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For more than 20 years, Teaching Tolerance, based in Montgomery, Ala., has worked to help educators embrace the diverse classroom. We strive toward bias-free schools. We advocate acceptance, respect, equality and safety for all students.

Oct. 8, was a day of victory for a group of 22 Life Academy students in Oakland, Calif. They are part of a 2-year-old advocacy club called “The Real DREAM Act Movement.” Students met regularly to support in campaigning for the passage of the federal DREAM Act. After several weeks of active letter writing and campaigning, their dream had finally come true: California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law AB 131, a companion bill to AB 130, together known as the “California DREAM Act.”

I decided to show a short You Tube video clip in class the other day. It’s a montage of scenes of men crying from various movies complete with cheesy background music, a song Don’t Cry Out Loud. I used it to open a discussion about how stereotypes put unnecessary limitations on people.

I wish I could introduce Santos to many residents in my state. Santos is a fifth-grader at my school. I want to keep him safe. He was in my classroom for the first half of second grade. His parents are migrant workers, so when the spring, summer and fall work on South Carolina farms slows and stops for the winter, they take their family to other places and look for life-sustaining employment. Over the past three years, Santos has spent part of the school years here and part away.

One of my fondest and most salient memories from the past school year happened toward the beginning of the year. Joe had just turned 5. He was making his own book about pirates.

Now that a federal judge has upheld most of Alabama’s new anti-immigration law, supporters can crow that the state is “No. 1” –at least when it comes to cracking down on immigrants. But what does that crackdown mean, practically speaking?

At my elementary school in Guatemala last year, soccer fields, basketball courts and baseball diamonds were dominated by boys and a handful of brave, tough girls.

I stood beside Samara, my appointed student leader, with my lips shut tight, overly expressive eyes and a dry-erase marker in hand. I was ready to respond to my students in writing on the 13th annual National Day of Silence.

Explore our turning points from the last 20 years.

As the final Space Shuttle mission touched down last month, ending NASA’s 30-year space shuttle program, I wondered what would come next for women in aerospace. Without a clear, defined mission from NASA, I questioned where that leaves girls and young women who dream of becoming astronauts.