IntroductionLove and Education: How Did We Get Here?We decided to write this book together as a way to invite teachers to explore the practice of teaching and supporting students from a place of love. Every year, we conduct hundreds of workshops and presentations with administrators, educators, and parents around the country to help them develop loving and inclusive approaches to support diverse students. We wanted to share practices, stories, and tools from our experiences as people committed to teaching and leading schools from the heart. We understand that it may seem radical for us to use words like love, compassion, and heart when we talk about behavior and discipline. However, we feel emboldened not only because the concept of love in education is not new but also because neuroscientists and biologists have begun to use this very same language in their research as they learn more about the significant impact love and compassion have on the human mind and body. Our brains are constantly forming and changing throughout our lives, and the human mind is particularly impressionable when we reach school age and adolescence. Educators, therefore, have the power to shape and change student brains at critical times in their lives. The compassionate words and actions we model and the heartfelt strategies we practice with our students can help shape who they are and, eventually, who they will become. Many teachers and administrators, at their core, believe in teaching from the heart and leading with love. Yet they don't always know how teaching from the heart translates into effective supports and practices for working with students who exhibit challenging behavior. Over the years, we have drawn from incredible scholars and thinkers (such as Alfie Kohn, Bill Ayers, and bell hooks), expert practicing educators, wise and intuitive students, and formalized approaches (such as restorative practices, humanistic behavior supports, and social-emotional learning) to turn an educator's belief in love into actionable, practical, heartfelt practices that work to heal. Why Do We Teach?Because we have the incredible power and privilege to help shape student brains, it is critical that we ask ourselves the following questions: "What do we want for our students?" and "Who would we like to help them become?" We have thought about this question long and hard, and we wanted to share our thinking with you as you begin to approach the question for yourself. We, Kate and Julie, teach because we believe we can Create inclusive and sacred environments where every one of our students can feel safe, valued, and loved. Encourage possibility, transformation, and creativity. Promote compassion and belonging in our students and communities. Build a society in which we celebrate the diversity of humanity. Help every human reach an even fuller version of their potential.
We also teach because we are hopeful and intent on living a life that aligns with our values. We teach because, although changing systems and communities can be daunting and seemingly impossible, we believe change begins with us. And, above all else, we teach from a place of love. Teaching Is HardPracticing love and compassion in education isn't always easy, and we are not pretending to sugarcoat the daily realities of a teacher. We know that educators are tasked with immeasurable work and incredibly challenging situations. You must be both generalists and specialists and be prepared to teach reading, writing, arithmetic, a variety of content areas, life skills, communication and collaboration skills, socioemotional skills, and remedial skills. You must meet national and state standards and help your students achieve on standardized assessments you may or may not agree with philosophically. You must be guides, inspirations, nurturers, comforters, critics, comedians, gurus, therapists, and advocates. You must show up every day, in every way, for each and every one of your students. Educators must also come prepared to address students' fears, concerns, hearts, and minds. In recent years, educators have arrived at school, heartbroken themselves, to talk to their students about mass shootings at Parkland High School, a Pittsburgh synagogue, an Orlando nightclub, and a church in Charleston. Educators have shown up to discuss national movements and traumas connected to #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo. And educators have shown up to listen to and support students dealing with community and personal issues—a bomb threat at the local high school, a young boy who lost his mother to breast cancer, or a student bullied for her transgender identity. But let us not forget that educators also have the amazing opportunity to come to school and celebrate and experience joy with students—and to practice and teach kindness, love, and compassion. Educators such as you are there to give a student a hug after her first typed communication on her iPad and share a goofy dance with students at graduation. Educators such as you take a moment to help a student understand her anger and let her know they are there to support her no matter what. Educators such as you are there to shed happy tears when 10th graders present community action projects about ending homelessness. And you are there to show students how to spread kindness and gratitude to one another at the end of a hard day … or a wonderful day. Throughout all this joy, pain, and love, if we are to use a heartfelt approach that draws on love, we must also face our triumphs and failures with kindness and compassion for our students and ourselves. We must reflect on our bravest moments and our most vulnerable ones. We must consider our language and our actions with our most challenging students. We must consider how to push back against systems or schools that do not align with our values or educational philosophies. And we must always ask, "How can we do this better tomorrow with more love and compassion?" Throughout this book, we will ask you to practice the radical act of reclaiming your classroom as a place of love. We will ask you to consider new ways to approach your students with love and to teach them, with words and actions, the new types of learning and becoming that can occur when we bring love and education together. Before reading on to the next section, we want you to take some time to answer the question of why you teach (see Figure 0.1). This will help ground and focus you before you dive into the perspectives, tools, and "how-tos" of our approach. Please be sure to reflect on all the amazing, artful, change-making work you take part in every day as a teacher. We encourage you to write or draw your response. Throughout this book, we will ask you to engage your learning in various ways with questions, reflections, and activities. We encourage you to dedicate a journal to use in connection with this book. Whenever you see this journal prompt icon, you can write, draw, and reflect in your journal. Figure 0.1. Why Do I Teach?Why This Book Matters NowEven when excellent educators approach teaching from a place of love, we find that they can still struggle approaching students with challenging behavior from the same place. When we work with educators and administrators across the country, they almost always point to challenging behavior, outdated behavior management practices, and misguided schoolwide discipline policies that get in the way of effective, heartfelt teaching. Because challenging behavior is one of the most significant issues educators face, we know it is critical to rethink these outdated behavior management practices that do not align with educator values such as promoting inclusion and teaching with love. Since the 1990s, school discipline approaches have largely been dominated by zero-tolerance policies. Originally developed as an approach to drug enforcement (Skiba & Rausch, 2006), zero-tolerance policies were adopted by schools as a way to uniformly mandate responses to student behavior, such as bullying, fighting, drugs, and disruption. However, such uniform responses are punitive and severe (e.g., suspension or expulsion) and are applied regardless of circumstances or context. Educational and psychological research has shown again and again that zero-tolerance policies are not effective in creating safer schools. In fact, they often produce negative outcomes for students, such as a lack of opportunities to engage in school relationships, a distrust of adults, and a negative impact on self-worth and self-esteem (APA Zero Tolerance Task Force, 2008). Pause now and consider your answers to our question "Why do I teach?" It is likely that the outcomes of zero-tolerance policies and practices do not align with your values. This is particularly true when we examine the following incredible personal and systemic challenges students are facing today in our schools: Reports of anxiety and depression among our school-aged students are at an all-time high (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019). One out of every five students report that they are bullied at school (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019), and the reasons most often cited by students include physical appearance, race and ethnicity, gender, disability, religion, and sexual orientation (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019). Students who are subjected to bias-based bullying are at a higher risk for negative emotional and physical health effects than students who report nonbias-based bullying (Rosenthal et al., 2015). Schools across the nation are suspending, excluding, and expelling students with disabilities, students of color, and LGBTQ students at a significantly higher rate than their nondisabled, white, and cisgendered peers (U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, 2016). Our nation is politically divided with a significant focus on identity politics connected to race, religion, immigration status, gender, and sexual orientation.
These issues are overwhelming, and our current punitive behavior management and disciplinary practices only exacerbate them. In order to realize the values you've outlined in your response to "Why do I teach?"—and to reclaim your classroom as a sacred, heartfelt space—we must rethink and restory the way we understand and approach student behavior. Our students, now more than ever, need us to believe in them, shine a light on their strengths, and approach them with whole hearts and compassion every single day. What's Different About Our Approach?Our approach first requires you to shift away from a "behavior management" mindset that punishes or rewards students for "good" or "compliant" behavior. We then ask you to adopt new heartfelt approaches that foster a sense of belonging and aim to support all students, even the most challenging ones, with kindness, creativity, compassion, and love. When we support a student using a heartfelt approach, we Focus on the student's strengths, gifts, and talents. Brainstorm and enact strategies that illuminate and create deeper connections between teacher and student. Implement strategies that illuminate and create deeper connections between a student and their peers. Purposefully plan to ignite the student's creativity and sense of self-worth. Problem solve daily to meet the social, emotional, and academic needs of the learner.
Rather than use outdated behavioral management practices such as rewards and punishments, our approach Helps you reconnect to your values and beliefs about students and teaching. Helps you identify barriers to student success in the cultural, social, and environmental landscape. Provides questions for rethinking challenging student behavior and how we support our students. Is steeped in the extreme self-care of the educator first.
When we use an approach that focuses on belonging, we are teaching and leading from a place of love. This book represents a paradigm shift from a punitive mindset to a strengths-based, loving approach and represents a radical act toward creating more inclusive and caring schools. Who We AreWe, Kate and Julie, are here to guide you as you explore what leading with your heart to support students with challenging behavior means for you. For the past several decades, we have worked as teachers, researchers, and consultants to support administrators, educators, students, and parents through the art of creating caring, creative, and inclusive schools for all learners. We are in schools across the country working alongside teachers who are supporting students with some of the most challenging behaviors. Does This Book Fit with Existing Approaches?This book is an excellent complement to the strategies and ideas involved in Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and Restorative Practices in Schools (RP). It is not a replacement of these ideas but instead a deeper complement and personal guide to help teachers embrace all types of behavioral supports that focus on belonging, acceptance, relationships, and building an inclusive school culture. PBIS consists of clearly defining and teaching behavioral expectations and rewarding positive behavior. It also focuses on targeted interventions consistent with expectations. For students with more intense behavioral support needs, it utilizes a wrap-around approach guided by a functional behavioral assessment. Our approach works hand in glove with these ideas, but it also provides a deeper framework of emotional supports to educators as they do this work. RP, like our approach, focuses on shifting from the use of punitive strategies to handle student behavior, using alternative methods grounded in building positive relationships between teachers and students, and helping students problem solve conflicts and emotions. Schools using RP can implement specific methods, such as informal problem-solving conversations, circles, and mediation to help students reflect on their behaviors, take responsibility for what happened, and work collaboratively to determine a plan to address any harm done to the student, peers, teachers, or community. Emergent research regarding the effectiveness of restorative practices shows that the use of RP can reduce disciplinary issues and improve the academic and social culture of a school community. Our approach parallels the RP mindset shift from punitive to positive and provides expanded problem-solving methods and conversations you can have with your students and your colleagues. When used alongside RP, our approach and practices will help you deepen your ability to build positive and authentic relationships with your students. How to Use This BookAs you make your way through each section of this book, we will provide you with heartfelt strategies, variations, and examples you can try with both individual students and entire classrooms. We believe the ideas in this book are powerful tools for change, and we encourage you to spend time reading, analyzing, and practicing them. We have provided stories from teachers, students, and families we've worked with in each chapter (though we have changed some names and details). Our deepest thanks go out to all those who provided their voices and support for this work and this book. The stories are critical because we believe the experiences of these individuals are what best bring our approach and its dramatic results to life. Chapter Contents Chapter 1: Rethinking Students Who Challenge Us. This foundational chapter is about the active work teachers must engage in to rethink our students' challenging behavior using a heartfelt, strengths-based approach. We explore the ways in which schooling systems, traditional disability labels, and deficit-based thinking can stifle educators' natural inclination to support students in creative and loving ways. We then describe a new approach to view difference and diversity as natural and positive. We provide practices to help reset thinking and lead to a change in student support. Chapter 2: Focusing on Educators' Mental Health: Developing Love and Self-Care. When our cup is full, it is easier to share with others. We want educators who have full cups. Students deserve educators who are rested and in the right emotional place to support them with love and kindness. That requires a good deal of reflective self-care. Dealing with challenging behavior can feel very personal and emotionally taxing. We provide strategies and supports for you to reflect on each day and to process and heal the challenging emotions that come from this difficult work. Chapter 3: Belonging: Putting Your Love on Display. In this chapter, we discuss the structures and practices in traditional schooling that can impede a sense of belonging for many of our students. These include pullout programs for students with disabilities and English language learners, separate classrooms for students with behavior problems, and ability grouping. We contrast these with inclusive structures and practices that foster a sense of belonging and connections to peers and teachers. These structures and practices help educators cultivate relationships, facilitate collaboration, encourage friendships, and celebrate what is unique about each learner. Chapter 4: Creating a Culture of Inclusion. In this chapter, we ask you to abandon the myth of the so-called typical learner and embrace diversity in new ways in the classroom. We discuss that, as educators, what we do and present in our classrooms (i.e., instruction, curriculum, language, materials, community building) has a significant effect on student behavior. We discuss class and schoolwide practices that educators can draw on to decrease challenging behavior, create an inclusive culture, and respect who students are and the value they bring to the school community. Chapter 5: Teaching Gratitude, Kindness, and Compassion. Here, we focus on how you can teach students important social and emotional skills such as kindness, compassion, gratitude, and trust. We provide strategies, ideas, and resources you can use daily in your classrooms or throughout the entire school. We address what research says about these practices and how they connect deeply to our goal of building kinder, compassionate, and more inclusive communities. Chapter 6: Exploring Acceptance, Belonging, and Community: Heartfelt Problem Solving. In this chapter, we focus on shifting from a mindset of fixing or disciplining student behavior to collaborative problem solving with the student. We ask educators to reflect on their responses to student behavior and invest in building relationships—instead of barriers—with students. We discuss practices that support educators to do this work, including giving students and families ownership over the process, encouraging peers to work together to develop new ideas and mediate existing problems (which aligns well with RP), and leading colleagues to help create success plans for students. Chapter 7: Dealing with Crisis Artfully. The goal of this book is to help students be seen, heard, and supported so they do not end up in emotional crisis. However, even with thoughtful planning, creative and engaging lessons, and a cohesive community, some students will still struggle with behavior. The most important thing educators can do is accept that fact and respond in a compassionate, calm, and loving way. When a student struggles and is yelling, hitting, or kicking, we explain that safety is the primary concern. We then ask educators to reflect on how they would want someone to react to an extremely difficult situation or an emotional meltdown. This chapter deals with the practices that come in handy during a crisis. Chapter 8: Proclaiming and Maintaining Loving Spaces. The book concludes with inspiration for committing to the work and practices you can use to increase your happiness, improve your health, and build a more connected community of educators. We know that educators who are happier and more connected to a support network are better able to support students. We therefore conclude with two "educator proclamations" for creating and sustaining radical and loving classrooms. Helpful Tools for Using This BookThroughout the book, we encourage you to write, highlight, and draw on these pages to help clarify your thinking and engage in the many self-assessment and reflection sections we've included. You will also find reproducibles, such as the following: Our strengths-based approach protocol for supporting students. Our collaborative heartfelt problem-solving process. Examples of heartfelt problem-solving processes and success plans. Teacher proclamations for committing to loving, caring classrooms.
Take Your TimeWe hope that by the end of the book, our approach and the tools we've provided will help you feel empowered and encouraged to develop deeper relationships with students, promote desired student behavior, and improve an inclusive classroom community and culture for all. Take your time and feel free to jump around to sections you need right away. This book's primary goal is to support you with love and compassion—because you are a teacher and a superhero. Printed by for personal use only |
