Her classmate, Sophia Spungin, 16, said the incident felt “like a direct attack as it’s the symbol signifying hatred toward a particular group. Plain and simple, it’s not okay.”

Poll When It Comes to

Hate in Schools

After the incident, students at Marblehead worked to raise money to bring in the ADL’s anti-bias program, which extends beyond addressing anti-Semitism to other forms of discrimination.

Some teachers say they must play a frontline role in combatting intolerance. One of those teachers is Jennifer Goss, who designed a course on the Holocaust and other genocides in world history at Robert E. Lee High School in Staunton, Va., where many of her students are white. Goss has taught her course for nearly 15 years, but she said interest has grown among her students, as well as her fellow teachers in recent years, something she attributes to the heightened cultural tensions in the country.

“Initially when I started teaching the class I was using examples of anti-Semitic graffiti that were from 10 years ago,” Goss said. “And sadly, I can go onto most major news outlets today and find examples from just a couple of weeks ago.”

‘I'm not in school with her, I can't protect her’

The pervasive use of social media to spread messages of hate can leave communities feeling pummeled.

Many of the bias reports Education Week reviewed included the use of Instagram and Snapchat. Parents interviewed in various cities said they usually find out about hate-related incidents from their children or social media.

In another case of racist speech spreading like wildfire on social media, seven students at Bel Air High School in Bel Air, Md., used the occasion of the school’s “Scrabble Day” to spell out the n-word with letters written on their T-shirts. A photo went viral on social media in the following days.

Jahneen Keatz, an African-American mother whose daughter Jenea is a junior at the high school, said she got a robocall from the principal who said there had been an “incident” and students had been disciplined. But the principal offered no other details. Keatz finally found out what happened when another black parent saw the image on social media and called her.

After community outrage, the Harford County school district started some diversity initiatives at the high school, where 79 percent of students are white, according to state data.

Bel Air school officials declined to be interviewed, but Laurie Namey, the district’s supervisor of equity and cultural proficiency, sent a statement that listed their efforts, including at the high school campus where “students directly involved in the incident took part in a restorative lesson focused on the historical and current social impact” of the slur used.

Jenea, 15, has become a vocal activist against racism since last fall’s incident, said her mother. But Keatz said she worries about her daughter’s safety.

“My daughter will tell you, I check in with her every day,” Keatz said. “I want her to know that she has a voice and my only job is to teach her how to use it productively, to hopefully evoke change. But as a parent, as a mother…there is some worry. Because I'm not in school with her, I can't protect her.”

These conversations are inescapable for families of color, said Karsonya Wise Whitehead, a professor of communication, African, and African-American studies at Loyola University Maryland who is often is tapped to speak to audiences after a bias incident occurs in their community.

This school year, that call came from her own backyard, after a cluster of affluent private schools in Baltimore, including the school her own sons attend, started a social media firestorm after photos of students and alumni dressed in racist Halloween costumes circulated online.

According to the Baltimore Sun, one photo showed a graduate of Boys’ Latin School of Maryland dressed in an orange jumpsuit with the name “Freddie Gray” on the back, referring to the African-American man who died from injuries while in police custody in 2015 and who became a prominent symbol in the greater Black Lives Matter movement. A second photo, from a different party, depicted two teens from Gilman School and Roland Park Country School dressed in orange jumpsuits with a racial slur in the caption, the Sun reported.

One of the schools, Roland Park, brought in Whitehead to talk to all students about how hurtful and racist the images were and to lead a discussion about diversity, inclusion, and taking “ownership over our words and actions” with the predominately upper-class, white student body, she said.

Video Discussing Hate: Advice for Teachers From Teachers After the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., last August, teachers came together to share resources on how to best discuss racism and hatred in the classroom. Here are five pieces of advice from educators.

Whitehead has found that sometimes it’s parents—not school administrators—who are the most reluctant to address incidences of bigotry.

“Sometimes the complaint is, my child is too young,” Whitehead said. “Or it seems like you're stuffing this down our throat. Or I can't believe we have to deal with this again.”

Whitehead’s oldest son Kofi is a student at the all-male Gilman, one of the private schools involved in the Halloween scandal. He will be the vice president of the school’s Black Student Union next year.

“After the incident, I talked with my parents, trying to figure out how to make my white classmates understand what it means to be black and male in America,” he said. “There are days when I do not completely understand it myself.”

‘I tell them to be proud of who we are and what we bring to the community’

In rural Perry, Iowa, the Latino student population has grown a lot in the past 20 years due in part to the meat processing plants and other industries that employ many immigrants from Mexico. Perry High School, once mostly white, is now half white and half Latino, said Principal Dan Marburger. Most of the school’s Latino students are U.S.-born with Mexican-born parents.

But in a region that’s still predominately white, Perry High’s Latino students have been the targets of hate speech—especially in the realm of high school sports.

During a basketball game in February 2016, the Perry Hall team—most of its players were Latino—heard chants of “Trump! Trump! Trump!” when they ran onto the court to start the game. The taunts came from about a dozen students from the opposing high school, Marburger said.