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The question above was posed to me in the comments section of a blog post I wrote recently. The post was entitled "Imani and the Cabbage Seeds." In it, I wondered about “isms”—racism, sexism and other things that either separate people or give one group power over another.

I broke a toe recently. Woke from a deep sleep, ambled around my apartment for just a few moments and then thump! I hit my foot on a piece of furniture. As I hobbled around in the days that followed, lost in the effort of just getting about, I thought “this is what it must feel like to be old.” And then—“this is what it feels like to have a disability.”

When I was studying to be a teacher, I had to write a philosophy of education. This essay was to explain what I believed about kids and the role teachers and education played in their lives. I wrote that all kids could learn, that they all deserved equal access to inspired teaching and that my role was to meet them wherever they were and serve them in the way that best met their needs.Although I still believe those things are true, I've come to realize that my teaching is driven more by a different philosophy than the one I wrote about.

As schools warm up to the idea of including a child's BMI (Body Mass Index) on his or her report card, perhaps we should evaluate the way we address the issue of childhood obesity. Yes, a high BMI can be dangerous. But as we've seen, the BMI can also be incredibly misleading.

“You can’t sit with us!” I giggled as I, along with the 20 or so other girls in my high school health class, sprawled out on the classroom floor and watched Mean Girls. Gretchen Wieners had just told Regina George she couldn’t sit at their lunch table because she was wearing sweatpants­­. We’d all seen the movie countless times before, but it didn’t matter. The scene was perpetually funny.

Scattered across the cinderblocks of our middle school walls are some new faces, photographs of kids who have been silenced. Lee Simpson on Oct. 10, 2008. Scotty Weaver on July 22, 2004. Lawrence King on Feb. 12, 2008. Carl Walker-Hoover on April 9, 2009. All silent. They are dead.

Thursday and Friday mornings, I have cafeteria duty at my elementary school. I always smile when our younger students come through the breakfast line. Their heads are at the level of the serving racks, so they have to hold their hands up to get their trays of food. I have to help them or we will have pancakes and syrup everywhere.