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When a classmate says Min Jee’s Korean lunch is “how everyone got sick,” will her friends speak up?

As you know, many schools in Los Angeles have dealt with racial tensions, race riots, and violence on campus stemming from issues of race and misunderstanding.

A Vermont artist brings students face-to-face with her enslaved ancestors.

Memphis families remodel the concept of home schooling.

Each spring, at the start of baseball season, fourth-graders at my school connect with Shorty, a character from Ken Mochizuki’s book Baseball Saved Us. Shorty’s a Japanese-American child who plays baseball on a makeshift field in an internment camp during World War II. Mochizuki’s consummate read-aloud story encourages a fired-up discussion in the library. Students talk about the inequities and intolerances foisted on kids and adults alike. It’s the kind of lesson that I thoroughly enjoy teaching, year after year.

The first day of my second year of teaching, a third-grader walked into class, saw another student and punched him in the nose. He didn’t say anything or give any indication that he was going to do this. It just happened. After cleaning up the blood and redirecting the class, I asked the attacker why he wanted to punch someone else. “He’s Mexican,” he said. “He don’t belong in my class.”

A resourceful Kansas town adapts to changing demographics.