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"The Trouble with Tuck by Theodore Taylor,” I began to tell my class, “is an important book to me because it was one of the first that I read again and again.” I held up the 100-page paperback book for my students to see. A couple looked as if they might laugh at me, showing off a kid’s book. But I continued to tell them how the main character, Helen, trained a guide dog to lead her first dog, Tuck, when he went blind. Despite my fear that talking about books would create opportunities for put downs, I soon heard rumblings through the classroom as students dropped names of their favorite books.

Today, I opened my classroom door to a surprise. Diego was back! He put his arm around my shoulder and said, “It’s good to see you again.” One of the best things about being a teacher is when students come back. Some of those homecomings are more significant than others. Just a 10th-grader, Diego wasn’t back to tell me about his college life, his career or kids. He was back to tell me that in juvenile hall, where he’d spent the last three weeks, he had found out he loved to write.

“All these kids … you must be brave,” said the man in hiking gear. After a sunny but cold day on the beach punctuated by a trudge through sandpaper wind, I was plodding downhill with the stragglers from my hiking group. The more energetic among them galloped to the end, past the curious hiker.

One of the surest ways to motivate students to not only write, but to write with passion, purpose and power, is to make sure they have an authentic audience. This means they must write for somebody other than me, their teacher. Students must know that there is power in their words and that they can be heard.

Building relationships with students sometimes takes a back seat to achieving passing test scores. That doesn’t have to be the case, according to this sixth-grade teacher.

This high school student with APD shares some classroom and teaching techniques that helped her succeed—and that can benefit all students.

Dealing with outbreaks of lice or bedbugs in the classroom presents a prime opportunity for elementary school educators to examine implicit bias.

Teaching Tolerance is pleased to announce that we are among the recipients of 2017 REVERE Awards from the Association of American Publishers.

This ninth-grade English language arts teacher—and TT Award winner—offers a creative way for teaching about political candidates.

When the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights mandated diversity trainings for this school district, everyone pulled together to make some serious changes for the better.