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The free college tuition movement is gaining some traction.

This just in: Men make up a small fraction of early childhood and elementary school teachers. And for children younger than 6, having a male teacher is a rarity. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, just 2.3 percent of preschool and kindergarten teachers are men.

A couple of nights ago, I took my daughter to Chuck-E-Cheese, a tradition of ours when her other mother is out of town. We play skee-ball to win long rows of tickets that we later exchange for plastic toys and stickers. We play — it’s our way of lessening how much we miss the Mom who’s not with us. This particular evening something besides the blinking lights of games caught my eye, though.

Banning a book can go like this: An outraged parent complains about a book to the school librarian or principal. After a noisy debate, the school administrators decide that the book should be removed from circulation. Or, banning a book can go like this: A librarian receives a new book. Perhaps it shows LGBT issues or atheism in a sympathetic light. Perhaps it portrays civil rights struggles in a way that might offend some local sensibilities. Whatever the reason, she quietly puts the book in a back room. Then she politely discourages questions about it.

As a class, develop a working definition of human rights.

Encouraging students to take an interest in the well-being of others is not indoctrination: It’s the right thing to do.

To close an English unit on social activism, this teacher had her students reflect by recognizing and writing about the activist potential in their classmates.