Women’s History Month is a crucial time to remind the nation and the world of women’s important work and the barriers that exist to full gender equality.
Recently, after reading a story about a bike messenger in a big city to my kindergarteners, I asked the students if being a bike messenger was a job they might like. I also asked them to clarify why it would or would not be.
This week as the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, I plan to gather my third-, fourth- and fifth-graders around me. I will tell them, "Our country is a beautiful place." I’ll keep this in mind as I think of the moments when we were clearly afraid.
Every school year, my incoming students receive a welcome letter. Included in their packet is something a little different: a snack-sized baggie of sand. One student may receive some black volcanic sand from Japan; another gets green sand from Hawaii; still another receives the silky sand from Florida’s west coast; while another may get the pink sand found on Bermuda’s pristine beaches.
This English teacher’s students engage in lots of self-reflection toward the end of the year. This year, she added in a missing element: questions about how they’ve affected each other.
LGBT school leaders speak to a group of students about their own identities and explain why it’s important to ask questions and learn more about people who are different from ourselves.