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Many teachers still feel it’s safest to teach from the closet.

My third-hour class was a challenge. The students were young, the class was large, and most students just needed a required fine art credit. Not great art lovers, they spent their considerable energy doing everything but their art projects.

I hate sheet protectors. Those shiny, clear plastic sheaths have no place in my classroom. When my new ninth-graders hand in their summer reading logs each September, the first thing I do is remove and return all the sheet protectors. They make it impossible for me to maintain my neat stacks of student work. They don’t quite fit into the file folders I use to transport those stacks home to grade them. I have to remove them before I can write any feedback.

Sometimes school tracking sets students up for failure, academically and socially. My students with disabilities, who require extra academic assistance, often ended up on the short end of the stick. Because they were in all of the same classes together I noticed that they also clung to each other in the cafeteria. They had a difficult time fitting in and making friends with other students.

This toolkit accompanies the article “Serving Up Justice at School,” and provides a classroom activity that engages students in learning about the food in their daily lives through an interdisciplinary social-action project.

As the country approaches the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Teaching Tolerance bloggers have written about their insights and experiences in the classroom as a result of the attacks. We offer these for your reflection and adoption.

This high school language arts teacher marvels at how his students were engaged in controversial and difficult topics.

After learning an important lesson about student engagement as a classroom teacher, this teacher educator passed it on to her pre-service teachers: Focus on connecting with students versus trying to control them.