Articles

When my daughter pulls hard on the heavy glass doors of the Martin Luther King Jr. Laboratory School and races upstairs into her fifth-grade classroom, she is living my dream.

The month of Ramadan comes upon my classroom slowly. The non-Muslim students don’t notice the changes at first, but soon the little things start creeping in. They see that the classes are smaller, because more students are staying home. Or they might notice that the Muslim students are a little more tired than usual, or that when offered food, they politely put up their hand and say, “No food for me, I am fasting.” This is when the questions start.

Explore our turning points from the last 20 years.

It was a brisk New England day as I walked out of the community center with a group of Somali Muslim women from my adult English as a Second Language class. My students were laughing and joking, their hijabs blowing in the breeze. We had finished our unit on the New World, drawing connections between Europeans immigrating to America and Somalis immigrating to Lewiston and southern Maine. Suddenly, a local woman shouted, "Terrorists!"

"She's just trying to act white." I remember those piercing but confusing words cutting me like a knife. I clinched my Super Reader certificate. My puzzled expression was taken as bravado by the African-American girls, who responded with a threatening question, "Do you want us to fix your face?"

Alternative certification gives educators a different route to the classroom. Does it make them fish out of water once they get there?

Secular students are forming clubs for mutual support—they’ll need teacher-allies.

Sean Price's interview with Arizona State University Professor Neal A. Lester. Lester has twice taught courses on the n-word—and found there’s plenty to talk about.

A common misperception in many early childhood environments is the idea that, as one teacher told me, “There’s no diversity in my classroom.” She, and many others, think that a focus on diversity is unnecessary in an apparently homogeneous classroom.

We all want our schools to be safe and orderly. Our teachers should be able to focus on teaching and our children should be able to focus on learning. Sadly, though, the effort to instill greater discipline in our schools has backfired.