Wake Up Everybody!: Operationalizing Love as an Innovative and Accessible Solution

• In Event: After the Locusts: Just Education Renewal for Black Communities After Racial-Capitalist Predation and State Dissolution

Abstract

“Wake up all the teachers
Time to teach a new way
Maybe then they'll listen
To whatcha have to say
'Cause they're the ones who's comin' up
And the world is in their hands
When you teach the children
Teach 'em the very best you can”
– Harold Melvin & the Bluenotes (ft. Teddy Pendergrass)

When the raspy baritone voice of Teddy Pendergrass sang these socially conscious lyrics, he was pleading for both innovation and care. Nearly 50 years later, these words are just as relevant today as they were in 1975. The song itself is asking us all to wake up and do things differently, and better, as we incorporate lessons from the past. AERA’s 2025 theme “Research, Remedy, and Repair: Toward Just Education Renewal,” parallels the song’s sentiment.

In 2014, John Legend, the Roots, and Melanie Fiona remade the 1975 hit Wake Up Everybody. Adding innovation to the classic was a hip-hop verse from Common that ends as follows:

“And even in this generation, living through computers,
Only love, love, love can reboot us...”

We’ve seen how a lack of love destroys communities, schools, and school districts, all while harming children in the process. The way to repair these broken school systems, ineffective schools, and suffering communities is to heal them with love. Establishing an operational definition of love is essential for a successful restoration. Relying on the theoretical framework of bell hooks, I have chosen to define love as hooks (2000) did, as the “combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust” (p. 9). Not only does this operational definition provide a clear, universal understanding of identifiable elements/characteristics of love, but it also illustrates how love is an action that all leaders, policymakers, and community members can access and adopt. I argue that doing so will result in the greatest impacts on our most vulnerable stakeholders.

This paper adds to existing literature from researchers who have discussed love as both resistant and restorative. Sandoval (2000) refers to when concluding, “Love as social movement is enacted by revolutionary, mobile, and global coalitions of citizen-activists who are allied through the apparatus of emancipation” (p. 183). In that spirit, hooks (2000) noted that Black teachers were aware of white supremacy and utilized education to resist it. She highlighted how teachers the impact of those genuinely-loving relationships. Ginwright (2015) declares that “present conditions in Black communities have fostered the development of new modes of youth leadership that focus on hope, love, and joy, and are ultimately restorative and redemptive” (p. 34). Even with these scholars offering their posits and findings, there is still a glaring need for research that situates love as a viable solution to right societal wrongs and catalyze the education renewal needed to propel us beyond schooling and into a richer educational experience, community-based research where universities partner with practitioners to value and incorporate student voices, and schools that are truly and consistently sites of love and joy.

Author

• Antwuan Williams, Wayne State University