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Through a grant from Teaching American History, I was part of a group of teachers who spent months reading, listening and watching films and videos about the civil rights movement before we took a trip to the South. But still it was history—far away, untouchable and remote. That was until the first day in Sumner, Miss.

I decided to show a short You Tube video clip in class the other day. It’s a montage of scenes of men crying from various movies complete with cheesy background music, a song Don’t Cry Out Loud. I used it to open a discussion about how stereotypes put unnecessary limitations on people.

Children can learn a thing or two from pets. They learn responsibility through feeding and caring for their furry friends. They learn about loss when their pets die and they partake in their first funeral rites.

We must teach conflict resolution, empathy and individual responsibility to students as deliberately as we teach math and science. Schools will not get better until we do.

I love my neighborhood. On any given morning at the bus stop, I hear five different languages being spoken. While the words and sounds are different, the context is the same.

I lean against my classroom door, fielding questions about last night’s homework and passing out early morning hellos. I watch students disperse into their assigned first-period classes. As I steal a quick sip of my morning coffee, I find myself pausing at this thought: A supposedly unbiased computer system serendipitously placed our students into their respective classes, but is this all there is to mixing it up? No.

I wish I could introduce Santos to many residents in my state. Santos is a fifth-grader at my school. I want to keep him safe. He was in my classroom for the first half of second grade. His parents are migrant workers, so when the spring, summer and fall work on South Carolina farms slows and stops for the winter, they take their family to other places and look for life-sustaining employment. Over the past three years, Santos has spent part of the school years here and part away.

The sixth-graders at Roxboro Middle School tumbled through the doors and into the lunchroom, looking around for places at the tables. The security officer didn’t need a bullhorn; his voice carried.

It was more than just a change of scenery for Cole Archer. Today, he moved from his usual center lunch table to the front of the lunchroom to sit with five schoolmates he generally only sees in the halls and in classes.

Hackberry Hill Elementary takes its Mix It Up At Lunch day seriously–and so do its kids. They arrived in waves during lunch and recess on Tuesday, eager and ready for fun activities.