I travel a lot with my students. We go on the road and even learn about things like doing your laundry and managing your time. And maybe that's not on the test at the end of the year, but it's in the test of life and that's why my classroom is successful.

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.

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.

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

I have students who are PhDs in music who come back and scored the music and teach the kids the instruments that I don't know how to play. Those are the points of light, the former students.

I try to show the children how every lesson I teach them is going to be something they use in their real life. That's why my kids work so hard, not because I'm so cool. They're working for themselves.

I love Shakespeare. In Shakespeare, tragedy is not just something that's bad. It's something that could be good and is bad.