When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed.

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.

What all good teachers have in common, however, is that they set high standards for their students and do not settle for anything less.

An error means a child needs help, not a reprimand or ridicule for doing something wrong.

Parents often brag about the amount of money spent per child, but I think, perhaps ironically, those great monies that are spent - I call it putting a band-aid on a hemorrhage.

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.

Death cannot put the brakes on a good dream.