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My colleagues thought my teaching Lord of the Flies was “perfect.” My seventh-grade class is two-thirds male. The group contains several strong personalities and many “followers,” who often mimic bad behavior. Last year, teachers struggled with this group, several instances of bullying, and a developing culture of negativity. I saw the power struggles on the first day of school and knew I had to address them early.

Hands jut into the crisp autumn air, restricting my field of vision to a sea of shirtsleeves. While this is not an odd phenomenon after a new writing assignment, the types of questions are. “When will we mail it?” and “Can I make this longer than three paragraphs?” replace heavy sighs of “When is this due, again?”

Whether it’s the bully or the blonde, the nerd or the jock, most of us are familiar with a wide range of stereotypes. We’ve also been affected by them. But there are plenty of unexpected stereotypes that need to be acknowledged as well.

When Gary enrolled in her class, my friend Mary was warned that he had an attitude problem. But on his first day in her high school basic art class, she soon realized that Gary's main problem was the attitudes of certain other students.

The suicides of boys tormented by anti-gay harassment grabbed the public’s attention this fall. Those suicides are the tip of the iceberg. For every tragic and unnecessary case that makes it to the news, there are others we don’t hear about. These are the ones that families are too ashamed to disclose. Then there are scores of suicide attempts that leave parents desperately trying to convince schools to do the right thing.

As these young activists prove, it's never too early to change the world.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me." I was sitting outside on the playground bench wiping the tears of a child when this proverb came to mind. It isn’t true, of course. Nancy was a second-grader going through an evaluation process to help us understand why she couldn't read. Kayla was one of her classmates. As they were climbing the ladder of the slide, Kayla yelled out, "Nancy is retarded!" Ouch. Words can break our hearts.