Bettina Love

— by Jaime Danen

On Saturday, October 5, Dr. Bettina Love, award winning author and Associate Professor of Educational Theory and Practice at the University of Georgia came to close out our week of Educating for Democracy on the beautiful University of Minnesota - Twin Cities campus. Dr. Love brings with her a dynamism and radical approach to education that looks to reimagine and rebuild our current educational system.

Using a progressive mindset, understanding critical race theory and dismantling the mysticism of underserved populations, Dr. Love called on us all to question and reevaluate our current educational system that not only denigrates students of color but profits on the reinforcing of the idea that students of color matter less than other students.

As she spoke, she reminded us of the importance of ensuring that the stories and environments we surround our students with reflect them and not what they are used to seeing in current educational settings. She spoke of cultural movements that have occurred and the value of using them in classrooms, but reminded everyone that you must fully understand and believe in what you teach. She warned about using teaching as a way to sympathize and elevate students of color. She said teachers need to understand that way of teaching undermines and devalues the student. They do not need saving from themselves, they need an educational system that values and respects every part of them as human beings.

Dr. Love was quick to educate the audience about events, movements, people and policies while also calling everyone to action. Hers was not an emotional appeal, it was an insistence that we become better educated on the things that impact all of our students. She knows and understands the history behind what she teaches and wants those who are listening to become scholars and educate themselves beyond just knowing the basic facts, but to truly understand the basis of important cultural movements. She told us that we cannot truly teach about the Black Lives Matter movement without fully understanding it and, most importantly, believing in it. Giving lip service to movements that “feel good” is more damaging to our students and must end. Don’t hurt our babies

Finally, she appealed to us on the most basic of levels. She said we must stop hurting the babies. The facts that she shared about the rates of discipline and arrest of our students of color and the inequity in comparison to their white peers, reiterated the mantra of “don’t hurt our babies.” It’s an appeal that every person has to take heed and find ways to stop this hurting in our educational system. Perhaps we cannot tear down the walls and rebuild schools so they are no longer pipelines to prison, but in each of our classrooms and our spheres, we can find ways to legitimize, understand and value the stories all of our students bring in and find focus and attention for the students of color who live every day in a society that fails to do this. Dr. Love’s plea to not hurt the babies, must be what we insist upon for all of us and all of our schools.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jaime Danen is a middle school English Language Arts teacher at Aldo Leopold Community School in Green Bay, Wisconsin. She has been a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Teacher Fellow since 2016 and serves as a facilitor of the Holocaust Institute for Teacher Educators which aims to help future teachers in their roles as Holocaust edcuators. She served on the planning committee for the Progressive Education Network National Conference in 2019. Additionally, she works with a local educational organization developing and delivering leadership coaching for principals, administrators, staff and students. Jaime’s email jldanen@gbaps.org