When I was growing up, kids used to talk about snitching... It never extended as a cultural norm outside of the gangsters.

When I first found out that Superman wasn't real, I was about maybe eight. And I was talking to my mother about it. And she was like, 'No, no, no. There's no Superman.' And I started crying. I really thought he was coming to rescue us. The chaos, the violence, the danger. No hero was coming.

Teachers need to be paid like professionals.

It is important to have permanent safe spaces in Harlem.

I would like to make it so that education was a right, and not a privilege.

Every video I make, I want to make sure that it's doing something entertaining or hopefully inspiring or maybe teaching somebody something or sharing my mistakes so that they can learn from them or anything that will make a positive impact in the world.

My Grinnell education didn't prepare me directly for the work that I'm doing, but it did give me the tools that I needed to focus my curiosity.

All the kids are learning different languages. I asked them what languages they wanted to learn, and Shi is learning Khmai, which is a Cambodian language; Pax is focusing on Vietnamese, Mad has taken to German and Russian, Z is speaking French, Vivienne really wanted to learn Arabic, and Knox is learning sign language.