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When a bias incident occurred on her campus, this educator quickly adjusted the next day’s teaching plan to address it—because she had to.

All over the nation people strive to answer Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous invocation: “What are you doing for others?” Many engage in projects to make their community a better place to live. My students at Life Academy in California have answered the call to service in several ways. First, they showed up on campus during a school holiday to beautify the school grounds, paint a mural, clean out an old storage room, build benches and tend to a garden. Second, they launched a 74-day fast “Season of Peace Building.” Students signed up to fast on certain days, in a kind of relay, to highlight the time from MLK day to Cesar Chavez day.

Kids disappear from schools and communities every day. This teacher does all she can to keep them where she can see them.

I stood beside Samara, my appointed student leader, with my lips shut tight, overly expressive eyes and a dry-erase marker in hand. I was ready to respond to my students in writing on the 13th annual National Day of Silence.

In the course of the day, sometimes, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of choices and decisions to be made, I miss the big moments. Take a day last fall. We were coming from lunch when I noticed that Brendan was crying. “Malia, why is Brendan crying?” I asked. “Oh, he’s sad that his caterpillars got let go,” she said.

Activists Nikole Parker and Brandon Wolf from Equality Florida emphasize the need for each of us to advocate for safer schools where all young people are valued.

These Perspectives for a Diverse America resources for all grades are sure to help you get the new semester off to a good start.