A superintendent in New York, read the interview with Bill Gates. He has a suggested reading for Bill:

“Perhaps if Mr. Gates started with students instead of trying to fix teachers and shrink high schools he’d find answers. He should start by reading Jane Healy’s Endangered Minds. First line here is most powerful sentence he may ever read.

Healy writes:

“Now, when I walk into a classroom of twenty students, be they four or forty year olds, I remind myself that I am trying to teach twenty individual brains that are probably as different in their learning patterns as my students faces are in appearance.

“As a teacher, I must accept the fact that their level of success – and thus their motivation – will be directly related to the accommodation we mutually achieve between the subject matter and their particular pattern of abilities. I must encourage them to push themselves a little hard on things that do not come so easliy, but I must also accept the necessity of supporting and working to develop each student’s potential. Even with twenty students, which fewer than the number found in most classrooms, this job requires skill, patience, and a lot of hard work. ”

Jane Healy Endangered Minds: Why Children Don’t Think and What We Can Do About It 1990