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Teachers need to be comfortable talking about feelings. This is part of teaching emotional literacy - a set of skills we can all develop, including the ability to read, understand, and respond appropriately to one's own emotions and the emotions of others.

The basic premise that children must learn about emotions is that all feelings are okay to have; however, only some reactions are okay.

A kid should be told that you can have feelings.

When I was growing up, I wasn't taught how to feel or communicate feelings.

Kids' views are often just as valid as the teachers'. The best teachers are the ones that know that.

Teachers need to feel they are trusted. They must be allowed some leeway to use their imagination; otherwise, teaching loses all sense of wonder and excitement.

I am sure it is one's duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one's own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this.

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

A big part of teaching is being emphatic. Maybe I'm right or wrong, but part of my approach was that when I said something, the kids understood exactly what I meant and what I wanted.