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Every now and again, a student will say something that leaves me speechless and desperate for the correct response. I can feel in my bones that the moment is about to become pivotal. One of these moments came while we were reading Katherine Paterson’s novel The Great Gilly Hopkins, in which the main character deals with her racism. We were in the process of analyzing her character, her motivations and her racist attitudes, and I could tell that my sixth-graders didn’t really understand the theme of racism, so I needed to step away from the novel for a moment and put the history in context for them.

“Dad, what is the Clue Clux Clan,” asked my 10-year-old son Bakary as we sat under a shade tree on Saturday in Montgomery, Ala. We were waiting to register for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s 40th anniversary celebration.“Well, it’s the Ku Klux Klan,” I told him. “Do you remember the old song that goes, “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight?" Well, the KKK thinks only white people are precious and they try to hurt people who think differently.” “Oh, I’m glad it’s not the ‘Clue Clux Clan’ because they don’t have a clue,” he said.

After a candid classroom discussion, this high school teacher marvels at the questions and concerns that educators like herself must confront at school.

Think you know all about the march? Think again!

General Mills recently ran an ad for Cheerios cereal featuring an interracial couple and their child. This is cause for celebration and an opportunity to help students explore race and expand media literacy. Unfortunately, not all viewers saw it that way.

Engage fourth- through eighth-graders in close readings and read-alouds of Margaret Auguste’s story “The Day I Swam into a New World” with the activities and audio recording in this toolkit.

Horrified at a fourth-grade teacher’s hateful Facebook rant after the pool incident in McKinney, Texas, this TT staffer realizes she could have been just like that teacher—if not for strong anti-bias education.

How do we celebrate the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 when significant threats to equal voting rights still exist in the United States?