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When I was a kid, I attended two different elementary schools in the same town. They were very different. One was large, suburban and within walking distance to downtown. The other was very small, outside the city limits in an agricultural area and had a significant number of Spanish-speaking students.

This elementary school teacher hopes that the president can visit her school to see and learn about a different strategy for keeping our children safe.

4-H renews its mission by cultivating diversity.

During the first week of school, we received a note from Margot’s parents. Margot was battling an eating disorder than had left her hospitalized for much of the summer. She had medical and counseling appointments scheduled several times a week, and she was very uncomfortable talking about or being around food. I am ashamed to confess that I hadn’t noticed Margot. My classes are large, and she had chosen a seat near the back. She hadn’t spoken to me or anyone else. She was a small, quiet girl. Nothing about her stood out or drew attention.

I wiggle in my desk chair, softly swiveling it ever so gently back and forth, and fidget with my pen. I am a student in my own classroom. At the front of the room stands a teacher in my place. To outside observers the girl dressed in flip flops and jeans pointing at things projected to the white board could not possibly be in charge—if anything they might mistake her as an unruly student who escaped from the confines of her desk.

By now, most people have heard about the new edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn being released next month. In it, the n-word has been slashed 219 times and replaced by “slave.” Discussions over this edition have been loud, particularly in literary and education circles. Erasing the n-word would, theoretically, free teachers to teach Huck Finn again. After all, year after year, the novel appears on the American Library Association’s list of most frequently challenged or banned books.But what have we heard from our young people about this issue?

My student Belinda got into a fight last year. It wasn’t a prissy, slappy, name-calling fight, either. It was a reality television-worthy, punch- throwing, eye-bruising fight that didn’t end until Belinda’s opponent had ripped the weave out of her hair and waved it around in front of the student spectators.

Every year our school conducts what has come to be known as “The Bully Poll.” Teaching Tolerance also offers an activity to open the discussion about bullying. Our poll is an anonymous questionnaire that enables the students to answer questions openly and honestly about incidents of bullying in our school. Where does bullying most often occur? What do you think about the way in which the school handles bullying? Who is the biggest bully?