If you want your children to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others.

Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression.

Friends are like television. Some are like PBS and always asking for money. Others are like the news, with sad tales to tell everyday, some are like that one station with the foreign language; you don't understand a word of it but you listen and watch.

I've come to the frightening conclusioin that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child'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 child humanized or de-humanized.

If you want your children to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others.

Parents often talk about the younger generation as if they didn't have anything to do with it.