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Teaching Tolerance director Maureen Costello says that none of us can afford to look away from fear or harassment happening in our schools.

Dealing with outbreaks of lice or bedbugs in the classroom presents a prime opportunity for elementary school educators to examine implicit bias.

Each spring, at the start of baseball season, fourth-graders at my school connect with Shorty, a character from Ken Mochizuki’s book Baseball Saved Us. Shorty’s a Japanese-American child who plays baseball on a makeshift field in an internment camp during World War II. Mochizuki’s consummate read-aloud story encourages a fired-up discussion in the library. Students talk about the inequities and intolerances foisted on kids and adults alike. It’s the kind of lesson that I thoroughly enjoy teaching, year after year.

How can we disrupt toxic masculinity in our boys as they come of age? Let’s start by eliminating some phrases from our homes and classrooms.

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.