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My first year of teaching in middle school was an onslaught of reading quizzes, vocabulary lists, lunch duty, reading skills and faculty meetings. It didn’t really leave a great deal of time for reflection other than the simple thought that I wasn’t quite living up to my ideal of changing the world through teaching.

A legal settlement reached in Los Angeles Tuesday could reverberate through schools in low-income neighborhoods across the country. The Board of Education there approved a deal with the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups that would radically limit the practice of laying off teachers based solely on seniority.

There is a wonderful scene in Harper Lee's novel To Kill A Mockingbird where the all-white jury has returned an unjust verdict against Tom Robinson. Atticus begins to wearily walk out of the courthouse. Jem and Scout are in the balcony with the black folks of the county. They all rise as Atticus walks out—except the children—so the Rev. Sykes says to Scout, “Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin’.”

September has been a grim month. Three boys—15-year old Billy Lucas in Indiana, and 13-year olds Asher Brown in Texas and Seth Walsh in California—took their own lives after being subjected to relentless anti-gay bullying in school. And then, just one day before this miserable September ended, news came of another tragedy. This time, Tyler Clementi, an 18-year old college student, believed it was better to jump off the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River 600 feet below rather than live through being outed and humiliated at the hands of his homophobic roommate who streamed video of Tyler’s sexual encounter with a “dude” for the world to see.

It’s not that hard to stick out in middle school. The unspoken code of social conduct is unyielding and inflexible. Anything outside of those narrow parameters is weird, and weird makes kids uncomfortable.

Billy Lucas grew up an Indiana farm boy in Greensburg—halfway between Indianapolis and Cincinnati, Ohio. He grew up winning blue ribbons for his prized and much loved horses and lambs. He also grew up enduring taunts, threats, and physical abuse from bullies. He grew up with those bullies telling him he should kill himself because they thought he was gay. Whether he was or not, Billy never said.

This year’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was clearly a disaster for the environment. But it has also been a disaster for people, and it did not affect everyone equally.