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Recently my family stopped at the Civil War battlefield at Vicksburg, Miss., to take a walk and soak in some history. Near the monument to Louisiana’s troops stood a young boy, about 8 or 9, with his mom and dad. The boy was dressed up as a gray-clad Confederate soldier. The combination of the outfit and the Confederate flag sticker on his family’s car told me something important about this boy. It told me that he was a lot like me at that age.

A developmental psychologist investigates how children think about fairness and exclusion.

Through Big Brothers, Big Sisters, I’ve been working with a little girl from the neighborhood where I used to teach. I think very highly of this group and have only had good experiences with them. However, at a recent area-wide picnic, I noticed something disturbing. Most (not all, but the vast majority) of the children being mentored were African American or Latino. Most of the adult mentors were white or Asian. Again, this was not without exception, but was apparent.

One recent November, a discussion about plants as a food source led Cowley's first-grade class to talk about hunger. The class decided to bake pies and cookies to deliver to a local church's Thanksgiving dinner for

I don’t have an answer to the question, “How should I talk to my students about Garissa?” But I have some real fears about the dangers of not contextualizing this incident.

We know little about the motives of the gunman who opened fire yesterday in a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Many of us will monitor the news during the day, hoping to learn more about what the shooter thought he was doing, sure to hear more about the heroism and horror inside the building.

Putting empathy into action is a daily calling for Kelly Wickham Hurst.