George believes that the most accurate way to avoid negative peers is to choose your friends wisely, as your friends help shape your behavior. This is because every kid wants to be with the popular crowd and be accepted because being an outsider during middle school and high school is a kid's worst nightmare. This can shape the behavior, attitude and choices a child will make for the rest of their life based on the experiences they had during adolescence. George chose people among his friends who wanted to be positive and do the right thing. However, choosing your friends is only one part of avoiding negative peer pressure because you have to have positive people throughout your life. With George, you see it from the dentist who gave him a dream, from his hard-working mother, from his third-grade teacher, and from his friends Sam and Ramick. The way to avoid negative peer pressure is to surround yourself with positive, hard-working people who believe in you. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay George has a different outlook than the other protagonist in the book. As the story begins, you can see his eagerness to learn and how well he retains the knowledge he gained during his dentist appointment. You see the idea of ​​a dream, a possibility forming in such a young mind and it's different from the other protagonists. However, just having a dream is not enough; you need people to help you thrive. I feel like his third grade teacher, Mrs. Johnson, gave him this encouragement. He also goes on to say, “I loved school. My third grade teacher, Viola Johnson, was largely responsible for that.” He always told his students that they should go to college, not to worry about money and just get that degree. This showed him that anything is possible if you have a positive attitude and work hard. She never wanted them to think that they couldn't have wonderful experiences because of what others considered the ghetto. He took them to see shows on Broadway and got scripts for the shows so they could try them out. He made them believe that anything they wanted to do was possible as long as they worked hard to achieve it. She was a positive influence that pushed George to continue with his dreams, and to this day he remembers what she did for him. “He made a lanky, mild-mannered boy growing up in a tough place feel smart and special.” George has many influences in his life, but it was his mother's spirit of hard work that kept him on the right path. She was the dominant figure in his life and showed him that working hard and doing what you were supposed to do was the way to succeed in life. You never saw her reward them for doing what they were supposed to do, yet she never left them needing nothing. She divorced her husband and moved to a project in Newark, and George also noted, "She was a proud woman who didn't like living in public housing." She grew up on a farm and this made her independent and determined, which was noticed by her children. George never saw bad luck break his mother, and she struggled to keep her children healthy and happy. This influenced George not to disappoint his mother. You can see this in her decisions not to date kids who were selling drugs or getting into trouble due to an unstable home life. George said, “A lot of kids I knew sold drugs because they felt they had no choice,” and despite this, George stayed on the straight and narrow. He knows his mother is a factor.”