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This professional development activity gives ideas for developing narrative empathy: using the power of story to step into another person’s shoes in the name of justice.

I decided not to leave a phone message. As my mind began racing through what I wanted to say in an email instead, I thought about my dual roles in school. As a teacher for more than 20 years, I have confidence that schools and teachers are there to help, support and build a relationship with parents. But as a parent, faced with having to speak to my child’s teacher, I froze.

What good is a privilege walk activity if participants aren’t engaging in perspective shifting?

In almost every public school in the United States, attitudes and behaviors in the classroom presume an unacknowledged, yet pervasive, Christian norm. How does this affect students who are not Christian?

This toolkit for “Joseph’s Castle in the Sky” includes lesson plans, book lists, games and data to help teachers in K-12 classrooms give their students a deeper understanding of Haitian culture and history.

Shrinking there on the stool in the science classroom, I just want to gather my ungraded quizzes and my dignity and flee to freedom. But, I don’t. I sit there, paralyzed by the assault. “We are not your enemies,” I finally counter. “We are not Blake’s enemies.”

How do you teach current events in a highly politicized climate in which facts have alternate versions and newspaper editors have worn out the thesaurus looking up synonyms for lie?

The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq marked my first year of teaching. When one of my students referred to Iraqis as “towel heads,” I told him he had to do extra homework researching turbans and present a report to me the next day. It took him a week to complete the assignment, and instead of gaining insight and compassion for a different group of people, he probably just became more resentful. I now see this as a lost opportunity. As a precursor to our social studies unit on conflict in the Middle East, I taught a unit this year on world religions. We started off studying seven of the world’s major faiths and then narrowed it down to the three Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam.