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When I reflect on the incidents last week involving students who wore offensive shirts with anti-Muslim statements on them in Gainesville, Florida, I cannot help but to think of Jonathan Swift’s quote, “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.” I don’t agree with Swift, though. All we have to do is observe how no local company in Gainesville, Florida would agree to print the T-shirts.

Every school needs a ready plan in the event of a bias incident. Recent developments at two schools illustrate why.

Mix It Up at Lunch Day is all about diversity. It celebrates the diversity of America’s classrooms. And it shows the diverse ways teachers can tackle cliquishness in schools. We were inspired by some of the great stories the day has generated. We thought we’d share three of them with you here.

Educators have a role in ending discipline that criminalizes youth. Reforms, including trauma-informed and restorative practices, can disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline.

This spring, my principal asked who would be interested in teaching a two-week summer session for our own students. I found myself saying, “I’ll do it.” I had previously sworn off summer school as something I would never teach no matter how much I needed the money. But then “summer school” was something I’d only seen in the movies: large groups of unmotivated kids who had even less desire in the summer than they had during the school year. I imagined sweltering classrooms, hours of endless instruction and failure for all—myself included.

When my daughter pulls hard on the heavy glass doors of the Martin Luther King Jr. Laboratory School and races upstairs into her fifth-grade classroom, she is living my dream.

A small Catholic school and its students grapple with life and learning in the shadow of two nations.

World Kindness Day is a great opportunity for all educators to integrate SEC skills into their curricula.

The language that educators use to address students can maintain and reinforce class structures and classist attitudes. The antidote? Anti-classist language.

Tapping into community resources conveys to students that their families, their neighbors and they themselves matter.