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Whether close to home or far away, hands-on experience brings history to life.

A middle school wellness program removes the social rigors from gym class.

The editor of Teaching Tolerance writes on critics' objections to the magazine's treatment of gay and lesbian issues

The editor of Teaching Tolerance writes on music education.

I was putting my 6-year-old son to bed recently when he excitedly announced that he was going to be in the school play. “Peter Pan,” he said.

Children can learn a thing or two from pets. They learn responsibility through feeding and caring for their furry friends. They learn about loss when their pets die and they partake in their first funeral rites.

I wiggle in my desk chair, softly swiveling it ever so gently back and forth, and fidget with my pen. I am a student in my own classroom. At the front of the room stands a teacher in my place. To outside observers the girl dressed in flip flops and jeans pointing at things projected to the white board could not possibly be in charge—if anything they might mistake her as an unruly student who escaped from the confines of her desk.

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.

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.

There are some new labels kids have created for one another since I was in school. When I grew up, there were no skaters or noobs. No one was goth or emo. In my day, kids who wore collared shirts and madras were preppy. Kids who smoked cigarettes and listened to Led Zeppelin were burnouts. Jocks were still jocks, although the jocks of my youth were all-inclusive. Today, they separate themselves by sport.