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I recently confronted my prejudices. After teaching for many years in a low-income, high-violence area of Oakland, Calif., I decided to do some private tutoring. I sought to avoid the stress of politics in the district and the uncertainty of having a new principal every year for over eight years. Although I had outlasted all of the teachers I had started working with, I felt guilty because this was the population I wanted to serve.

How does funding impact a day in the life of your students? Have them do the math!

Like many, if not most, I had a rough first year as a teacher. I was 21 years old and full of passion and desire but little else. I had survived student teaching on the Navajo Reservation for six months, but arrived on the other side of that experience with much to learn. I was teaching two-hour blocks of seventh-grade history and English. I was struggling on almost every level in almost every area.

Teaching Tolerance recognized five outstanding educators with the first-ever Teaching Tolerance Award for Excellence in Culturally Responsive Teaching on Dec. 9th in Washington, D.C.

As a fourth-grade teacher, sometimes I feel like the social director on a cruise ship. On the playground, I try to match up students with peers. “Why don’t you go and see what Alanna is doing?” Or sometimes, “It looks like Daniel and Hunter are having fun playing tag—let’s practice how you could go and ask them if you can join in.” Then in the classroom, I pair students up to accomplish tasks. “Melanie and Jorge, you’ll be working together to read for science today.”

On the arid flatlands near the small town of Delta, Utah, 140 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, the scorching summer winds whip dust through the dry brush, and winter cold freezes the ground under a blanket of snow. In this forbidding landscape lie remnants of an American tragedy -- an internment camp that housed over 8,000 Japanese Americans behind barbed wire and armed guards during World War II. Named for a barren nearby mountain, the camp became known as Topaz.

A small Catholic school and its students grapple with life and learning in the shadow of two nations.

Teachers, principals and school districts nationwide are grappling with how to respond to the increase in deportations and heightened fears of students and families.

Young people who are overweight can face a lifetime of discrimination.