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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.

Learn from 2016 TT Award winner Cody Miller about how the award influences professional practice.

Each March 7, Stephanie and her husband John will invite immediate family members to the house to celebrate their son, Alexander, now 3. And every year, she’ll ask people not to bring gifts, but she knows the grandparents will not listen. She will serve cake. Friends will send cards and messages of congratulations. Pictures will be taken and loaded into photo albums.

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.

As teachers, we hear almost daily that we “must meet the students where they are.” It is a core tenant, a sacred truth offered as a key to successfully unlocking the hearts and minds of even the most reluctant learners.

For the last few days, an “educational analyst” for Focus on the Family has been getting a lot of press. She’s been suggesting that anti-bullying efforts that draw attention to the harassment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students are part of a “gay agenda” to “sneak homosexuality lessons into classrooms.”