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Two TT bloggers share their tips on using dystopian young-adult fiction to engage students in discussions about tough topics.

Almost one-third of teen relationships involve abuse. Help students learn to avoid—or break free from—unhealthy entanglements.

This teacher’s musings about Max from Where the Wild Things Are leads to a reflection on the ways educators can close opportunity gaps for their students.

Empathy and caring need to be nurtured through direct involvement in meaningful activities. Involving children in the care of plants and animals is an excellent way to do this.

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.

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.”

Today, the Dignity in Schools Campaign (DSC), together with the Opportunity to Learn Campaign, launches Solutions Not Suspensions, a national campaign calling for a moratorium on out-of-school suspensions. Teaching Tolerance supports this initiative.

Middle school teachers struggle to find ways to respond to bullying, teasing, name-calling and exclusionary practices among students. We tread lightly sometimes, afraid of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time thus making conditions worse for a bullied student. Being heavy-handed almost never works. Students also know how to say the right thing to adults and then act in a completely contrary way towards peers.

Students are dying. On Nov. 27, Josh Pacheco took his own life. He had come out as gay to his mother a couple months before his death. His parents learned recently that Josh had been bullied at school.

As this Teaching Tolerance story points out, the poor represent the fastest-growing segment in our nation’s suburbs. They are immigrants who choose to locate there and formerly middle-class families who have been hit by