Summer days are over and another school year begins. There’s a spirit of hopefulness. For some students it’s a comfortable transition and a necessary step on the way to achieve their well-established life goals. For others, the hope is that this time it will be different. They will fit more congruently into the school model and the model will expand to include their hopes and dreams. For all students, it will be a search for authenticity and a desire to be connected to someone who values them. How easy it is for all of us to remember the teacher who made us feel worthless? I suspect it is easier for us to remember the wounds we received as students than it is to recall those teachers who made us feel that we were capable, competent and likeable human beings.

Many teachers too will approach this new year with the hope that this one will be different. Lesson plans will be prepared and expectations for student behavior endlessly discussed, but will this be the year that they light the fire of thought in the minds of their students? Ultimately, it will be a meeting of people who want and hope for the same outcome but who may struggle to find that common language.

Our classes are diverse in so many ways and being able to meet that person whose values and ideas are so different from your own has to mean letting go of preconceived ideas, often based on the experiences of others and on our own prejudices, and becoming vulnerable. There is not one way to teach or learn in any classroom but there are numerous opportunities for vulnerability and for stepping out of a comfort zone to meet another person. My advice to any teacher is to include yourself in the life of the classroom, recognizing and celebrating diverse experiences. Through doing that we recognize our common humanity. That is the way to build a community. We are not the arbiters of others’ lives and those who do not resemble us are not therefore deficient.

There is so much to do in building community and so many stereotypes and notions of superiority to overcome. This summer I met someone with whom I had been in touch for some time, but we had never met. Her greeting to me was, “Oh, I thought you were black because you do the African American Heritage Trail.” We are both white but vastly different culturally and socially. It’s ironic that in 2015, African American history is still regarded as not being just history, but something of interest only to people of color. Ironic but understandable given the tragic events of 2015 that have shown us that profound divisions still exist. We are all victims of our own history, in a sense the captives of our own world view.

And that is where the hard work begins. We recognize our limited view and lean in toward others even when it is difficult. We make this path toward understanding and harmony in our diverse world by reaching out a hand and suspending judgment. It has never been more important in education for us to do this than now. All our young people will spend some time after they graduate negotiating a diverse and rapidly evolving world. As teachers, we need to make sure that we are giving them the tools to do that. To do that, we must learn those skills.

Over the summer, I took Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, N.J., , on the African American Heritage Trail. In conversation, it emerged that as a teenager he had jumped off a school bus that was taking his senior class to Howard University on a college tour. His escape was noted by his guidance counselor, Rosita Camillo, who hauled him back on the bus and got him to Howard. He later graduated from that university. Reflecting on his thwarted escape, he said: “We called her Mama Zita and we listened to her. She changed my life.” His fond recollection of an educator who had made a huge difference in his life was sweetened by the fact that Mama Zita is Carrie Camillo Tankard’s sister. Carrie is the co-founder of the heritage trail, and she and Mr. Baraka spent some time recalling their shared personal history. The seeds we plant as educators are like any other seeds. They need to germinate and with nurturing in time they flourish.

As educators we believe in the power of teaching and learning as tools of transformation. It’s not in the best interests of our students to reject ideas that challenge our traditional thinking or for us to assume that we have achieved perfection. Education is complex and our world is hard to navigate. We do no service to our young people by pretending it is otherwise. The skills that are needed now are not the ability to follow orders in a factory, but how to be innovative and creative and how to function effectively in a multicultural, multilingual world. This we have to teach and learn.

As I enter my 23rd year of teaching I have some reflections to share with my colleagues. Be brave and stand up for what you believe but do not mock the beliefs of others. Question and challenge yourself and others and stand up to the bullies you will encounter because it is my observation that when bullies realize they have no power over you, they tend to deflate. This job is too important to operate from a position of fear so speak your truth, and I know that you will never be ashamed of having taken the moral choice rather than the expedient one. Learn your students and know them well. When one route in doesn’t work, then take another. Take time my friends, plant those seeds and allow time for them to grow. Reach out to those whose culture and ideas seem so different from yours. That way you will also grow. Be vulnerable and shed your own baggage while looking for the gifts that all of our students bring. We can’t afford to waste any of them.

Elaine Cawley Weintraub is chairman of the history department at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School.