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Feast for 10, a children’s book by Cathryn Falwell, recently found its way into a lesson at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Cooperative Nursery School. The book, focusing on counting skills, follows a family through the

When teaching his seventh-graders about the Syrian refugee crisis, this teacher decided to step back and let his students immerse themselves in the topic.

A ZIP code shouldn’t determine the quality of a student’s education.

Sometime in the next week or so, the Senate of the state of Tennessee will probably approve the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. It’s a proposed law that states, “No public elementary or middle school shall provide any instruction or material that discusses sexual orientation other than heterosexuality” in grades K-8.

It happened again today. I was standing in the cafeteria when I heard the dreaded sound of yelling, chairs scraping the floor and students scurrying for cover coming from the other side of the room. Food fight. Ugh. I rushed over to find french fries, ketchup and peaches everywhere and students complaining about another destroyed lunch.

Every school day just after 2 p.m., Sandra pushes her cart into my classroom to clean the bathroom and empty the trash cans. She is the school custodian and my students love her. When students hear her squeaky wheels in the hallway outside our door, they listen for her kind giggle as she enters the room. "Ms. Sandra! Ms. Sandra! Can I help you empty the trash? Can I help you?" they yell out with their hands waving in the air.

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.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the novel To Kill A Mockingbird. Harper Lee’s work is so powerful and popular that it has never been out of print, selling more than 30 million copies.

I once had an elementary school teacher who tried a multicultural approach to the holiday season. She told my class about Hanukkah, which she described as being a kind of “Jewish Christmas.” This fascinated us until we discovered that the gift-giving aspect of Hanukkah was spread out over several days. As fans of Santa Claus, we couldn’t help thinking that Jewish kids must have it tough.