by Krissy.Venosdale | Jul 31, 2016 | Design Thinking
I’ve been thinking about our youngest students and empathy. Last week I spent a few days at a super awesome Stanford dSchool workshop on Design Thinking and my head is still kinda spinning… in a good way. There’s a reason we have the word EMPATHIZE so huge on the wall in The Launch Pad. It’s that critical first step where design becomes all about thinking and feeling for someone else. Not feeling sorry for someone else, but actually putting yourself IN someone else’s shoes by hearing his or her story. Brene Brown said it best, “Empathy is about connection. Sympathy is about separation.”
So how can we start the conversation and thinking with our primary and elementary learners? I’ve been thinking of some ways to build their skills and have some fun along the way.
1.) Pictures. A site like Pixabay has wonderful searchable images with a variety of situations. These could be printed out for students to examine, write on, displayed on a large board for students to write ideas on Post-its and stick on the picture. By thinking deeply about the photo, students might begin to understand how to dissect and take apart the story of another person to help improve it.
2.) Charity Projects. Just about every school has a charity or collection of some sort at some point in the year. Whether it’s can goods for Thanksgiving, pennies for sick children, or even collecting supplies for local pet shelter, these projects provide great jumping points for discussion. Sometimes we ask kids to bring canned goods, but we never stop to talk about where those canned goods end up. Maybe a Skype call with a volunteer from the charity, pictures from social media of the organization that show real families being helped, or even a story about a student receiving help at a local charity.
3.) Connecting Through Social Media. I’ve always believed in the value of connecting your class with other classrooms around the world. When kids connect with others in their state, country, or world, it allows them to understand their differences, appreciate the cultures of another, and develop global thinking that, to be honest, is just part of our lives now.
4.) Books & Characters. A good story is a great tool to start with. Common Sense Media has an excellent list of books to use as a starting point. Getting to know a character and thinking deeply about who they really are is not only an excellent exploration into literacy skills, it’s a stepping stone to developing empathy. Stories online, like Scholastic’s Immigrant series, can be powerful tools, too. I created these character cards as discussion starters, and you’re welcome to use them, too.
5.) Partner Up. When kids are learning to use digital storytelling tools, we typically do a project where they tell about themselves. After watching this video, My Friend Isabel, I realized it might add more to the project if kids tell about each other. They could compare themselves in the story, taking turns and working together, and learning what it’s like to be someone else… practicing empathy.
Teaching empathy doesn’t have to be “one more thing to add” to class. It’s easy to tweak questions add in short discussions and work toward fostering skills throughout the year. It brings learning back to the real world where it belongs. It can lead up to powerful design projects where kids can meet users and design for them. I’m really excited about this aspect of the design process and I think the real power in designing is when kids think deeply about someone else. That will take practice for our little ones. Before we start designing, we’ll be learning to see with our hearts. And that is a view that is going to help build strength, confidence, kindness and caring, so it’s definitely time well spent.
![Invite Empathy In]()
by Krissy.Venosdale | Jul 28, 2016 | Uncategorized
“Maybe stories are just data with a soul.”
Brene Brown
Learning as a data game. Kids are just numbers. The very thing that makes us human is reduced to a simplistic system of endpoints that either end in a gold star A or a giant red F stamped for fail. Working within a system that could be planned, plotted, graphed, and fit in neat little bubbles and boxes. Bubbles to reduce you to a rating. The amount of work taken to sustain it all eventually sucks the joy from the soul until there is nothing left. Until it’s no longer about learning at all.
Then, empathy walks in.
It’s messy. Unpredictable. Humans are. There’s no number to put to it. There’s no score to attach. There is only feeling, connecting, and being human. It gets uncomfortable, unfamiliar, and isn’t written in a lesson plan. It’s raw, unstandardized, and it’s going to take kids to a level where their thinking is more about changing the world than changing a score. Because in creating solutions, solving problems, and designing ideas that make someone else’s life better, and that person is a real person, a person with a heart and soul… we bring the joy back to learning.
I don’t know why or how joy got separated from learning in the first place. I only know the path back to it. Empathy. It won’t be easy, pretty, simplistic, or fit in a neat little guide from the shelf. You will fall, hurt, disappoint, change, and face facts that uproot your thinking. But, it will be worth it. Because, joy.
Don’t wait for empathy to knock on your classroom door, because it won’t.
Invite empathy in.
by Krissy.Venosdale | Jul 27, 2016 | Uncategorized
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by Krissy.Venosdale | Jul 22, 2016 | Uncategorized
Whenever I see stories in the media, of people coming down on public education, it’s crushing. My heart is filled with stories of real kids with real lives that I taught many years ago. I think about poverty and what life outside of our school was like for my students. I was fresh out of college and ill-equipped to understand fully what the situation was. But, I learned fast. I knew I had 3 packs of copy paper and curriculum materials that were “on their way” from central office for almost the entire school year. I learned quickly to make do with what I had. Not because I was innovative, but because I had absolutely no other choice. I knew some of my students didn’t have parents. Some were in foster group homes. Some had one meal a day, and it was the one the school served them. There was a fourth grader who brought razor blades into my classroom, a tool he was using to survive on his walk through the neighborhood. There was the boy who looked squarely at me when I was a young pregnant teacher and told me, “I hope your baby dies.” There was the student whose dad was arrested and he came to school anyway, in the same clothes, for the next several days. There was a boy who would run away from school, too many times to count. There were kids who moved, week to week, never attending the same school long enough to connect with a teacher or even other kids. These are just a few things. A tip of the iceberg. Things that left scars on my heart and determination in me to make learning better, because the world needs to be better. Because every kid deserves better. These are just a few of the stories, all true, and many others that are too personal to share.
So when someone attacks public schools, I don’t get it. There are people working, every day, doing things that most wouldn’t imagine. People who spend countless extra hours working with less each year, to make the experience as great as they can for the kids in their classrooms. Not because the kids are their students, but because their hearts are is in it and the kids are part of their hearts.
And to go through that, working so hard, and have the public make comments insinuating that you don’t care, or that you aren’t trying hard enough? Every teacher has THAT day where they ask themselves if they can keep going. The real magic is that they continue because HOPE for a child is in their heart.
So please think before you criticize. The federal government has tied the hands of administrators and teachers, forcing mandates for test scores and creating a focus on the wrong things. No Child Left Behind and all that would follow were a debacle and schools are still reeling from effects. A focus on assembly line factory style learning, while teachers struggle to maintain their creativity and their souls that led them to the classroom in the first place. Hope has been being sold to textbook companies and testing organizations at a high price.
Every single year, teaching is getting harder and harder with more hoops to jump through. Great teachers are being forced out of the classroom. Problems are mounting. Poverty continues and the stories I told above are not unique, they are just a tiny heartbreaking sample of reality. Yet, there is hope. And people, all around our country TEACH ON because that hope is there. Before you criticize, ask yourself if it’s fair for YOU to steal someone else’s hope, and most of all, who are you taking it away from?
