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A new third-grader arrives at your school. He is blind. He is autistic. He is developmentally delayed. How does your school deal with the special needs of this child?

Today somebody vomited in fourth-period study hall. Before the period had ended, kids in my study hall already knew about it. On my way to fifth-period class, every kid I passed in the crowded hallway was talking about it. Webster’s dictionary defines gossip as “a report about the behavior of other people.” In my school, gossip is the pipeline through which all sorts of misinformation, lies, and occasional truths get exchanged.

Every school year, my incoming students receive a welcome letter. Included in their packet is something a little different: a snack-sized baggie of sand. One student may receive some black volcanic sand from Japan; another gets green sand from Hawaii; still another receives the silky sand from Florida’s west coast; while another may get the pink sand found on Bermuda’s pristine beaches.

Story Corner is a student-directed feature in Teaching Tolerance magazine. In the current issue, we tell the story of the Tennessee House member who cast the deciding vote for women’s suffrage. Vocabulary lapel [luh-

Educators can use classroom publishing to validate the experiences of all students and to introduce critical literacy. This toolkit provides writing prompts to help you bring out the best in your students’ writing.

My student was trying to act like he wasn’t smart. He told his parents that being smart meant not having cool friends. When test time came, he simply made random patterns with the bubbles on his standardized test, scoring one of the lowest scores in the sixth-grade class. The following year, he made a fresh start by earning one of the highest scores on the pretest. I knew I was in for a fight or, rather, a battle that would culminate with a full-on war to maintain. One I hoped to win.

A school district in northern Mississippi has cancelled its high school prom rather than let a lesbian student wearing a tuxedo attend with her girlfriend.