The Backpack Drop Zone: One Sixth-Grade Truth That Exposed Our Quiet Crisis

by fences, by bank accounts. But looking at my 6th graders, I realized they were suffering from a different kind of division. They were alone together.

So, I threw out the lesson plan. I put away the history books.

“Class,” I had said an hour earlier, “today we aren’t studying the Civil War. We are studying the war happening inside you.”

I walked to continue reading …