For our last January lesson, we finished our unit on empathy by discussing the final step: compassion. We reviewed the previous lesson about Tiana and Brandon and talked about what Tiana had done to make Brandon feel better about the science assignment. We also talked about how our skills for learning help us to have empathy. We must focus and listen in order to know how someone is feeling. Self-talk allows us to think about ways to help, and when we do something to help we are being assertive. We played a brain builder called Mum's the Word where students had to use their skills for learning to count around the room, replacing any numbers that contain four with "sun" and any number that contain six with "sun."
For the rest of the lesson, we talked about a student named Ayako, who was the helper of the day. The teacher had asked Ayako to pass out supplies to students for an assignment, and while Ayako was walking with the supplies, she tripped on her shoe string, spilling the supplies. We talked about how Ayako felt (sad, embarrased), and what clues showed us that feeling. We also talked about whether we had ever spilled something and felt embarrassed. Because we have experienced something similar, we are able to have empathy for Ayako!
Kareem, another student in the class, also saw Ayako slip and fall. He used his feeling clues to notice how she was feeling, and he wanted to say or do something to help. Students shared with their partners their ideas for how he could help: ask if she is okay, offer to help, say something kind. Kareem was able to help Ayako feel better because he had empathy for her! Because Kareem had care and concern for Ayako, he asked if she was okay and helped her clean up. We talked about how compassion is empathy in action -- meaning, what you do because of your empathy. We ended the lesson by sharing examples of times we had shown compassion.
