Resources for Teaching About Love

It’s Valentine’s Day–a day filled with joy and surprises, but also angst and disappointments–and sometimes all of the above!

Let’s help children climb out of the emotionally wrought Valentine’s Day box by exploring different manifestations of love with these articles.

Enjoy these articles, available free to all friends of Rethinking Schools. 

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Illustration: David McLimans

Can’t Buy Me Love, by Linda Christensen
Christensen gets students to write critically about clothes, class, and consumption.

Poem: Valentine’s Day at Casa del Migrante, by Bob Peterson
The Casa del Migrante in Tijuana, Mexico provides assistance to men, most of whom have been recently deported from the United States. Bob wrote this poem after visiting the facility with Rethinking Schools.

A Pedagogy for Ecology,
by Ann Pelo
Helping students build an ecological identity and a conscious connection to place opens them to a broader bond with, and love for, the earth.

“Hey, Mom, I Forgive You”
Teaching the Forgiveness Poem
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by Linda Christensen
Christensen shows how she builds community in her classroom as her students write a poem about forgiving-or not forgiving. She starts with her own story.

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Making Every Lesson Count, by Linda Christensen
Want to help students learn to write? Get them writing about what they love.

Reading First, Libraries Last, by Rachel Cloues
Scripted programs undermine teaching and children’s love of books.

The Hero’s Human Heart, by S.J. Childs
In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez, a novel about female revolutionaries in the Dominican Republic, teaches important lessons on how ordinary people can become heroes.

Home Cooking, by Linda Christensen
Food connects us to our heritage and our homes. Getting students to write about food can make them feel at home.