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Teacher-librarian Amy Hamrick found out the hard way why it’s important to learn about students’ many cultures.

A pass-along handout for parents, from Teaching Tolerance magazine.

Every year around Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the news media start quoting his “I Have A Dream” speech. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a great speech – certainly one of the best ever given in the cause of civil rights.

I lean against my classroom door, fielding questions about last night’s homework and passing out early morning hellos. I watch students disperse into their assigned first-period classes. As I steal a quick sip of my morning coffee, I find myself pausing at this thought: A supposedly unbiased computer system serendipitously placed our students into their respective classes, but is this all there is to mixing it up? No.

I didn’t say a word. I never saw myself as a person to let a homophobic comment slide. Even from another adult. Even from someone with more power than me in the hierarchy of the school structure. But that day, in that conversation, I just let it go.

The Anoka-Hennepin school district, Minnesota’s largest, has been in the national spotlight since last year. That’s when several students who were gay or perceived to be gay committed suicide. According to friends and family, the students had one thing in common: They had been bullied at school.

For the second week in a row, I was left partnerless in my graduate class. It was my own fault, I guess. I didn’t feel like moving. As I scanned the room, no one made eye contact with me or motioned toward me. It was clear that I would have to make the first move to ask to be included in a group—and, after a day filled with hundreds of tiny setbacks, I just didn’t feel like it.

Like many of us, I sometimes overuse the word “need.” I have a tendency to say that I need the new iPhone or I need a pedicure, even though those are clearly things that I want, rather than need. My greatest lesson on distinguishing between a want and a need came with my first-grade class when I was a new teacher. Volunteers from the business community came to teach for a day through the Junior Achievement program. As a new teacher, I was overwhelmed and relieved not to be responsible for lesson plans for the day. I was nervous, however, about how an idealistic businessperson would deal with 20 extremely needy first-graders living in one of the most violent parts of Oakland, Calif.

Join the movement to prevent bullying!

When dealing with a student whose behavior is a challenge, first ask yourself if you have a relationship with the student. When you build a relationship, you’ll notice a huge difference in behavior.