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Giovanni Blair McKenzie gave this speech about supporting LGBTQ youth of color and “interlocking forms of discrimination” at the 2015 Human Rights Campaign’s Time to THRIVE conference.

Every week I write a quotation on the board and ask my students to write responses to it in their journals. One of our favorite quotes is by William Butler Yeats: "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." This quote aptly captures the reason why I teach. A group of minds in a room–thinking through problems together–can generate amazing heat and ignite a fire.

In this first of a three-part series, this new-educator mentor explains how mentoring can help new teachers focus on students’ assets rather than their deficits.

Editor’s note: The author of this essay prefers the pronoun they. In a poignant letter to their teenage self, Jey Ehrenhalt—a transgender educator and advocate—recalls jarring and painful experiences of their youth and describes how many schools urgently need to become more welcoming and supportive places for transgender students.

This toolkit for “An Open Letter to Teachers Everywhere” offers two suggested resources for educators.

An initiative to revamp college admissions criteria presents an opportunity for K-12 educators to highlight academic achievement and caring for others at the same time.

There are positive and negative effects from working in a helping profession like education. This toolkit aids educators in the exploration of the fatigue, burnout and even the trauma they may experience when helping students who are suffering.

Teachers need resilience too.

Activities for The Fighting Mynahs

I love teaching in a co-op with other homeschoolers and former public educators. We are an incredibly diverse group—racially, ability-wise and religiously. We also incorporate diversity in our guest speakers and field trips. The first day of school this year, we were chanting and doing art projects with Tibetan monks. So how do we make Mix It Up at Lunch Day unique with this gorgeous hodgepodge of people that is already used to joining together?