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How to help your students talk about race.

Two afternoons a week, I tutor a high school junior in English and history and enjoy gleaning insights into a different school community than the one in which I work. My client Mary attends a school with a predominantly white and wealthy student population. I work mainly with students of color from families who live in poverty.

When students thought success was impossible, wooden model rockets served as tools to boost self-esteem.

Spanish classes are the perfect place to help students develop cultural competence.

Sometimes teaching at my magnet arts school in Alabama, I can imagine the worst days of racism and intolerance are behind us. Most of the roughly 500 students have genuine, deep friendships across racial lines and very rarely do the old racist memes and tropes raise their ugly heads.

A Vermont artist brings students face-to-face with her enslaved ancestors.

It’s not unusual to encounter misconceptions about Africa. People erroneously refer to “the country of Africa” or say that someone “speaks African.” Most of my third-grade students were African-American, and they not only knew very little about Africa; they held negative assumptions about anyone who is African. Worse, my students used “black African” as a slur. No one knew how that got started. In fact, part of the reason I usually say “black” instead of “African-American” is that I got used to my students saying “black.” The term “African” was not anything they wanted associated with themselves, even with “American” tacked on to the end.

"There’s nothing wrong with the way your grandparents talk,” my elementary school teachers used to say. “Standard English is different. Not better or worse. It’s just a way of talking that you need to know.”

Mexican culture cannot be reduced to tacos, oversized sombreros and piñatas.