While educators work hard amid big challenges to provide all students a great public education, some politicians and groups are stoking fear and division with extreme rhetoric and proposals to restrict classroom speech and learning.

In this series, MEA Voice Editor Brenda Ortega shares five powerful individual stories that together reveal the detrimental effects of anti-LGBTQ laws and rhetoric on students and educators.

1. Chilling effects from ‘Don’t Say Gay’
2. Echoes from history of the worst kind
3. Award-winning teacher faces threats
4. Loving families won’t return to shadows
5. ‘Our power comes from our stories’