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My eighth-grade girls squealed at the shirtless male movie star photos in a magazine. “Oh my gosh! Check out the abs on this one!” “Yeah,” responded another. “And look at that picture of Taylor Lautner. His face isn’t very good looking, but who cares. Look at those muscles!” This is a typical exchange in my classroom during lunch or before morning meeting. As a teenager, I remember flipping through fashion and celebrity magazines, looking at female models with long legs, luminous skin and perfect hair. They represented what I was supposed to be. Knowing how far away I was from looking like them definitely made me feel ugly. But the magazines were also telling me what kind of guy I should find attractive. Apparently, not much has changed in teenage popular culture.

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Sonia is a quiet girl with a shy smile who never raises her hand in my class. Recently, she told me that she is bisexual. Sonia shared this during a conflict resolution meeting conducted for her and another girl in the class, Katie. She had a crush on Katie and had been pursuing her through frequent text messages. Sonia had persisted even though Katie had made it clear she only wanted to be friends. At the end of our meeting, Sonia agreed to stop texting Katie. By the end of the day they appeared to be friends again.

Become an “equity designer” with new research from Mica Pollock and colleagues.

I like to switch things up every once in a while, so I assigned my high school students a project I’d never done before—a gift book. In addition to the academic value, I hoped to strengthen at least one teen-adult connection at a time when it’s sometimes hard to just grunt, “Good morning,” without an argument. (I know this because I have two teens in my own house.) I also wanted students to be able to create a keepsake to give a loved one during the holiday season. Many students could not afford to buy anything. In our rural school, many students come from low-income homes.

For the second week in a row, I was left partnerless in my graduate class. It was my own fault, I guess. I didn’t feel like moving. As I scanned the room, no one made eye contact with me or motioned toward me. It was clear that I would have to make the first move to ask to be included in a group—and, after a day filled with hundreds of tiny setbacks, I just didn’t feel like it.

Children are susceptible to superficial notions of beauty, but this teacher believes the real purpose of education is to give them a different message.

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.