An Ethic of Love: Love Beyond Romance

Hello All,

Happy Black History and Black Futures Month. During this month, we also celebrate Valentine’s Day. We celebrate Valentine’s Day as a way to honor the profoundness of love, beyond romance. 

At the Institute, we are fueled by an ethic of love: love for our students, love for our communities, and love for ourselves. It is love, rather than fear or control or indoctrination, which fuels our pedagogy. 

In the next few weeks, we’ll be introducing our amazing cohort of curriculum creators. One of them shared: “Teaching from a pedagogy of love means working alongside students to create positive change in their communities.” Another educator described their pedagogy of love as: “Listening and communicating in multiple languages - with our bodies and emotions, words and materials, the natural world. Taking seriously our interdependence: finding the intersection of our questions and needs, collaborating, taking accountability for and healing harm.”

In his Puck newsletter, Baratunde Thurston wrote:

We are overdosing on fear in America. But the antidote to fear, as every great leader, artist, and seer has noted, is love. “When we choose to love we choose to move against fear—against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect—to find ourselves in the other.” [bell] hooks argued for us to embrace a “love ethic.” 

We’ve got to find ourselves in the other. We’ve got to move from fear to love. Otherwise, we will keep repeating history’s deadliest and most avoidable lessons. And we will deny ourselves the beauty of seeing the world the way a young, Black photographer named Tyre wanted us to. 

Rest in peace, Tyre. I love you.  

On our social media, we have been embracing a love ethic with quotes from scholars, authors, thinkers, and love practitioners:

• Their Eyes Were Watching God

• All About Love 

• We Want to Do More Than Survive

• Pushout

• Rest is Resistance

• “black love” 

Upcoming Opportunities to Connect, Learn, and Heal:

• Creating Loving Schools for Black Students Panel
• Healing Space for Black Educators: Thursday, March 2nd, at 6pm EST
• The CARE Network for White Educators: ongoing 

On Sunday night, Lizzo became the first Black woman to win a Record of the Year Grammy since Whitney Houston for “I Will Always Love You.” We will invoke Lizzo’s words to close out:

In case nobody told you today

You're special 

In case nobody made you believe

You're special

Well, I will always love you the same

You're special

I'm so glad that you're still with us 

Broken, but damn, you're still perfect

We love you.