The light in children’s eyes — There’s a spirit inside every child and every day it seems to change because they’re interested in new things and in different things and it has kept me so fully alive.

Never being afraid to learn — As we’ve learned more about the brain, how it grows and how it develops, we have proven how important the early years are. In that we’ve talked about literacy and we talk about ABC’s, we talk about numbers, and if we don’t understand it really deeply, then we get caught up in the trap that earlier is better and it’s not.

Keeping the light alive — Edison was one of the ones that they talked about and how it was always the mother in the family who said you know what, this child has no business in school. I’m going to take him out of school and then they can do things on their own.

The fear that society creates — Fear comes from not being grounded in what we believe about children and allowing the scary things that you read in the newspaper, that you see on television, and the things that people talk about every day, I got the kid down the street, oh my goodness, what happened?

Nature not plastic — I go to this home and I sing songs and I read as many books as the child wants me to read in an evening. And these are parents who are in the school and I know they care about me and I know they care about the philosophy. I know they believe the philosophy and it was almost more than I could bear when I saw all of the plastic. It was a room that is bigger than you can imagine, filled with plastic stuff for kids. Plastic fruit, plastic food, plastic this and plastic that. There was nothing real, nothing really authentic in that house.

Dirt is for walking — We live in a world that doesn’t know how to be with kids. There was a mother and her little kid who’s barely walking, walking down the sidewalk, and the little girl stepped off into the dirt and the mother said, “Oh no, no, no, dirt is not for walking in. The sidewalk is for walking on.” No, no, no, dirt is for walking on, it’s much easier on your knees and your legs and has uneven surfaces. The brain needs uneven surfaces. It’s amazing how far off we’ve gotten but it’s that public place that we’ve put children.