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Raige Hollis always liked the idea of talking to classmates. In fact, he says he's "friends with everybody." So when his high school announced plans for a Mix It Up at Lunch Day, Hollis, captain of the football team and senior classman, was all in. But some of his classmates at Laconia High School in New Hampshire were less excited about sitting down to lunch with folks who were not part of their usual circles.

It was a brisk New England day as I walked out of the community center with a group of Somali Muslim women from my adult English as a Second Language class. My students were laughing and joking, their hijabs blowing in the breeze. We had finished our unit on the New World, drawing connections between Europeans immigrating to America and Somalis immigrating to Lewiston and southern Maine. Suddenly, a local woman shouted, "Terrorists!"

Our history is sometimes painful; focusing on the “best version” of that history to make it more palatable to young readers denies them the education they deserve.

My middle school students had started to use words like “bum,” “creeper,” and “hobo” to describe people who are homeless in our city. To my eighth-graders, it was comic relief.

I was excited by my lesson plan about the presidential elections. I planned to help students research issues and form opinions by guiding them through a variety of perspectives. Then my student teacher asked a question that surprised me. “Do you ever have parents complain about elections being discussed in school?” he wanted to know. “Why would they?” I asked.

The emancipation story remains largely incomplete, over 150 years later.

TT answers your tough questions.

Karen Sharpe teaches for the moment when she can see the unlikely become possible.