Teaching Empathy

As we return from the Thanksgiving holiday and look forward to many other holidays in the month ahead, it is hard not to be overwhelmed by a feeling of gratitude.  Pleasantdale is a school community with an abundance of dedicated staff members, kind and hard-working students, and invested parents and community members.  However, along with this gratitude comes the obligation to continually be sensitive to the fact that we only see a portion of each other's lives.  We must constantly consider how we can support our Pleasantdale family through thick and thin, through life's ups and downs.  This week Mr. Glimco blogs about some of the ways we do this specifically around the holidays at the middle school, and Mr. Vandercar explains how this is done at the elementary school.

But what do we do the rest of the year, when the holidays are not upon us?  At Pleasantdale Middle School, our Social Emotional Learning committee, which is comprised of teachers and administrators and is spearheaded by our social worker Carrie Castaldo, has been working hard to ensure students are receiving regular opportunities to engage in social-emotional learning opportunities throughout the school year.

One of the Illinois Social-Emotional Learning Standards that enables students to support others is Standard 2A: Recognize the feelings and perspectives of others.  A key component of successfully doing this is teaching empathy.  The benefits of teaching empathy are clear.  It strengthens a classroom culture, builds community, and prepares students to be leaders in the community outside of school.  Teaching empathy can also help students with academics since it can help students to understand their audience when presenting and speaking, to interpret a character's motives in a text, and to have a better understanding of the solution a problem necessitates.  Behaviorally, empathetic students are able to better understand how their words and actions impact others, which provides for a richer learning experience when mistakes are made.  Our staff strives to embed lessons in empathy into the curriculum by reading and discussing a variety of texts, taking on historical personas during social studies class, and role playing during health class.

With each conversation we have with students, our goal is to increase their capacity to empathize with others.  By teaching our students empathy, it is our hope that we will create a more supportive school culture throughout the school year, not just during the holiday season.