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Last month, 12-year-old Alexa Gonzalez used an erasable marker to scribble on her desk. “I love my friends Abby and Faith,” she wrote, along with, “Lex was here. 2/1/10,” punctuated with a happy face. But neither her Spanish teacher nor the principal at Alexa’s Queens, New York, middle school were amused. They called school security—New York City police officers—who arrested and handcuffed Alexa, and walked her across the street to their precinct, according to the New York Daily News.

As an eighth-grade writing teacher, I routinely focus on reading student writing and utilizing it for several purposes. I am designing effective lessons, creating sound rubrics for assessment, developing peer conferences and monitoring their ability to meet standards and benchmarks. However, I often forget about one of our most important, frequently overlooked roles as writing teachers: our role as listeners.

School discipline practices often disproportionately affect students of color and students with disabilities. Use this toolkit to form a professional learning community that reflects, researches and plans together to create a more just and equitable behavior management system in your school.

This toolkit provides a College/University Affordability Audit to help counselors, teachers, families and students evaluate the financial and academic supports and graduation outcomes offered by higher education institutions.

This history teacher uses Chimamanda Adichie’s TED Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” to foster his middle school students’ understanding of the relationship between narrative and power.

Field trips can be a great opportunity to take critical literacy to a new level. This toolkit will help you prepare your students to take on social justice issues on trips.

Are school uniform policies a perfect fit for all students?

Teaching Tolerance director Maureen Costello asks: Do our schools allow students agency and security?