Case: 12-60264 Document: 00513162565 Page: 14 Date Filed: 08/20/2015 No. 12-60264 (13) the school-district’s discipline policy; (14) the school-board attorney’s letter to Bell’s mother informing her of the school-board’s determination; and (15) the transcript of the preliminary-injunction hearing. A. Students qua students do not forfeit their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and expression. Tinker, 393 U.S. at 506, 511 (“School officials do not possess absolute authority over their students . . . . In the absence of a specific showing of constitutionally valid reasons to regulate their speech, students are entitled to freedom of expression of their views.”). On the other hand, the First Amendment does not provide students absolute rights to such freedoms, and those rights must be tempered in the light of a school official’s duty to, inter alia, “teach[] students the boundaries of socially appropriate behavior”, Bethel Sch. Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675, 681 (1986), and “protect those entrusted to their care”, Morse v. Frederick, 551 U.S. 393, 408 (2007). As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote nearly a century ago: “[T]he character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47, 52 (1919) (citation omitted). Therefore, because “the constitutional rights of students in public school are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings”, Fraser, 478 U.S. at 682, certain speech, which would be protected in other settings, might not be afforded First Amendment protection in the school setting. Balancing these competing interests, Tinker provided in 1969 the standard for evaluating whether the First Amendment protects a student’s speech. There, the Court considered the suspension of students for wearing black armbands in protest against the Vietnam War. Tinker, 393 U.S. at 505– 14