Newsweek Editorial: A couple of my colleagues showed their students documentaries like Why We Fight, which I believe portrays America as a prison industrial complex with no redeeming qualities. Others repeatedly said that their students couldn't pass Advanced Placement exams even when they'd taken AP classes.

In the Herculean effort to prepare students for college, work and life, I believe there is no room for the unchallenged belief that our country is irreparably broken and the system is rigged against people of color. Especially in the school where I taught, where the student population was mostly Hispanic and African-American.

Therefore, I told my students that they were architects of their own destiny, hard work and good choices matter, and America is the only country in the world where you can grow up without electricity or hot water and become Oprah Winfrey.