Shakespeare's Spy by Gary Blackwood

While I read all three of Gary Blackwood's Shakespeare Stealer books and thought the first was the best, it was in the third book, Shakespeare's Spy, that I found this passage. It made me think about teaching children, how fragile their psyches are and how teachers need to be supportive and encouraging in their teaching methods.

" I had grown accustomed to being criticized by them-for my acting, for my singing, for my dancing, for my scriming. But those were all external things, mere skills to be mastered. The play was personal, a product not of my muscles or my vocal cords but of my mind. If they found flaws in it, the flaws were mine; if they judged it foolish, I would be the fool."

Don't we all have a little of that fear when we open our thoughts and hearts to others?