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Religious topics have long been a touchy subject in public schools and none of them touchier than atheism. For young people though, the taboo surrounding unbelief appears to be disappearing. Recent surveys have found that younger Americans are the least likely to be religious. According to the American Religious Identification Survey, 29 percent of 18-29 year olds are religiously unaffiliated, compared with 15 percent of the population as a whole. And a 2006 Pew Research poll found that 1 in 5 young people said they have no religious affiliation, nearly double the proportion of the late 1980s.

Many in the LGBT community love sports. Sports, though, have rarely returned the affection. Basketball star Kobe Bryant highlighted the problem when he made an anti-gay slur in a televised game last April. In sports

A couple of years ago, I had a run-in with a parent. He had developed the habit of coming into school before the end of the day, standing outside the door of our classroom and motioning impatiently for his son, Victor, to hurry up. When I requested that he wait outside the building for his son to be dismissed, he became irate, yelled at me and angrily pulled his son out of class.

Folklore invites students to explore the curriculum of "real life."

There is no “typical” rural teacher. Here’s a glimpse into the lives of three teachers in diverse, far-flung settings.

As a child I knew my grandfather was different. Grandpapa had been a sharecropper in southern Indiana. He had worked most of his adult life raising corn and pigs. His hands were big and callused. He stooped when he walked and the skin on his neck and face was scarred. His earlobes were long, stretched and fused down low at the back of his jawbone. His eyes seemed to be a bit elongated in their sockets. He was different because he looked different. You see, when he was a young child he had played with matches and caught his clothes on fire. His facial disfigurement was the price he paid for the bad judgment of a toddler.

A Mix Model School coordinator explains why her school participates in Mix It Up at Lunch Day and how she extended it beyond one day with an in-depth social experiment.

Eighteen years ago, I thought I was starting a brief stint at a rural school. It turned into a career full of experimentation and success.

A small town sees itself as larger than life.

New concepts of PE and sports programs are making it more fun for everyone to play.