I want to be a children’s hero… Children need heroes because heroes give hope; without hope they have no future.

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.

Why is it that when we had rotary phones, when we were having folks being crippled by polio, that we were teaching the same way then that we're doing right now?

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.

Movies portray men as tough guys.

When you see a great teacher, you are seeing a work of art.

One of the saddest days of my life was when my mother told me Superman did not exist. I was like what do you mean he's not real. And she thought I was crying because it’s like Santa Claus is not real and I was crying because there was no one coming with enough power to save us.