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After teaching a particularly grueling class, I looked forward to the solace of my 55-minute planning period. I started to organize the black hole that is my desk and found a folded piece of notebook paper with my name, Ms. Samsa, hastily scrawled onto it.

A family of four came to speak to my high school juniors and seniors. Two dads and their 16-year-old daughter and 17-year-old son talked about their family, the adoption process and their experiences with discrimination and prejudice.

Jenny started the year desperate to make friends. She was new, immature for her age and starting seventh grade. Because of a learning disability, Jenny was reading and writing at a second-grade level. She tried to hide that from friends. But in the cover-up effort, she often badmouthed her classmates and created drama.

Bill Gates said there would never have been a Microsoft were it not for his teachers, Fred Wright and Ann Stephens. I have to wonder if, at the time, they realized what influence they had. Was the year that they taught Gates one that stood out above the rest, or was it a school year in which they did what they always did—taught to their best ability?

Challenging regional bias in the classroom is important.

Whether it’s the bully or the blonde, the nerd or the jock, most of us are familiar with a wide range of stereotypes. We’ve also been affected by them. But there are plenty of unexpected stereotypes that need to be acknowledged as well.

Ava, an 8th-grade student in my after-school creative writing class came to me to discuss a story she was working on. She was writing a fictional story about a gay teenager who struggles with his sexuality and coming out. Even early on in the process, I was impressed with her ability to look at this story as a complex study in understanding—giving a voice to, and respectfully exploring, the conflicts of a gay teen.