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I like to switch things up every once in a while, so I assigned my high school students a project I’d never done before—a gift book. In addition to the academic value, I hoped to strengthen at least one teen-adult connection at a time when it’s sometimes hard to just grunt, “Good morning,” without an argument. (I know this because I have two teens in my own house.) I also wanted students to be able to create a keepsake to give a loved one during the holiday season. Many students could not afford to buy anything. In our rural school, many students come from low-income homes.

For the second week in a row, I was left partnerless in my graduate class. It was my own fault, I guess. I didn’t feel like moving. As I scanned the room, no one made eye contact with me or motioned toward me. It was clear that I would have to make the first move to ask to be included in a group—and, after a day filled with hundreds of tiny setbacks, I just didn’t feel like it.

Children are susceptible to superficial notions of beauty, but this teacher believes the real purpose of education is to give them a different message.

Educators can use classroom publishing to validate the experiences of all students and to introduce critical literacy. This toolkit provides writing prompts to help you bring out the best in your students’ writing.

Many teachers still feel it’s safest to teach from the closet.

My third-hour class was a challenge. The students were young, the class was large, and most students just needed a required fine art credit. Not great art lovers, they spent their considerable energy doing everything but their art projects.

I hate sheet protectors. Those shiny, clear plastic sheaths have no place in my classroom. When my new ninth-graders hand in their summer reading logs each September, the first thing I do is remove and return all the sheet protectors. They make it impossible for me to maintain my neat stacks of student work. They don’t quite fit into the file folders I use to transport those stacks home to grade them. I have to remove them before I can write any feedback.

Sometimes school tracking sets students up for failure, academically and socially. My students with disabilities, who require extra academic assistance, often ended up on the short end of the stick. Because they were in all of the same classes together I noticed that they also clung to each other in the cafeteria. They had a difficult time fitting in and making friends with other students.

This toolkit accompanies the article “Serving Up Justice at School,” and provides a classroom activity that engages students in learning about the food in their daily lives through an interdisciplinary social-action project.