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While I share some aspects of my life with my students, one thing I don’t share is that I was born Jewish. I am ashamed of my shame, knowing that Jews, like many religious groups, have suffered because of their beliefs. My shame comes from growing up in a community that seemed to typify every negative stereotype about Jews. It also stems from being silent for years whenever someone made an anti-Semitic comment.

As a kid, I remember listening wide-eyed to my grandmother tell me about the “Dummy Room.” The Dummy Room was one of her first assignments as a young teacher in small-town Iowa in the 1930s. Like other Dummy Rooms across the country, it was the dumping ground for the school district’s hard cases.

Among the baby pictures, reports on summer activities and other news reported by my many former students on Facebook, I saw this status update about a week ago: “… it’s good to see fear-mongers called out for spreading misinformation …”

We must teach conflict resolution, empathy and individual responsibility to students as deliberately as we teach math and science. Schools will not get better until we do.

Last week, I had a chance to preview documentary films that showed how a strong arts program—and that could range from mariachi to Shakespeare to poetry slams—could turn struggling schools into powerhouses of energy and promise. Last night, millions of viewers got a chance to see what students from a school that values the arts look like—on the Academy Awards, no less.

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.

It was a brisk New England day as I walked out of the community center with a group of Somali Muslim women from my adult English as a Second Language class. My students were laughing and joking, their hijabs blowing in the breeze. We had finished our unit on the New World, drawing connections between Europeans immigrating to America and Somalis immigrating to Lewiston and southern Maine. Suddenly, a local woman shouted, "Terrorists!"

In order to teach tolerance, a teacher must proactively bring in those who are typically left out of the mainstream. With the 2010 release of the HBO movie about her life, Temple Grandin may be going mainstream. But autism remains an enigma to most people. So I was thrilled when my student teacher, Eva Oliver, prepared a lesson about Temple Grandin and her work as a livestock equipment designer at the beginning of National Autism Awareness Month.

The transition from middle school to ninth grade creates chaos for students. In eighth grade, students know their teachers and their classmates. They have a safe academic home. Then comes high school.

Adults often marvel as they watch children frolic on the playground centers. Children’s interactions appear effortless. There seem to be no barriers, no ego or self-doubt. If you want to play with someone, you simply ask him or her. It looks so uncomplicated. If a child is willing and able to partake in the fun, then there are bad guys to vanquish, princesses to be rescued and treasures to be found. A child’s imagination is the only thing placing limits on the exploration.