Articles

It was a brisk New England day as I walked out of the community center with a group of Somali Muslim women from my adult English as a Second Language class. My students were laughing and joking, their hijabs blowing in the breeze. We had finished our unit on the New World, drawing connections between Europeans immigrating to America and Somalis immigrating to Lewiston and southern Maine. Suddenly, a local woman shouted, "Terrorists!"

"She's just trying to act white." I remember those piercing but confusing words cutting me like a knife. I clinched my Super Reader certificate. My puzzled expression was taken as bravado by the African-American girls, who responded with a threatening question, "Do you want us to fix your face?"

We’ve rereleased the powerful documentary, "A Time for Justice," to help schools educate their students about the civil rights movement.

Every adult in the building needs to act when the bully is a teacher.

Grades: 4-8 Subjects: Social Studies, Reading and Language Arts, ELL/ESL Categories: Race and ethnicity; History Story Corner is a student-directed feature in Teaching Tolerance magazine. In the current issue, we tell

Junior high school students and members of their school's student civil rights team felt that no one was taking them seriously in their efforts to improve the school's climate. Recently they'd visited classrooms and offered presentations on Maine's civil rights laws and the harmful impact of bias-based derogatory language. They did not get a warm reception from their peers.

The year I taught art in the dysfunctional chaos of an overcrowded urban middle school with weak administrators, practically everyone in the school—both students and teachers—needed a "safe place."

Grades: 5-8 Subjects: Science and Health Categories: Diversity and inclusion; Disability The “new PE” emphasizes personalized fitness programs and cooperative rather than competitive games. How could this work in your

Grades: 9-12 Subjects: Social Studies, Reading and Language Arts Categories: History As this Teaching Tolerance story tells us, it’s important to study history—in particular first-hand documents—so that we can continue

As Neal A. Lester reminds us in “ Straight Talk About the N-word,” the term is one of the most loaded words in the English language. Is there ever a place for the n-word?