LeBron James may be moving to Los Angeles to play ball, but that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten his Ohio roots. That explains why the LeBron James Family Foundation is collaborating with Akron Public Schools to open a brand-new, groundbreaking public school in Akron, Ohio, where James grew up. The I Promise School is an extension of the I Promise Program, which already provides services to 1,300 Akron public school students.

On July 30, 240 third- and fourth-graders will be the first to enter the school as students. By 2022, the school plans to operate for first through eighth grades.

Like James, Jayden Shippe (pictured above, far right) is a kid from Akron and the son of a single mother, with dreams of playing professional basketball. He’s been in James’s I Promise program since the third grade, and is now a 10th grader; he serves as one of James’s 330 ambassadors who mentor and support the foundation’s younger students. These two kids from Akron share a parallel path — one that leads to the grand opening of the I Promise School. Jayden spoke with James for a Teen Vogue Q&A.

Jayden Shippe: Growing up in Akron, managing life on a daily basis is hard. I try to put my focus on sports because that keeps me on the right path, but keeping up with my schoolwork is a struggle. Being from a single-parent household, my mom is everything, and she had cancer, so I struggle with the fear of her getting sick or losing her. How did you balance everything when you were growing up with all the challenges and struggles I know you also had?

LeBron James: I think the best way that I managed those struggles growing up as a kid was just always understanding that there’s loved ones around me that want me to succeed and there’s loved ones around me that want me to be great. Even though the adults and the people that we love are going through so much, they don’t want us to feel that burden. They want us to continue to be as positive as possible because they see the bright future in us. Even though there were some days I felt like it wasn’t the best day for me personally, or for my mom, I always felt like there would be brighter days.

Even as tough as it can be, you just have to have that positive attitude, knowing that your parents or your guardian or your loved ones want you to be as great as you can be, and they don’t want you to fall into the trap of being in a position where you feel like there’s no outlet for you.

JS: Sometimes, it’s hard to stay away from all the bad stuff that’s happening in the streets. It seems like as soon as you leave school, there’s people hanging around doing the wrongs things. Some of those people are my friends. How did you deal with all that when you were in school?

LJ: At the end of the day, you have to understand and you have to ask yourself, “What do you want out of life?” Do you want to be caught up in the streets? Do you want to be caught up with people that don’t have the positive attitude that you have? Are those people really your friends? The ones that are provoking you to do something that could be detrimental to not only you but to your family — are they really your friends?

If you can sit back and really understand that and say, “You know what, they’re not. They’re not really looking out for what’s best for me,” then you will completely understand and change the way you think. You will get around a group of people that have the same passion and the same outlook on life as you or what you want to get out of life, no matter how old or young you are.