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As I head back to the classroom, I think about the last school year. In the second-to-last week of school, my fifth-grade classroom was 90 degrees, with no air conditioning. My students were sitting together, helping each other, laughing, struggling and having fun. At the beginning of the year, they were unsure of each other. They smiled politely but kept to themselves or the friends they knew and never asked for help. So what had changed?

I asked a small group of second-graders what they would like to find inside their mailboxes. That was after we read a story about a goose who opened her mailbox and found a kite. I expected to hear answers of things: video games, toys or basketballs. But the first student who raised her hand looked at me with sincere, big brown eyes and said, "I'd like to find a letter from my dad." In my classroom, my kids say the profoundest things.

How does a school community deal with the violent loss of a student? Unfortunately, this is a question my school has had to answer too often. Still, no matter how many times I’ve been through it, trying to understand my own pain while holding space for my students to feel theirs is something that pushes me beyond my capacity as a teacher.

A simple statement at the start of the academic year or semester can help students with post-traumatic stress disorder approach potentially triggering material on their own terms.

Anti-hate and anti-bullying policies aren’t enough in the fight against Islamophobia.

It’s time to update the way we think—and talk—about immigrant students.

This first-grade teacher invites Broadway stars to his classroom to build students’ literacy skills in a fun and exciting way.

The importance of relationships and community are woven into this school’s culture. How do they do it?

Antisemitism is alive and well in the United States, and its proponents feel emboldened. The antidote? Anti-bias education.

In New Orleans it’s called “mess.” That cancerous, manipulative drama that teenage girls get wrapped up in every year. We dealt with our share of it this year at my school, most of it within the seventh grade. It came to a head with two strong-willed young ladies yelling from behind their desks, exchanging threats and insults.