This essay provides interrelated principles for teaching and learning in times of heightened awareness of wars, disasters and human suffering. Purposeful teaching in times of crisis should occur both with children directly impacted by catastrophic events as well as with those less directly impacted. As a direct reflection of the author's most recent work and experiences in a school district that includes hundreds of classrooms with students recently evacuated from New Orleans, this essay will focus on working with children directly impacted by catastrophe. The examples provided in this essay for teaching in times of crisis are drawn from the positive work of committed schoolteachers and others in Austin, Texas as they have been working with a student community that since September 2005 has come to include close to 10,000 new families and 1000 new students who came from New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunate counter-examples, against which this framework stands, also come from Austin educators, specifically teachers and administrators whose prejudices, fears or lack of proaction have outweighed their better selves and furthered the miseducation of children. This essay is grounded in the work of community responsive and action oriented educational anthropology undertaken between September 2005 and May 2006. (Contains 7 endnotes.)