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Positive discipline can teach students self-respect and empathy.

My knee injury was neither serious nor permanent, but it was enough to put me on crutches and earn me a key to the elevator.

In Oakland, Calif., there are a lot of homicides especially for a fairly small city of about 400,000 people. Last July, there were seven homicides in seven days. Victims ranged in age from 15 to 84. Six of them occurred near the school where I taught. One was a friend of many of my former students and a cousin of a little girl I mentor.

Picture books can help 5-year-olds explore social justice topics and nonviolence. The resulting discussion is the start of a peace curriculum.

As dean of students, I’m sitting at my desk passing time one morning when my radio crackles. “There was just a fight in the courtyard,” says a teacher. “I’m bringing both of the students in right now.” I sigh in frustration and turn to watch the security-camera footage on my computer. Sure enough, there are two students facing off in the courtyard. Oh no, I think. Please don’t let that be who I think it is.

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.

When a student directed an LGBT slur at a classmate, this teacher missed the teachable moment. He won’t let that happen again.

Name-calling is pervasive in our culture. According to advocacy organization Mental Health America, teens hear anti-gay slurs approximately 26 times a day. Other anti-bullying websites such as Bullying Statistics.org cite name-calling as the most common type of harassment in schools.