Christopher Chatmon, founder of Oakland Unified School District’s African American Male Achievement initiative, shares the philosophy behind a decade of work he describes as “treating the fish in the toxic ecosystem” — the fish being African-American boys, the ecosystem the public school system. He recounts a 2010 listening campaign that found more than eighty percent of Black students felt adults engaged them “as if they had done something wrong,” and the response that followed: leading with love and high expectations, culturally rooted curriculum, student-led “Kings” leadership, and the King Maker magazine. A practical, hopeful blueprint for seeing the beauty and brilliance in Black boys rather than their deficits.