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“I hate Jews.” That was the sentence, uttered coldly and dripping with vile undertones, from the mouth of a sixth-grader that nearly caused me to let a very powerful teachable moment slip through my fingers. Almost.

“Dad, what is the Clue Clux Clan,” asked my 10-year-old son Bakary as we sat under a shade tree on Saturday in Montgomery, Ala. We were waiting to register for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s 40th anniversary celebration.“Well, it’s the Ku Klux Klan,” I told him. “Do you remember the old song that goes, “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight?" Well, the KKK thinks only white people are precious and they try to hurt people who think differently.” “Oh, I’m glad it’s not the ‘Clue Clux Clan’ because they don’t have a clue,” he said.

Curriculum specialist and writer Jeff Sapp on starting a conversation in the face of pushback and ignorance.

I held up the front page of our college newspaper and asked my first-year journalism students if any questions came to mind as they looked at the photographs of candidates running for president and vice president of our student government. It’s a multimedia storytelling class and the assignments for the week were about analyzing and taking photographs.

Spanish teacher Tricia Kelly reflects on one of her favorite teaching days.

Junior high school students and members of their school's student civil rights team felt that no one was taking them seriously in their efforts to improve the school's climate. Recently they'd visited classrooms and offered presentations on Maine's civil rights laws and the harmful impact of bias-based derogatory language. They did not get a warm reception from their peers.

Recognizing the history of defamatory symbols can help schools see fewer of them.

The confluence of President Obama’s second inauguration and MLK Day is a fitting legacy and inspiration to continue making changes.

Stories from the past, like those of Freedom Summer, serve to remind us that change happens when everyday people create it.