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On August 28, 1963, at the March on Washington, Dorothy Height sat on the speakers’ platform and listened to Martin Luther King, Jr. deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech. She had helped organize the rally that brought about 250,000 people to the National Mall. In fact, she’d been in the forefront of the civil right struggle for decades as the president of the National Council of Negro Women.

We know little about the motives of the gunman who opened fire yesterday in a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Many of us will monitor the news during the day, hoping to learn more about what the shooter thought he was doing, sure to hear more about the heroism and horror inside the building.

Take this quiz to see if you're up on one of the biggest trends in U.S. education--the resegregation of public schools.

Answers to your toughest social justice questions.

Parlez-vous français? This educator reflects on what students on the autism spectrum, including her own daughter, can gain from foreign language study.

A few years ago, I wrote a classroom resource about ecology for elementary and middle school kids. It covered all the territory you’d expect—biomes, habitats, food chains, etc. But the publisher insisted on a conspicuous omission. No mention could be made of one of the major biologists who pioneered ecology. That biologist was Charles Darwin.

Singer, actor and activist Nick LaTour died Monday. To many children in Alabama and across the country, LaTour was a consummate storyteller who was able to bring the civil rights movement to life. People who heard him sing will forever be touched by his baritone renditions of spirituals or civil rights anthems.

As new generations come along, we hope the old beliefs mired in hate and separation will die out. The lines that once separated us continue to fade. We have evidence. Our society is more accepting now than it was decades ago of multiracial relationships, multiracial families and multiracial children. Blogger Pamela Cytrynbaum says the new generation is “rejecting the color lines” that once constrained them. The New York Times writer Susan Saulny poignantly describes the younger generation as having a “more fluid sense of identity.”

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.