Dr. Tommie Mabry shares similar lived experiences with many students who are at-risk. Due to a lack of positive role models, he turned to life on the streets. He was expelled from numerous schools, and by age eleven had beed arrested. His life began to shift when he joined an AAU basketball team. Not even a shot in the foot his senior year could alter his positive trajectory, he received a full basketball scholarship to Missouri State University - West Plains. After completing his undergraduate studies at Tougaloo College, he taught school in the same district where he had been expelled numerous times before. This session and his best selling book are centered on his life story and the research/study done by applying cognitive learning theory which his dissertation was based on - earning him a Ph.D. from Jackson State University.