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My third-period students rushed in at the start of class, wide-eyed and excited. Something had happened. “Quentin hit Ms. Combs!” Helen Combs was my friend. She taught language arts. “He knocked her down,” one student reported. “They took her to the hospital, and the police took him away in handcuffs!”

The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq marked my first year of teaching. When one of my students referred to Iraqis as “towel heads,” I told him he had to do extra homework researching turbans and present a report to me the next day. It took him a week to complete the assignment, and instead of gaining insight and compassion for a different group of people, he probably just became more resentful. I now see this as a lost opportunity. As a precursor to our social studies unit on conflict in the Middle East, I taught a unit this year on world religions. We started off studying seven of the world’s major faiths and then narrowed it down to the three Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

A war on obesity is raging. Everyone from Jillian Michaels to Michelle Obama is calling for all Americans to lose the fat. But as doctors spend millions of dollars on fat-shaming billboards targeting children and studies proving that dieting simply doesn’t work, one might ask where does encouragement end and bullying begin?

Sometimes teachers have to think outside the box to reach students. This educator found his work requires great expansion.

The 2008 election showed us that true progress in the struggle for equality is possible. Yet there is still much work to be done.

A North Carolina professor advocates teaching respect for dialects.