Teach like your hair's on fire!

Baseball is a religion in my classroom. It's a very important part of life, baseball.

I am asking teachers to understand that we must make the education relevant for the children. If they're only working for the tests or they're only working to please us, they're not going to be interested in school.

I always tell the kids that excellence is like pregnancy. You can't be a little bit pregnant. You either are or you're not.

The reason I love teaching, it's like being a miner. I find all these undiscovered jewels and, with the right motivation, they're amazed at what they can do. I have to show them their capability.

When the kids see the poverty in their neighborhood, but they see these successful kids who come from the countries they come from, come from Mexico, come from Korea, come from the Philippines, come from Salvador, and were doing really well, it motivates them to do better. The former students give them a vision of what's possible.

When I have children that go home and mom and dad are not home because they're working, they're trying to get food on the table, and they come home to an empty house and they go to sleep in an empty house, there is no way that child can compete against a child from the west side of Los Angeles who both parents went to Stanford. Well, good for them, God love them. That's not an equal playing field.