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A recent issue of Teaching Tolerance magazine addressed two subjects that I see converging in news stories from around the country – intolerant attitudes toward students who are atheist and teachers using their positions to bully students.

This teacher helps students find commonalities between their own complex lives and the experiences of children a world away.

As a child I asked my father whether there was someone like Martin Luther King Jr. who had fought for Latino rights. “Yes,” he said, and told me that his name was César Chávez. My father, a former farmworker who had toiled in the agricultural fields from childhood until adulthood, taught me about César Chávez, Dolores Huerta and the farmworker struggle.

The Kyrene school district is one of the top performing districts in Arizona. We serve approximately 18,000 students in 19 elementary and six middle schools. The student population is quite diverse in background and academic needs.

Occupy D.C. protesters Nathaniel Brown and Nicole Normile are high-schoolers. That’s not unheard of. The really interesting story is that they were encouraged to get involved by their high school civics teacher. The two seniors are part of the seven-member, student-directed extra-curricular club “Waking Up the Nation” at the Howard Gardner School in Alexandria, Va. Since its inception in the Fall of 2010, the social activism club has tackled a number of social projects from preventing war to seeking environmental justice under the leadership of faculty advisor Matt Hawley is the group’s faculty advisor.

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is my favorite book to teach. It’s the reason I became a high school English teacher. Years ago when my teacher handed me that book, I was both engrossed and frightened to learn of a dystopian world in which books were not only illegal, they were burned.

Most people want to be kind, but many reject being politically correct. Here are three rules that can help you be both.

Teach students to value religious diversity—yes, it’s OK in public schools!

In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, one of our teaching and learning specialists reflects on how three exceptional teachers shaped her as a person—and an educator.

Primary sources can help students explore just how controversial voting rights were in the century preceding the Act.