lessons for love: speaking, listening, collaborating

I’ve always wanted lessons that were alive, that spoke to my students and to me. There’s a kind of poetry in curriculum design: the rhythm of directions that are concise but still clear, the unfolding of ideas, the ways to anticipate the needs of students in a classroom, and the web of ways they might interpret the information and then teach me something back.

Thankfully, I didn’t encounter a scripted lesson plan until after teaching in Abu Dhabi. It was a blessing to start there, in a school where I was trusted to write my own curriculum and surrounded by colleagues who believed in project-based learning.

In American public schools, that kind of freedom is rare. In some schools, lessons are so tightly controlled that teachers are monitored through live-streams to ensure they stick to the script. Even in the “progressive” school where I later taught in Denver, I quickly learned that when administrators came to observe, they expected to see a particular structure and format. 

My most meaningful lessons grew out of what was happening in the community—the needs of the students right in front of me. I once taught a lesson the day after a shooting took place right outside our school. What do you do the day after a student is shot? I gave students space to process, to share, and to imagine hope and transformation in the face of violence.

Toward the end of my time (when I knew I had to quit) I taught lessons on surviving public education itself. I showed my students the importance of community and standing together. That instinct was shaped by what I had first learned in Abu Dhabi, where students remained in the same sections year after year, building relationships with the same peers. At first, it was an adjustment for me, but I began to see how much leverage students had when working together and supporting their peers.

I don’t claim to have done this perfectly. (Once, I yelled at a group of students who were late to class, only to later learn they had been getting me an iPhone as a gift - whoops). I had plenty of unlearning to do. But I held on to this truth: in public schools, students were often set against each other, and in my classroom, I wanted to show that supporting and advocating for one another mattered more.

the intention of teaching love

The difference between teaching a pre-written lesson and teaching one I’ve created myself is that my heart is in it. I know that even a single moment in the classroom can change a life, can alter the way we see the world and when we hold that awareness, we begin to understand how powerful lessons, projects, and curriculum can be.

I have always wanted to write curriculum that was humanizing, responsive, and rooted in love. That impulse carried me into graduate school, and later into my PhD program, where my research now focuses on love as pedagogy. But in doing that work, I’ve missed writing curriculum. I have many ideas, but I rarely create them. Lately, I’ve been dreaming about what it might mean to design literacy that explicitly teaches love. So, in small, shareable pieces, I plan to begin sharing that.

bell hooks reminds us, “To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients—care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication” (All About Love, 2000, p. 5). Few of us are ever explicitly taught these practices of love. Instead, our understandings are shaped by media and culture which are a patchwork of half-truths, unrealistic expectations, or outright lies.

If I were still in the classroom, I would teach love directly: as an ethic and a practice. Since I’m not, I’m choosing to share resources here—for parents, guardians, educators, or even friends—that create opportunities to think and talk about love more intentionally.

scroll to the bottom to access the free lesson

My goal isn’t to position myself as an expert, but to invite conversation. Love, like literacy, grows with practice.

speaking and listening

My teaching career began in Abu Dhabi, where I had the freedom to design lessons that fostered critical thought and collaboration. I often invited students into group projects and peer conversations. They didn’t always love it (in fact, many complained), but those were the moments when learning happened: conflict resolution, shared responsibility, and dialogue that stretched them beyond simple answers.

Later, when I taught sixth grade in Denver, I carved out time for students to gather in small groups and talk. It wasn’t easy. Many had never been asked to sustain conversations with peers before. We practiced patience: how to listen, how to wait, how to speak from your own perspective and then respond to another’s. Sometimes it took multiple class periods before conversations felt natural.

My administrator discouraged this. She told me it took too much time, and that I needed to be moving through the curriculum quicker, she wanted me to spend class time doing test prep and multiple-choice drills. But I couldn’t ignore what I was seeing: a room alive with the sound of students learning how to speak, listen, and think together.

This is why I chose speaking and listening as the focus of the first resource I’m sharing. Love is practiced through dialogue. As Paulo Freire reminds us, dialogue is not only a method, but a practice of freedom (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970). To love others is to listen to them, to speak honestly, to learn how to exist in relation.

collaboration and interaction

Collaboration is rarely neat. While running group projects in Abu Dhabi, I often felt like most of my time was spent mediating conflict. Students clashed over project decisions; sometimes threatening to quit the group, sometimes breaking down in tears. Painful as it was, that was the point: to practice working through real disagreements.

In the U.S., public schools silo students and focus narrowly on individual performance. Rarely do they get the chance to practice the slower, relational skills of working with others: listening deeply and persisting through disagreement. And yet, those are the skills that sustain communities. As bell hooks wrote in Teaching to Transgress(1994), schools are not designed to set us free; they often reproduce systems of control and compliance.

In my classrooms, group projects became opportunities to practice patience and presence with one another. I believe the curriculum should make more space for this kind of interaction.

Now, when I design resources, I try to leave space for collaboration—even if that just means a parent and child sitting side by side, or two friends trying out an activity together. The process of sharing time, energy, and thought is where love takes root.

Complete for Access to Free Downloadable PDF Lesson

References

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Herder and Herder.

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.

hooks, b. (2000). All about love: New visions. William Morrow.