Master These Three Aspects of Love This Summer

. . . To Teach Better This Fall

Three Aspects of Pedagogical Love. © 2025 forwardED LLC

I recently released a book, Pedagogy of the Black Child, based on thirty years of researching the education of vulnerable youth. It is a love letter to teachers—those beautiful laborers of light who show up, day after day, in classrooms that don’t always love them back. The book centers a simple yet radical truth: that love is the most important ingredient in the struggle for educational equity and excellence.

Cornel West once said, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” It’s a beautiful quote—framed on many a classroom wall. But justice is a noun. It doesn’t tell us how to love. And if love is indeed the foundation of justice, we must understand it not only as sentiment but as a deliberate and practiced action.

In my new book, I offer 14 aspects of love that can transform education—not just for vulnerable youth, but for all of us. This summer, I want to invite educators everywhere into a kind of Summer School of the Heart. I want us to master three essential principles of love: communication, visualization, and community. These are not techniques, not strategies in the traditional sense. They are ways of being. They are roots that nourish the work beneath the work. Let me explain.

1. Communication: Listening Is the First Language of Love

Before we can teach, we must learn to listen—not just to content, but to context; not just to what is said, but to what is meant. Real communication begins with listening deeply enough to understand the nature of the conversation: Is it pragmatic (seeking to solve a problem)? Emotional (seeking empathy)? Or social (seeking affirmation and belonging)?

Here’s a simple strategy: When you engage in conversation—whether with students, parents, or colleagues—pause first. Listen for the kind of need embedded in the voice speaking to you. Then, practice deep and empathetic questioning. Don’t ask to interrogate. Ask to connect.

For example, when a student lashes out in class, resist the urge to correct. Instead, try: “Help me understand what’s behind what just happened.” That question doesn’t solve the moment—it opens it. It shifts the goal of communication away from being right, and toward being human.

I invite educators, who haven’t already, to read Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg. In this powerful book on the magic of communication, Duhigg explores how meaningful conversations happen, offering insight into what makes people feel heard. Educators will find this book particularly useful in distinguishing the types of conversations we navigate and in improving our ability to respond with care. You’ll walk away with practical tools for transforming your relationships—one conversation at a time.

2. Visualization: Seeing Students as Possibility

The most dangerous myth in education is the deficit gaze—the belief, whether conscious or unconscious, that some children are broken, unmotivated, or incapable. This belief does not begin in pedagogy. It begins in perception.

Visualization is the radical practice of seeing otherwise. It is about conditioning your eyes to witness strength where others see failure. This doesn’t mean ignoring challenges; it means choosing to believe that beyond every obstacle is an opportunity.

Try this: Begin each lesson with a moment of intentional visioning. Before students enter the room, imagine one strength that each student brings. Then teach as if that strength is the key to unlocking the learning.

There’s a story I tell often of a young man named Malik. He came to school each day angry. One teacher saw a problem. Another saw potential. She learned that Malik stayed up late caring for his younger siblings. So, instead of punishing his tiredness, she praised his leadership. Over time, Malik grew into that vision. She didn’t fix him. She believed him into being.

If you want to learn more about how to visualize hope into being, I recommend reading The Inner Work of Racial Justice by Rhonda Magee. Though focused on mindfulness and race, Magee's book helps readers understand how inner work—like cultivating compassionate vision—changes how we see and engage others. Educators can learn how to dismantle internalized bias and open up new pathways to student flourishing.

3. Community: Building Circles That Hold Us

Education is not an individual act. It is a collective ritual—a shared fire around which we gather. And yet, in too many schools, teachers feel alone, students feel unseen, and families feel unwelcome.

Community, like love, doesn’t happen by accident. It is a pedagogical method. It requires structure and intention. I’m not talking about icebreakers or bulletin boards. I’m talking about circles—literal and figurative—of shared space, shared purpose, and shared belonging.

Want a strategy? Build circles into your week. Every Friday, hold a restorative circle. No grades. No rubrics. Just stories. Invite others into this circle from the community and our students homes. In circle, ask students: What’s something you’re proud of this week? Who helped you this week? What do you want us to know about you today?

Then listen. Let the classroom become a witness to each student’s life.

I like the book Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block because it challenges the notion that community is something we find. Block shows that community is something we create—through invitation, accountability, and purpose. Educators will learn how to curate spaces that heal, hold, and humanize.

The Work Beneath the Work

If teaching were only about standards, we could automate it. But teaching is about souls. It’s about building something sacred with students who arrive with stories, scars, and stars.

In Detroit, I once visited a classroom where students stood each morning in a circle, hand over heart, and recited not the Pledge of Allegiance, but a communal affirmation: I am here. I am loved. I am ready to learn. One day, a boy stepped into the circle in tears. Without instruction, the class moved to hold him—every hand reaching toward him. No lecture. Just presence.

That moment wasn’t in the curriculum. It was the curriculum.

So, this summer, as we rest and reset, I invite you to learn again how to love. Let us practice communication that begins in listening. Let us visualize the unseen strengths in every student. Let us build community not as an accessory to learning, but as its very heart.

The practices of love are not soft. They are not ancillary or naïve. They comprise the fiercest and most transformative force in education. So, let’s study these three aspects of love this summer—so we can teach with love much better in the fall.

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Suggested citation: Kirkland, D.E. (2025). Master These Three Aspects of Love This Summer: To Teach Better This Fall. In forwardED Perspectives, https://www.forward-ed.com/post/master-these-three-aspects-of-love-this-summer.

David E. Kirkland, PhD, is the founder and CEO of forwardED. He is a nationally renowned scholar and leading expert on education equity. Order his latest book, Pedagogy of the Black Child, anywhere books are sold. He can be reached at david@forward-ed.com.