Can we teach love? We must.

Sunday I woke up excited for a number of reasons.  My daughter and I were going to participate in the OSU Women's Football Clinic, a fundraiser for the James Cancer Hospital.  Spending all-day with my adult daughter is one of my life's greatest joys.

As I began to leave my home to pick her up, I noticed the numerous news media notifications.  50 feared dead.  50 believed injured.  Orlando.

Oh, no.  Not again.  Another supposed radicalized terrorist.  Many innocent people killed.  Because of who they loved.  Unfathomable.

As an educator who spent the last 15 years of her career as a high school administrator and the last nine years of that as principal of one of America's top high schools, I, too, worried about one day the unthinkable happening.  I cried the day we learned of Sandy Hook and, as a principal myself, perseverated about the innocent children and staff killed and the bravery of the principal and staff members who died trying to save their students.

Bastions of once safe places no longer exist.  Churches, schools, theaters, work places, entertainment clubs-- all places that people of similar interests gather, have become places of targeted hatred.

We no longer solely fight our wars soldiers to soldiers.  We now fight them in our safe places.  Mental illness has also caused people to strike out in hatred.

Sunday night after the clinic I packed up my computer as Monday I was presenting at an educational conference, Connect for Success.  Between sessions on Student Engagement, Innovation and PLC work, we engaged in conversations about Orlando as throughout the day the names and faces of the identified victims came up on our phones and laptops.

It is hard to think about educational accountability, ESSA and Common Core when we consider the state of our world.  Why so much hate?  Can we teach love?

Are our schools filled with love or hate?  Teaching tolerance is not enough.  Tolerance reminds me of to tolerate someone.  We need to not only accept others; we need to love them.

We need to have love in our schools, in our classrooms, and teach our students to love.  Can we do it?  Believe me.  I have no answers for the violence and hatred in this world.  It certainly looks to me like my generation has not done a very good job of teaching love.

We may have raised standards in school.  I believe the students in our high school have more doors open and have more opportunities than even before.  Many enter college with over a year of college credit.  They do more community service, have higher GPA's, and are more motivated than any students I know.  They are wonderful human beings.

But are they prepared for this world?  Is it possible for us to prepare for this world?  I have no answers but lots of questions myself.  Believe me, this is an apolitical, non-judgmental post which no indicting any religion or group in this world.

But I do know this.  Schools have layer after layer of things we are required to teach.  It just keeps coming.  I just read that now there is a movement in our state to to pass a law to require to teach cursive writing. Really?

Maybe we should be requiring teaching love.  Can we do it? Should we be doing it?  Well, everyone keeps telling us to teach everything else.  Schools throughout history are the ones who are supposed to teach students how to be good citizens. Now good digital citizens. Good character.  Community service. Academics.  Athletics. Student government. Democracy. Tolerance.  Global learning.

All I know is now more than anything else this world needs love.  And love strong enough to stand up for others who are hated and killed for being who they are.  And if not us, who?

As a principal, my students and staff may have disagreed with my decisions, but I believe they knew how much I loved them.  I am not afraid to say it.  I loved my students and I loved my staff and I loved my job.  And I believe that affected our school culture and climate positively as we made decisions to make each student feel valued and loved.  We cared about them as people and as learners.  And I know our staff truly loved our students also, for they are extraordinary educators and people.

Photo by Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.net

But today's world is not getting better.  Our daily lives can  be filled with anxiety and fear, when we travel, when our loved ones travel, when we gather at large sporting events, large rallies, and sadly, when we gather at our own places of worship, especially if tragic events happen recently or in proximity to what we are doing.

And then after a while, our anxiety eases, and we begin to forget.  Maybe, we think, this is the last one.  The last mall attack, the last theater attack, last club, last school, last church. . . . and then Orlando.

We must fight hate with love.  And so, can we teach love?  Yes. We can.  More importantly, we must.  We must teach and reinforce love in our history lessons and in our literature pieces we choose.  We must point out the devastating hate history we have around the world so that it never happens again.  We must make it real.

When I taught 8th grade language arts we "taught"about  the Holocaust.  We read Night and brought in a Holocaust survivor or their relative.  We made trip after trip to our school library and filled our classroom with six million pages of books, one for each victim.

Today we can also teach love in our classrooms, hallways and bathrooms, anywhere students are bullying, harassing or making fun of someone because of their sexual orientation, their weight, their hair color, their religion, their interests, or just because they don't like them.  We also need to teach love by our own words and actions, whether students are around or not, for if we cannot love each other though we may be different, we cannot expect our students to love each other.

We need to continue to teach our students and our staff to speak up when they hear anyone make any threats about anyone or any place. We need to work with our parents, for we cannot do this alone either, to also teach love in their actions and words, to teach love by example to their children, and to also be our eyes and ears in social media where threats may occur.

Graphic by Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.net

We must teach love and we must mean it.  We must teach our students that although we may be different from someone, that does not mean we have to disagree, and just because we disagree, we do not have to dislike.  Or hate.  And that should also apply to our Presidential candidates, for our children are also watching and learning from them also.

We are all part of some group in the world who is currently or has been persecuted, tortured and even killed.  We are women, men, gay, straight, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, white, black, Native American, Latino, mentally ill, disabled, Middle Eastern, American, African, etc. And we must learn to stand up for each other when someone is the victim of hate. Why?

A vey poignant poem entitled "The Hangman"  by Maurice Ogden best illustrates the reason.  In the poem, the Hangman visits a town and builds a scaffold.  He then selects a citizen to hang, only telling the town that he hangs "He who serve me best." One by one, he hangs citizens, while the other townspeople stand by and let him. for he was not coming for them.  Until only one citizen remained.  And then the Hangman came for him, because, since no one had stood up to the Hangman, there was no one left to save him either. The silence of the citizens "served him best."

And so, we must stand up to hate with love.  For the larger group we are all a part of is humanity.  And an attack on one of us, is an attack on all of us.

Photo courtesy of Photostock, freedigitalphotos.net

And we, our children and our grandchildren are not safe until we are able to overcome hate with love.  Can we teach love? Yes, in our homes and in our schools and in our churches.  We can, and we must.

You Can Do It!

For nine years, I served as principal of a then new Central Ohio suburban high school. We opened dedicated to initiating and implementing the principles of Professional Learning Community work and sought resources to inform, guide, and inspire staff.

One of the best resources we discovered was On Common Ground, edited by Richard DuFour, Robert Eaker, and Rebeca DuFour. With our Central Office's support, we purchased a copy for each staff member, that year and every year for new staff, and we utilized it as our PD focus and application.

My well-worn copy of On Common Ground.

It is a unique compilation of articles by some of America's best educational researchers and reformists supporting characteristics of specific research, such as assessment, and how it is supported in and by Professional Learning Community work.  Contributors include Michael Fullan, Douglas Reeves, Michael Schmoker, and Rick Stiggins, and other notables.

One of the chapters, entitled the "Masters of Motivation,"became one of our most valuable resources in our work with changing the culture and climate of our building from an emphasis on teaching to an emphasis on learning.  Why?  Because it is the chapter that speaks of learning communities as schools of hope, schools of "effort-based ability."

In short, the author Jonathon Saphier encourages us to examine the message we send our students every day in our classrooms.  Do we convey to our students that we believe they can each do rigorous work to high standards, even if they do not believe it themselves?

He states that we should and must continue to exhort students in our words and actions that "What we are doing is important. You can do it. I will not give up on you."(p. 87, On Common Ground.)


"What we are doing is important.

You can do it.

I will not give up on you."


It is a simple mantra, but one that as we reflected on it, we realized that we were not implementing.  As a high-performing high school that offered both AP and IB courses, in addition to Honors, we often started the year with long syllabi and first week of school messages that emphasized how hard this class was going to be, how prepared you better be to be able to succeed and how much work you were going to have to do.

We emphasized the "this is important work" portion without reassuring students that yes, they could be successful and yes, we were there to help them learn it.

As a result, many students fled to guidance in the first week of school to drop the very AP and IB courses we had encouraged and recommended that they take.

We had excellent discussions with our staff about the sometimes subtle and sometimes overt messages we sent students about whether they should be in that class or not.  We also realized that we sometimes believed ourselves that certain students shouldn't be in certain courses.

This, of course, is an antithesis to the PLC belief that we all need to commit to focus on learning, that students can learn, and it is our job to assure learning in every classroom, every period, every day.

We had rich discussions in staff meetings, department chair meetings, same-subject team meetings, department meetings and casual conversations.  This dialogue and its outcome was one of our tipping points in our PLC work.  We HAD to believe that every student could learn, and we had to recognize that it was our job to ensure it.  More importantly, we needed to build classroom and school-wide structures to become a school of hope with high aspirations for every student.

The Math Department actually printed these words on a poster and had it on every math classroom door: "Math is hard work. You can do it. We will help you."  Imagine the message that sent every student as they entered math class.  Soon, one by one, more teachers embraced this commitment as their own motivating mantra to engage students in believing that yes, they could learn and would learn.

Embracing "effort-based ability" and overtly teaching effective effort strategies to our students helped transform our school into a school of hope.  More importantly, our teacher-student relationships strengthened with a commitment to learning.  We changed from individual teachers communicating and teaching content to collaborative teaching teams communicating to students that we do important work, they can do it, and we will not give up on them.

As principals, we also realized the importance of communicating this same belief to our staff as they continued to engage in our PLC journey.  Adults, as well as students, need to know that this work is important, they they can do it, and that we will not give up on them.