I Care: Building Communities of Empathy in our Schools

Frogs and Who I Am

Studio Enjoy: Supaman - 'Prayer Loop Song' http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com

Learning Activity

Why Students Dropout

Could not get along with teachers 25.0Did not feel belonged there 19.9Could not get along with others 18.7

http://sgo.sagepub.com/content/3/4/2158244013503834Understanding Why Students Drop Out of High School, According to Their Own ReportsAre They Pushed or Pulled, or Do They Fall Out? A Comparative Analysis of Seven Nationally Representative StudiesJonathan Jacob Doll, Zohreh Eslami, Lynne WaltersDOI: 10.1177/2158244013503834Published 7 November 2013

Why Empathy?

• Roughly 160,000 children miss school every day “due to fear of an attack or intimidation by other students,” according to the National Education Association.

• A recent study by the University of Virginia also found that the dropout rate was 29 percent above average in schools with high levels of teasing and bullying, but 28 percent below average in schools with comparatively low levels of teasing and bullying. http://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-study-links-prevalence-bullying-teasing-high-dropout-rates

Teaching Empathy

“More than ever children need skills in how to work with changing teams of collaborators and how to seek solutions rooted in the needs of others.”“ Empathy is more than just awareness and concern. It’s about cultural sensitivity and conflict resolution.”

Hockenberry, Alison. Christian Science Monitor. June 8, 2012

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RSA Shorts - The Power of Empathyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw

Think About . . .

“Looking at the numbers, it is hard to accept that standardized testing is still the norm, when it is clear that we are failing our students by only emphasizing cognitive skills. Higher curriculum standards don’t correlate to higher student achievement, according to a study by the Brookings Institution; empathy does.” •http://www.forbes.com/sites/ashoka/2012/09/26/why-we-should-teach-empathy-to-improve-education-and-test-scores/2/

Who Are You?

What’s Happened?

In his Tucson memorial speech, President Obama called on us to “sharpen our instincts for empathy.” This study suggests young adults may have a lot of work to do: The results show that the average level of “empathic concern,” meaning people’s feelings of sympathy for the misfortunes of others, declined by 48 percent between 1979 and 2009; the average level of “perspective taking,” people’s tendencies to imagine others’ points of view, declined by 34 percent over the same period. There was a particularly steep decline between 2000 and 2009.http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/research_digest/empathy_on_the_decline/