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"Dear Me, I know you're having a rough time of it ..."

Read this installment of the "Why I Teach" series.

Heritage months offer opportunities to model yearlong inclusive teaching practices.

Her lessons met the standards, but her students were pummeling each other in the restroom between classes. How one teacher found a way to reach the benchmarks that really matter.

Activists and allies from a variety of identity groups work hard to dismantle exclusionary conceptions of gender. In the classroom, teachers have an opportunity to extend this work, one sentence at a time.

President Trump’s budget proposal uses the pretense of civil rights to further his school choice agenda—at the expense of research-based public school programming.

As dean of students, I’m sitting at my desk passing time one morning when my radio crackles. “There was just a fight in the courtyard,” says a teacher. “I’m bringing both of the students in right now.” I sigh in frustration and turn to watch the security-camera footage on my computer. Sure enough, there are two students facing off in the courtyard. Oh no, I think. Please don’t let that be who I think it is.

Mr. Franklin changed my son’s life. Alex used to hate school. He angrily questioned and resented every assignment, no matter how easy or fun it seemed. I dreaded the monumental struggle it took just getting him to do his work. Many parents fight this daily battle. Even those of us who are professional educators are not exempt from it. Then came Mr. Franklin.

The year I taught art in the dysfunctional chaos of an overcrowded urban middle school with weak administrators, practically everyone in the school—both students and teachers—needed a "safe place."