Since I moved here, it's been just about bringing my (grade-point average) up. If I can get my grades up and focus, maybe I can get into college.

I got a 3.95 (grade-point average).

So I began doing confrontational, iconoclastic performances, bringing my artwork into the public arena, like the Easter Sunday Crucifixion in 1966, which started when I dragged a 200-pound ten-foot-tall sculpture depicting a decayed figure on a cross into Tompkins Square Park on the Lower East Side.

When he was in third grade, even the average person could tell he wasn't some guy just shot-putting it down the field. He was pretty far ahead of anyone else his age.

I moved him around a little bit on the last lap, but for third place, I didn't want to mess him up. He was doing what I would have done.

If you read my sixth-grade report card, you'd notice that I started with unsatisfactory grades. My teacher sent a note home to my mother that said I was a 'good boy' but I 'needed to be watched.' She put a 'body' on me. Our children are trying to tell us something. They are trying to tell the black mayors, school superintendents, teachers - all of us, that they need a whole lot of bodies on them.