Stories by Jeff Wagenheim

Don't throw away those No. 2 pencils, the kind you used to fill in all the little ovals back when you took the Scholastic Aptitude Test. If your parents went to college, too, they probably secured their places on campus by completing the sat with the same type of lead pencils. (It's not lead inside, actually, but nontoxic graphite — maybe that should be one of the multiple choice questions on the test.) And if your children grow up with post-secondary schooling aspirations, they'll also most certainly use trusty old No. 2s to write their tickets to the future. But through the generations,...

Illustrations by Marc Rosenthal The North Carolina morning sunlight is peeking through the classroom window as the students assemble. It's the beginning of the school day at Bruns Academy in Charlotte, and the children are gathering on a rug, just as they always do at 9:15 a.m. They sit in a circle and begin taking turns talking, their carry-on baggage of thoughts and feelings coaxed out of them by receptive ears. Observing this scene might harken you back to your kindergarten days, but these are not 5-year-olds. This is Morning Meeting in an eighth-grade classroom. "The value of taking this...