Therefore, a lot of my work started around answering that question, and looking at what resilience is about, where it comes from, and how we can actually help people become resilient. That let me to developing programs to foster competence and resilience and focusing on children's strengths and what they are capable of. There were 350 people in my elementary school and of all those only two people went to college out of high school. I couldn't accept the idea that only two of us were capable of being successful in college and that's why my work in resilience and program development always led me back to looking at what is fundamentally wrong with the systems and the structure of systems, and the kinds of barriers and challenges that children have to deal with and confront. I think teacher education is primarily responsible for helping teachers understand how to help somebody, and how to focus on somebody's strengths in a classroom setting.
Teachers have to understand and appreciate that children have different abilities and talents.
My mom had a mystical notion that ideas were floating around in space and that everyone has a chance to have a certain idea. What matters is that when the idea comes across your mind, you have to act on it, and that's what makes you successful. So my mom was perceived as an impulsive person taking on these big projects. Her life ambition was to be an artist. But she had children and was never able to pursue it until much later on.