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My 4-year-old daughter Sophia was confused. She looked to me for an answer. “Greyson's not black,” she said. “Her skin is brown.” This was the first time I had heard my daughter bring up the issue of race or skin color.

Your administration made a choice you can’t live with. What now?

When you’re the only person of color in your class, school can become a struggle between two worlds.

When this teacher asked newly-minted sixth-graders how they want to treat themselves, others and their communities during middle school, paper airplanes made for a creative way for these students to offer answers.

A 7th grade Holocaust history project evolves into a memorial sculpture.

As an eighth-grade writing teacher, I routinely focus on reading student writing and utilizing it for several purposes. I am designing effective lessons, creating sound rubrics for assessment, developing peer conferences and monitoring their ability to meet standards and benchmarks. However, I often forget about one of our most important, frequently overlooked roles as writing teachers: our role as listeners.

Teaching is a tough profession. We know it. It comes with a lot of responsibilities and challenges. Nevertheless, teaching is a very rewarding life path. Perhaps equally as tough is teaching teachers to be culturally competent. For the last six months, I’ve led a book study at my school on Gary Howard’s We Can’t Teach What We Don’t Know, which looks at cultural competency programs.