A couple of years ago Matt Reeves, then my assistant principal, read us this the day before school, and I offer it now as a back to school thought:"I have come to a frightening conclusion.
I am the decisive element in the classroom.
It is my personal approach that creates the climate.
It is my daily mood that makes the weather.
As a teacher I possess 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."
- Haim Ginott, Teacher and Child: A Book for Parents and Teachers
(New York: Macmillan, 1972), 15.
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