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Racial stress can silence children. Storytelling can awaken their voices.

The editor of Teaching Tolerance reflects on recent church burnings.

Our democracy desperately needs diverse voices to engage in mature dialogue if we are to ever find compassionate solutions to our common problems. Schools must be where young people learn to do this.

Homeless kids can be hard to identify and even harder to help. But teachers can do a great deal to make sure that they don’t fall through the cracks.

It was meet-the-teacher night at my elementary school. The room was ready for a new class of second-graders. The rubric for grading paragraphs and stories was on the wall around the writing center. A scientific method poster hung on the wall in the science corner. Essential questions for numbers and operations were on the chalkboard in the math area. And a picture commemorating the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education was on the social studies wall. I was ready to help my children become successful students.

Today, thousands of people will stand against bullying and wear a blue T-shirt in a worldwide event to raise awareness about bullying. It is known as Blue Shirt Day or World Day of Bullying Prevention.

Students are dying. On Nov. 27, Josh Pacheco took his own life. He had come out as gay to his mother a couple months before his death. His parents learned recently that Josh had been bullied at school.

There is no greater blow to a society than when its children are harmed. Today, we are reeling.