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This week’s statement from Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos on historically black colleges and universities is a prime example of whitewashing U.S. history. Classroom teachers for grades 6-12, however, can use this moment as a teaching opportunity.

The tragic loss of Michael Brown presents an opportunity to help students connect with our collective humanity.

Silence speaks volumes. Our students are listening.

Will the Supreme Court outlaw purposeful integration of our schools?

When I was in fifth grade and new to suburbia, my teacher introduced the concepts of racism, civil rights and fairness. And she began the task of helping 10-years olds—all of us white—learn how to talk about race in constructive ways. I’d moved from a gritty urban neighborhood where whites, blacks and Puerto Ricans lived together rather warily. My parents maintained a chilly silence on the issue of race, although they forbade racial epithets; on the street I heard plenty. In this place, the black kids came mostly from the projects, the Puerto Ricans lived in apartments and the better-off among the white families might have an entire house. I knew that race divided.