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Educators working in locked facilities have a lot to offer—to their students and to their public-school colleagues.

For the last few days, an “educational analyst” for Focus on the Family has been getting a lot of press. She’s been suggesting that anti-bullying efforts that draw attention to the harassment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students are part of a “gay agenda” to “sneak homosexuality lessons into classrooms.”

How do your students learn how to know? And what does your teaching look like in the face of a devaluing of shared truth, deepening political polarization and the mainstreaming of intolerance?

Mentors and coaches can be anti-bias allies.

As my 10th-grade students came back from lunch, it was clear that a few of my more squirrely young men needed time to readjust to the ways of a classroom after being away all summer. “It’s just a joke between us, Mr. Greenslate,” said Aaron. “We all know Jason from outside of school, and so that’s just how we mess around. Once you know us better you’ll understand.”

“Will we be learning history from a biblical or counter-biblical perspective?” James asked. I could see an intense honesty in his eyes, one that I’m pretty sure only teachers know. It was another one of those moments

Through a grant from Teaching American History, I was part of a group of teachers who spent months reading, listening and watching films and videos about the civil rights movement before we took a trip to the South. But still it was history—far away, untouchable and remote. That was until the first day in Sumner, Miss.