It scares me to think that one day I'm not going to be in school anymore.
I can still remember. I was ill, and I was seven, and my father didn't want me to just read children's books. He came with Conan Doyle. I tried, and I liked it. I think the first I read was 'The Sign of the Four'; 'Study in Scarlet' was the next one. Then I guess I stayed home a few extra days from school to read.
I was in middle school right around the time the Bloods and the Crips started taking root in Compton and a lot of the other neighborhoods around me. I saw way too many of my peers - smart, kind, good kids - who got drawn into gangs and violence, and their futures were going to be forever scarred by that.
Writing was in my mind from the time I was in high school, but more, the idea that I would be a doctor. I really wanted to be a medical doctor, and I had various schemes: one was to be a psychiatrist, another was tropical medicine.
When I - when I was going to school, I knew how to read, write, add and subtract and I - I basically said, 'What else do I need? I'm never going to be able to go to college. I'm not going to be able to afford to go to college. I'm not going to be able to get a scholarship.'
My father had a brilliant scholastic record in high school and was awarded a college scholarship. Unfortunately he had to turn it down so that he could continue to support his family.
I used to start re-arranging my school uniform, hitching up my skirt to be more exciting-looking.
The reason I actually ran for office is because of Hillary Clinton. Everybody was telling me why I shouldn't run: I was too young, I had small children, I should start at the school board level.
You should absolutely get involved, especially those local politics like school board seats. That's really where America happens.
I've said that we need to elect Democrats from the school board to the Senate.
We went to school board meetings, we went to Little League games, and we did everything to be normal.
Both my brothers played football. My mother had season tickets as a school board member. I was in the band, my sister was in the band. The thing was, the unifying civic activity was obsession over high school football.
We have to have a school board that's actually gonna be able to function and that has true parent representatives on it.
That first responsibility as a school board member - meals for latch-key children - was absolutely critical in my understanding of the extraordinary problems of poverty.
I have been blessed, working both at the local level on a community school board, the state assembly, four years in the state senate, and now almost 12 years in the House of Representatives.
I have always been someone who wants to get it right. That started when I ran for school board. It's an avocation that's become a full-time job.
If you want to pray at a town hall meeting or a school board meeting or in the halls of Congress, that ought to be acceptable in the United States.
In 1996, Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night' was removed from classrooms after a school board passed a 'prohibition of alternative lifestyle instruction' act. Apparently, a young female character disguised as a boy was a danger to the youth of Merrimack, New Hampshire.
Connie Heermann is a Freedom Writer teacher. I believe she represents the best of what dedicated teachers can be because she chose to serve her students, not her school board.
I was on the San Diego school board for 4 years, where I watched children successfully matriculate into elementary schools from Head Start programs from all around our city.
