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Jenny started the year desperate to make friends. She was new, immature for her age and starting seventh grade. Because of a learning disability, Jenny was reading and writing at a second-grade level. She tried to hide that from friends. But in the cover-up effort, she often badmouthed her classmates and created drama.

Teaching Tolerance director Maureen Costello looks back on our 20th birthday.

A Louisiana Children's Museum exhibit takes the "dis" out of disability.

During spring break, I was reminded of what a huge impact a small decision can make. I caught up on information about two former students: Richard and Patrick. They were quite similar when I had them as eighth-graders nearly four years ago. Both were over-age (16 years old) and received special education services. Both got into trouble regularly and were suspended multiple times. However, due mostly to a couple of seemingly small decisions, their lives changed in vastly different ways.

For this teacher, transforming her interactions with herself translates into the vision of peace she wants to teach in her classroom.

Teaching Tolerance director Maureen Costello discusses the difficulty of teaching the 2016 election.

Kudos to the U.S. Department of Education for making such a strong case in this week's Dear Colleague Letter that bullying is a matter of civil rights. The DOE rightly reframed the issue of bullying in schools as one of institutional responsibility—one that can get schools into serious legal trouble if ignored. Among other things, the letter says “some student misconduct that falls under a school’s anti-bullying policy also may trigger responsibilities under one or more of the federal antidiscrimination laws.”

Not all kids need the same inteventions. Check out part two of our three-part series for bullying interventions that focus on the 15 percent of students who need social skills training to stop bullying.

A high school student with Down Syndrome talks about his world -- and his life at school.