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Slavery never went away, and students need to know how it affects today’s world.

It was meet-the-teacher night at my elementary school. The room was ready for a new class of second-graders. The rubric for grading paragraphs and stories was on the wall around the writing center. A scientific method poster hung on the wall in the science corner. Essential questions for numbers and operations were on the chalkboard in the math area. And a picture commemorating the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education was on the social studies wall. I was ready to help my children become successful students.

The explosion of news coverage over the controversial execution of Troy Davis in Georgia recently is a reminder that our students learn powerful lessons outside our classrooms. These events offer opportunities for lessons of context inside our classrooms.

I am a good driver. You’d never know it, given the theatrics of the backseat drivers in my vehicle, whose sudden gasps and quick grasps for the dashboard denote a lack of confidence in my skills. This drama is alternately amusing, annoying and unnecessary. I'm proud to say that, for the most part, my instinctive go-to practice of "when in doubt, step on the gas" has never let me down.

Last summer, my students were fascinated with union suits, the one-piece undergarment. We were getting ready to visit the Minnesota History Center, where a display featured a Minnesota-based company that got its start as a producer of union suits. We previewed the museum’s collection online. The students were quite taken with the red wool outfit with the “trapdoor” over the rear end.

A common misperception in many early childhood environments is the idea that, as one teacher told me, “There’s no diversity in my classroom.” She, and many others, think that a focus on diversity is unnecessary in an apparently homogeneous classroom.

What "little" things do you do that might marginalize your students in poverty?

When I was studying to be a teacher, I had to write a philosophy of education. This essay was to explain what I believed about kids and the role teachers and education played in their lives. I wrote that all kids could learn, that they all deserved equal access to inspired teaching and that my role was to meet them wherever they were and serve them in the way that best met their needs.Although I still believe those things are true, I've come to realize that my teaching is driven more by a different philosophy than the one I wrote about.

I work as an instructional coach at a large, diverse and underperforming urban public elementary school. Our students are at-risk. Families are struggling with stress and trauma. Teachers work mightily to close the achievement gap. So as I left a third-grade classroom the other day after a check-in with the teacher, I wasn’t surprised when she said, “Wait, can I ask you one more thing?”