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Growing up, no one told me that people shouldn’t be gay. My parents didn’t tell me I shouldn’t talk to kids whose parents were lesbian. My neighbors didn’t rant against the horrors of gay rights. Instead, all the people in my life encouraged me to live openly, to take people’s personalities and see the beauty in them, to smile at the adorable young couple clutching each other’s hands, no matter their gender. Love was love. I lived in a world blissfully ignorant about the cruelties of the “real world.”

Let’s use some time this summer to rejuvenate and reflect on our classroom practice!

The associate director of Teaching Tolerance urges us to stick with the tough conversations.

My parents stopped patronizing our local cinema when I was a child because they were livid when the theater owner demanded to see a copy of my birth certificate as proof that I could pay the child admission price. The boycott lasted six years. Although it satisfied my mother’s desire to “not give that theater” her money, the theater’s business didn’t crumble. I am not sure it prevented the theater’s management from treating another young girl the same way.

The editor of Teaching Tolerance addresses issues of school violence.

The presidential election controversy has affirmed the durability of our democracy.

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union..." I heard these words for the first time in a song when I was a kid. I was pouring a glass of orange juice in the kitchen when I heard it. Bugs Bunny had ended. I was waiting for Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids to begin. There was the familiar refrain of Schoolhouse Rock in between those cartoons. "As your body grows bigger, your mind grows flowered, it's great to learn 'cause knowledge is power!" And there it was—the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution (or at least a paraphrase of it) in song. I learned it and never forgot it.

Paulina walked slowly down the hall, her gait marked by the waddle of many pregnant mothers. As she came closer, you could see her belly, slightly swollen. You felt her discomfort as she squeezed into her desk. Five months in, she hadn't seen a doctor or taken any vitamins. The baby's father wasn't in the picture. There were rumors of rape. Her parents had all but disowned her. What role should the school play in the life of a teenage mom? How can we help?