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While reading and listening to the reflections of the high school seniors he teaches, one educator finds himself troubled by the persistence of outdated gender norms.

When this teacher saw how devastated her feminist student group was by the 2016 election, she decided to do something to make them proud. She decided to march.

From now on, when we talk about women’s history, the Women’s March should be part of those lessons. Here’s why.

On Monday, LGBT students’ rights were vindicated in a comprehensive settlement with Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin School District over its policies that hindered teachers from effectively responding to anti-gay bullying—policies that may have contributed to some of the district’s recent suicides. Then on Tuesday, in the afterglow of this historic victory, the Utah Senate passed its own discriminatory bill (HB 363) prohibiting educators from teaching about, or even talking about, homosexuality.

Last spring, our high school performed The Crucible, Arthur Miller’s play about the Salem witch trials (also an allegory of the witch hunts of McCarthyism). It’s one of my favorite plays. Watching the performance, I was struck by the character of Reverend Hale.

Recently I suspended a seventh-grade boy for publicly calling his former girlfriend a “slut” and a “whore.” Our rules on slurs are clear. But as I learned again, talking about something in class doesn’t always affect student behavior, especially if the unwanted behavior isn’t corrected or condemned outside of the classroom.

I held up the front page of our college newspaper and asked my first-year journalism students if any questions came to mind as they looked at the photographs of candidates running for president and vice president of our student government. It’s a multimedia storytelling class and the assignments for the week were about analyzing and taking photographs.

We each have a part to play, a role uniquely ours each day. I’d raised my hand often enough and spoke about equity and LGBT rights during my years in Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin School District to convince myself I was accomplishing the role I’d chosen when I decided to teach.

When students express outrage over the “rape culture” in another country, the teacher brings the discussion closer to home for further exploration.