A place for educators to find thought-provoking news, conversation and support for those who care about diversity, equal opportunity and respect for differences in schools
Are Your Students Targets of Racial Profiling?
It’s summertime, and students have replaced class time with free time. In the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, parents and teachers are painfully aware of the widespread racial profiling targeting men of color—particularly younger men who are more apt to be out and about during these summer months.
Families Come in All Shapes and Sizes
A school district in the midwestern town of Erie, Ill. found Todd Parr’s award-winning children’s book objectionable because it included references to gay and lesbian families. The school board gave in to pressure from a small group of outspoken parents and decided to remove The Family Book, written and illustrated by Parr, from their elementary school’s social and emotional development curriculum. According to school district Superintendent Brad Cox, the concerned parents took issue with the fact that "the book references families with two mommies or two daddies."
A Baker’s Dozen of Lessons in Advertising
Advertising is everywhere. It’s on the TV in our homes, on the Internet at schools, on billboards as we drive or walk through our communities, in the music we hear and the magazines we read. Students are sometimes influenced by it without even knowing it. So Teaching Tolerance is offering a series of lessons that includes specific strategies for reading and talking about advertisements and their impact. These lessons help kids understand what goes on when they view advertisements and develop critical reading skills to help determine what messages to believe.
Notes of Apology Offer Platform for Change
This past February, our school abandoned the traditional Valentine’s Day love note exchange, opting instead to encourage school-wide participation in a new activity we called the “Valentine’s Day Apology Note Project.”
Writing the Powerless Out of History
In a recent discussion about a history reading, I asked students if they understood the need to think critically about what we read, even if the reading is labeled “historical.”
Keep Trying Even When the Student is Prickly
Rodrigue drove me nuts. He stood too close and talked too much. If his hand was raised and I didn’t call on him, his face would contort and he would put his head down on his desk. He answered questions with a “know-it-all” tone that the other students (and I) found obnoxious.
Making Homelessness More Than a Stereotype
My middle school students had started to use words like “bum,” “creeper,” and “hobo” to describe people who are homeless in our city. To my eighth-graders, it was comic relief.
Where Boys Become Men
Early in the school year, members of a youth gang came to our Oakland, Calif. campus. Their target was a young woman from the ninth-grade class. As the rival youth approached her, several of our boys stepped up, formed a protective wall around the young woman and even took punches to the face. They had no intention of fighting. The young men later defended their actions saying, “I am not indifferent.”
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