We believed we could prepare our kids for a more competitive world. And today, our younger students have earned the highest math and reading scores on record. Our high school graduation rate has hit an all-time high. And more Americans finish college than ever before.
Looking back, I realize that this period of my life has irrevocably come to a close; my happy-go-lucky, carefree schooldays are gone forever. I don't even miss them. I've outgrown them. I can no longer just kid around, since my serious side is always there.
I just remember, all I'm doing is remembering when I was a kid I remember that they used to put out there in the old west, a wanted poster. It said: "Wanted, Dead or Alive." All I want and America wants him brought to justice. That's what we want.
I get bitter, angry and disbelieving and I tell my kids there a lot of idiots out there. I also want them to know that being successful is not the real world - that their parents get treated better because they're on TV.
The day after the president Trump election, I remember feeling like it was 1984 again. It was in the air somehow. That ownership of bigotry. I hadn't seen it since I was a kid. It made me want to change the kinds of poems I was writing, but I'm terrible at writing overtly political poems.
If you decide you want to change your life around, it doesn't matter where you came from, what you did, if you were incarcerated or you are from the projects, if you are an uppity kid who came from a really wealthy family - and all of them do drugs and are into that life - it doesn't matter; come as you are, and God does his work.
Part of what we have to do a better job of, if our democracy is to function in a complicated diverse society like this, is to teach our kids enough critical thinking to be able to sort out what is true and what is false, what is contestable and what is incontestable. And we seem to have trouble with that. And our political system doesn't help.
My hope would be that, as we're moving through the world right now, we're able to get that psychological or emotional peace by seeing very concretely our kids doing better and being more hopeful and having greater opportunities.
The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.
Ever since I started acting, I've always spoken to our people about identity. I've spoken to kids, telling them: "Where do I get my strength to push through the barriers to get me where I'm at today? It's my culture and my traditions, you know?
I was not one of those people who wanted to be a comedian when I was growing up. I liked comedy, but didn't know it was something you could do for a living. I actually wanted to be an attorney. I did do things on the side like improv and sketch comedy, but law was my focus. I was a very bookish, academic kid. When I got out of college, I was really unhappy. I had a great job that I should have loved, yet I was miserable. I slowly realized that was because I wasn't performing. So I just tried stand-up and fell in love with it after one performance.
Having a kid made me realize, "I have to take care of this kid, but I can't have the luxury of dropping everything in the world and spending every waking moment with him. I've got to work."
About 100 things that your kid will do that will surprise you and break your heart and it will be a combination of fact based therapy, medically advised kinds of passages accompanied by celebrity anecdotes and just some funny stuff to lighten the load.