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Elementary principal Jamilah A. Hud-Kirk says SEL isn’t something her school does—it’s who they are.

Reader reactions: your responses to Islamophobia, native voices and Kid President.

School and community gardens yield cooperation and understanding.

Every year around Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the news media start quoting his “I Have A Dream” speech. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a great speech – certainly one of the best ever given in the cause of civil rights.

I arrived to school ready for our morning staff meeting and took a seat among my colleagues. But today was different. There were about 30 student leaders joining us. As a newer staff member at the school, I had little idea of what to expect for our planned Culture Day, which was based on Teaching Tolerance’s “Mix It Up at Lunch Day.” The students were there because they were instrumental in planning and pulling it off.

The sixth-graders at Roxboro Middle School tumbled through the doors and into the lunchroom, looking around for places at the tables. The security officer didn’t need a bullhorn; his voice carried.

I didn’t say a word. I never saw myself as a person to let a homophobic comment slide. Even from another adult. Even from someone with more power than me in the hierarchy of the school structure. But that day, in that conversation, I just let it go.

My student Belinda got into a fight last year. It wasn’t a prissy, slappy, name-calling fight, either. It was a reality television-worthy, punch- throwing, eye-bruising fight that didn’t end until Belinda’s opponent had ripped the weave out of her hair and waved it around in front of the student spectators.