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Environmental sensitivity and social justice concerns can lead to action.

The election is tomorrow! Are you discussing voter registration and turnout with your students?

A group of technology-loving eighth-graders at Georgetown Day School combined their digital skills with a passion for helping others. It was community service in a computer lab. As part of the school’s service learning program, we asked the Northern Virginia AIDS Ministry (NOVAM), a local health organization, if students might interview staff, record the interviews and produce podcasts about its work and mission. NOVAM educates the public about HIV and AIDS and provides support to people and families coping with the disease. The eighth graders hoped their mini-radio programs might be posted on the organization’s website for clients to download.

Paulina walked slowly down the hall, her gait marked by the waddle of many pregnant mothers. As she came closer, you could see her belly, slightly swollen. You felt her discomfort as she squeezed into her desk. Five months in, she hadn't seen a doctor or taken any vitamins. The baby's father wasn't in the picture. There were rumors of rape. Her parents had all but disowned her. What role should the school play in the life of a teenage mom? How can we help?

What do you do with a teacher who provides students with authentic learning opportunities? A teacher who invests her own resources to support students? A teacher who was voted Teacher of the Year two of the last three years? If you’re Superintendent Jacqueline Cassell at the Pontiac Academy for Excellence Middle School in Pontiac, Mich., you fire her.

Poet Adrienne Rich once asked: How can we connect the process of learning to write well with [a] student’s own reality, and not simply teach her/him how to write acceptable lies in standard English? The question appeared in her 1979 essay, “Taking Women Students Seriously.” Last week, Adrienne Rich passed away, leaving today’s educators to ponder alone a question that remains as pertinent as ever.

I am in awe of young people. Today, for example, I read about a group of teens in Louisville, Ky. who continued to speak on LGBT issues. High school students from duPont Manual High School were censored for writing about gay issues, but they refused to let their voices be silenced. They decided to run an underground paper, The Red Pen, and won the annual Courage in Student Journalism Award.

Picture books can help 5-year-olds explore social justice topics and nonviolence. The resulting discussion is the start of a peace curriculum.

Let’s talk about voting. Yesterday, we asked our 65,000 Facebook followers if they had held mock elections in their schools. We heard from one lone voice that reported her middle school had 100 percent turnout.

Mention school desegregation, and most people envision the Little Rock Nine—not the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD). But Tucson is exactly where the battle for desegregation is being fought today.