I was born in San Antonio, TX, but moved to Lakewood, CO in elementary school. Then, I moved to Valley Center, CA in high school.
The senseless killing of 20 children and their teachers and principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School was not part of God’s grand plan. It was a thwarting of God’s plan. It was the misuse of human freedom.
My parents, they grew up in a time when there was war in Korea. And my grandmother, her husband, my grandfather, was a soldier and he died in the war. A lot of people in that generation, they didn’t go to schools. My grandmother couldn’t read; she didn’t finish beyond elementary school.
I used to do poetry in elementary school. I used to just write.
There were times I’d be nervous walking home from elementary school, thinking, ‘If that red tag from the power company saying our lights are turned off is on the door handle, I don’t know what I’ll do.’
I remember wearing a full checkerboard look with checkerboard Vans when I was in elementary school and got bullied so much for it, so it’s nice to see it being applauded and enjoyed.
Junior high and elementary school, those girls were so, so mean to me.
After I began in elementary school, I was able to go to the movies, and that was how I would spend my weekends, watching several movies one after another and almost all of them American movies. This is how I fell in love, at so young an age, with American movies and culture.
Actually, when I was in elementary school, I saw a saxophone. A band came to my school, and I saw this guy get up and play this solo. And I said, ‘Oh man, what is that! That must be fantastic!’
I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.
My mom is an elementary school gym teacher and a track and cross-country coach, so she really wanted me to be a runner. But I was not a runner. I was horrible at running.
I always wrote songs. Elementary school, middle school. It didn’t feel more creative than speaking. It was just normal to do that.
My mother would organize huge parties for my elementary school classmates. To prepare, she would go back to the bakery in her old neighborhood of Inwood and get special shamrock cookies. Hawaiian Punch was served and we had shamrock napkins. It was a lot of fun.
Hoping to instill my love of learning in other children, I taught my first class at a local elementary school the year my first book, ‘Flying Fingers,’ debuted; since then, I have spoken at hundreds of schools, classrooms and conferences around the world.
