until the parent brings him to us. So it is just the opposite - we get the ones that no one else will take. We get sawdust, and we have to make boards out of it.

I was very, very unhappy with even the so-called very elite schools. The one thing I've always done every day with my children is to watch what they do at school, and I was always a bit unhappy with the academic program. It was a kind of hit and miss.

I think what we've done is given children a lot of things that they didn't ask for instead of what they do want.

Readers are leaders. Thinkers succeed.