Boys want to grow up to be like their male role models. And boys who grow up in homes with absent fathers search the hardest to figure out what it means to be male.

There is an educational cliff we are walking over right this very second.

When kids know that you refuse to let them fail ... they don't give up as easy. So sometimes they don't have it inside, [but] they're like,'You know, I don't want to do this, but I know my mother's going to be mad.'That matters to kids, and it helps get them through.

When I was growing up, kids used to talk about snitching... It never extended as a cultural norm outside of the gangsters.

It's easy to have faith when everything is going great. The real test of faith is when you're facing something that only your faith in God will get you through.

Movies portray men as tough guys.

I graduated from Bowdoin College and went to the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Then I left and took a job teaching really poor inner-city white kids in Boston. It was interesting to me because I'd never been around poor whites before.