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Involve your students in the debate over race, class and integration.

To best serve LGBTQ students, GSAs should not exist in a vacuum. Schools and school districts should implement a host of other practices to complement the efforts of a GSA.

Every school year, my incoming students receive a welcome letter. Included in their packet is something a little different: a snack-sized baggie of sand. One student may receive some black volcanic sand from Japan; another gets green sand from Hawaii; still another receives the silky sand from Florida’s west coast; while another may get the pink sand found on Bermuda’s pristine beaches.

I was a teacher for eight years before becoming a therapist. I am currently working at two middle schools in Longmont, Colo., as a prevention/intervention specialist. Basically, my job is to provide a safe place where students can share their most pressing issues without feeling judged.

As a kid, I remember listening wide-eyed to my grandmother tell me about the “Dummy Room.” The Dummy Room was one of her first assignments as a young teacher in small-town Iowa in the 1930s. Like other Dummy Rooms across the country, it was the dumping ground for the school district’s hard cases.

It was more than just a change of scenery for Cole Archer. Today, he moved from his usual center lunch table to the front of the lunchroom to sit with five schoolmates he generally only sees in the halls and in classes.

We were encouraged to see that the school system in Durham, N.C., last week agreed to end discriminatory practices that prevent Latino students from receiving an adequate public education.