Teaching children is an act of love. But love, as a concept, needs to be unpacked. It can so often be misunderstood! Love can be used as an excuse to avoid the bad stuff, to give ourselves credit for the intention rather than the execution. This is the second post on what it means, truly, to be an educator who is on the journey to lead with love. You can read the first post here.
Being love. Carla Shalaby, in her “letter to teachers” at the end of her book, Troublemakers, writes that professional development books fail us when they treat classroom management as a “technical or a mechanical skill” rather than “deeply relational, human work” (172). She continues to write that Troublemakers offers “ideas about how to be… that we be love” (172).
I find the idea that our job in the classroom with children is about being love compelling.
To be clear, there are many books on classroom management whose techniques and mechanics have found their way into my practice. There was a place in my growth for Doug Lemov’s Teach like a Champion, and at the same time, my most uncomfortable evenings are the ones where I made a mistake of human relationship. Where I spoke too much or didn’t speak enough, where I overshared or missed an opportunity to share my experience to help ease someone else’s struggles. Those aren’t issues of technique. They are issues of love.
I want you to read what Shalaby has to say about being love. These are two of my very favorite paragraphs of education writing, and I am excited to share them with you.
“If you be love, as a teacher, then what you model is the belief – through the everyday things you do – that no human being deserves to suffer any threat to or assault on her personhood. It means that even in the face of a young person constantly calling out, cursing you out, or throwing a chair, you be love in a response that disciplines rather than punishes. You be love by modeling healing over harm. You be love by restoring community instead of excluding from community.
“People misunderstand the meaning of love in public life. On the surface it can seem easy to be love. We can be less mean, more forgiving. We can yell less and smile more. Public love is confused with things like affection, kindness, politeness. I am talking instead about a love that is fierce, powerful, political, insistent. This kind of love is not easy. Authentic public love necessarily demands conflict, tears, and hurt, because our transition to freedom and to more human ways of being requires that we call ourselves out in order to call others in. It requires that we be willing to confront one another, and that we be willing to listen generously when we are being confronted – letting go of our personal feelings for a commitment, instead, to the shared goal of freedom. Can we imagine our classrooms as a place to practice these revolutionary ways of being? If being love means materially changing the conditions of our world, we can begin to understand why it is hard work. And it becomes clear that we need to start practicing early, as young children, with the support of adults who are teaching and learning alongside us.”
(Troublemakers, pages 172-173)
I love the idea that love is ‘fierce, powerful, political, insistent.’ I think that an essential approach we must embrace as we figure this all out is a both/and approach. This idea reminds me of the lyrics of Taylor Swift’s “marjorie.” Swift writes “never be so kind, you forget to be clever / never be so clever you forget to be kind”, and, later, “never be so polite you forget your power / never wield such power you forget to be polite.”
Is there any better articulation of what love is? I truly can’t think of one.
I love “marjorie.” I feel like she really articulates how hard it is to be both/and. She helps us build a both/and framework for our own being. I especially love that her lyrics make it clear that it isn’t about finding “middle ground” – she isn’t saying that the solution is to be medium clever and medium kind, or medium polite and medium powerful. She’s saying that we have to do the difficult work of being very clever and very kind, at the same time. In committing to our values, we are committed too to seeing the tensions created by juxtaposing them.
When I sat down with the first lines of “marjorie”, I tried to write my own version. I came up with several versions, but there were two that I particularly loved:
- Never be so curious, you forget to have a point of view / never have so strong a point of view that you forget to be curious
- Never be so slow that you forget to have an impact, never push so hard for impact that you forget to take it slow.
Of course, neither of these have the poetry or rhythm of Ms. Swift, but they do get at real tensions I continue to struggle with in this work.
As we continue to find for ourselves a guide on being love, I encourage you to ask yourself, what are some of the values you hold that can sometimes be in tension with each other?
**Parker Palmer and Alex Venet among others talk about this both/and thinking and its importance in equity work, and I recommend both books to deepen your understanding of why this matters for educators.
sruti teaches 