Teaching Empathy to Kids: Why it matters and some ideas to get started!

"Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?" 

- Henry David Thoreau

Recently, I re-read a book called Unselfie - Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World by Michele Borba. As a teacher, it is my personal mission to prepare students to be successful in life. I use the academic curriculum as a vehicle to teach students even greater lessons of how to be compassionate, empathetic, and reflective members of our class community. My students are challenged in their academic learning and in their character development. 

What do kids need to be happy and successful? According to Michele Borba, the answer is empathy. The quotation below gives a quick overview of how empathy prepares a child to be happy and successful in life. 

"For starters, the ability to empathize affects our kids' future health, wealth, authentic happiness, relationship satisfaction, and ability to bounce back from adversity. It promotes kindness, pro-social behaviours, and moral courage, and it is an effective antidote to bullying, aggression, prejudice, and racism. Empathy is also a positive predictor of children's reading and math test scores and critical thinking skills, prepares kids for the global world, and gives them a job market boost."   

Unselfie - Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World by Michele Borba

In her book, Michele also explains that with the rise of self-absorption and the selfie syndrome comes the fall of empathy. According to her, there are four reasons that we should be concerned. 

1. There is a measurable dip in empathy among today's youth. 2. We can observe a clear increase in peer cruelty. 3. Experts observe more cheating and weaker moral reasoning in young people today. 4. Our plugged-in, high-pressure culture is leading to a mental health epidemic among young people.  

Unselfie - Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World by Michele Borba

Michele gives parents and teachers researched examples and suggestions to help them develop, practice, and live empathy with their children. Hopefully this brief explanation inspires you to take this book out of your local library or order a copy for yourself! I have read it twice and learned something new each time that has helped me in my leading of young ones! 

Below are a few of the ways I intentionally encourage empathy and kindness in my class. 

Positive Word Clouds

Materials: 

- Pencil

- Lined Paper

- Hard Surface

- Cardstock Paper

- Pencil Crayons (or markers, pastels, etc.)

Instructions:

Move desks and tables to the outside of the classroom and have students sit on chairs in a large circle. Have each student write their name on the top of their page. Explain that we are going to be writing words or a phrase to describe the character of their classmates and encourage each other. Spend time discussing the difference between what a person DOES compared to who a person IS. Choose a few students and give examples to help them understand. 

Some examples:

- Simon is a caring friend and is sensitive to the needs of others. 

- Jack is joyful and always willing to help anyone in need. 

Once students know what they are doing, have everyone pass their page one person to the right. Start a timer for one minute and let them write. Once the timer goes off, have every student pass their page one to the right again. Repeat until the pages have made it back to where they started. Let students read through their pages of encouragement. 

Put the class back together and hand out the cardstock paper to students. Have them make a creative representation of the words their community used to describe them and hang them up somewhere in your room. 

Spotlight

Materials: 

- Class names on Popsicle sticks

- Flashlight

Instructions:

Stand (or sit) in a circle with your class and turn off the lights (if you want to). Let them know that you are going to be drawing the name of a student. Once the name is drawn, a person next to the chosen student will hold the flashlight (spotlight) over their head. The rest of the students will have thirty seconds to silently think of positive character traits of that person. Once everyone has had thinking time, ask for volunteers to share. Go around the circle and let whoever wants to share have a chance. I usually do five different students each time we do this. Once each student has had a turn being encouraged, we start again. Students love it! They keep asking when we will do the next spotlight. 

Secret Treats

Materials: 

- Tiny snack bags

- Colourful paper

- Peanut free snack (we used mini donuts and some blueberry flavoured hard candies)

- Tongs

- Pencil crayons, markers, pencils, pens

- Stickers

- Class list from a different class in your building

Instructions: 

Set up a table in your class with the class list of a different class, paper, and snacks. Explain that we are going to secretly encourage another class by writing them cards and packing up a little treat for them. Students will get to choose their person and check them off on the class list. Once all the treat bags are made, a student will double check to make sure no one was missed, and then the box of treats will secretly be delivered to the other class. No one will speak of it and the treat givers will remain a anonymous. 

The Best You

In our class, we often do a writing warm up called an Extreme Write. Sometimes a student chooses the topic, other times I choose the topic. One of the topics I like to give them is "The Best You." They write about the best future version of themselves that they can imagine. Research has proven that visualization before completing an activity helps people successfully accomplish the activity. This is an easy way to have students think about their future and who they want to be. I encourage them to write about who they are as a person, not just what they do. 

Materials:

- Paper (or writing journal)

- Pencil

Instructions:

Write out a prompt on your whiteboard or project it onto a screen. 

"Write about the best version of yourself when you are 25 years old. Who do you want to be known as? What do you want to be doing? Where are you living?" 

You can adjust this prompt so that it focuses on what you want them to think about. Maybe change the age or make it more specific to an issue you want them to consider. Give students 10-15 minutes to write and then offer time to pair share and then class share.  

Hopefully some of these ideas are useful for you as you encourage your children and students to grow into empathetic and caring members of our world! Thanks for reading!