Sue Collentine
Head of Lower School
A recent New York Times article ─“Empathy’s Natural, But Nurturing It Helps” (February 16, 2010)─ shows not only the importance of the quality called empathy and the necessary conditions for its development in children, but also the role of parents and teachers in its nurturance. Interestingly, the community listening forums, which are part of the strategic-planning process, have begun to identify the wide range of abilities considered essential to the well-educated 21st century student. Along with academic skills such as encoding, calculating, interpreting and summarizing, interpersonal skills like communicating, cooperating, and empathizing are emerging as ones needing instructional time, too.
It is relevant to note that teachers do not approach these topics as surrogate parents or therapists, but as teachers. Teachers at SFDS are engaged daily with the work of promoting qualities of successful humans. For example, this week kindergartners are talking about the many feelings they experience and drawing pictures to represent them. Third graders are studying the power of language and labels, along with the courage required to stand up to prejudice. In second grade recently, I took part in the planning of a unit of study to nurture empathy. As in all units of study, we identified learning outcomes. The second grade learning outcomes are in the second grade are 1) students will appreciate a peer’s perspective and will use that information when deciding what to do or say; 2) students will identify and recall feelings of inclusion and exclusion and learn how to make choices to support fellow students. The learning goals will be accomplished through lessons and activities guided by Leah Rosenkrantz, lower school counselor, and designed collaboratively by Leah and the second-grade teachers.
The timing of this series of short lessons in second grade is concurrent with the children’s stage of development. Second graders are quite different from where they were a year ago. Many are now ready for a discussion of feelings and amenable to hearing others’ perspectives. According to the child development experts at the Gesell Institute, a seven-year-old is a good listener and is, within his/her own limits, a good student. Perhaps most helpful to the adult is the seven-year-old’s increasing reasonableness, his willingness to listen to somebody else’s side of the story.
Though these developmental descriptions are generalizations, the trends are true for all students who are either entering or on the tail end of this stage of maturation.
“Empathy comes from being empathized with,” explains Dr. Stanley I. Greenspan, a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at George Washington University School of Medicine, in his book Great Kids (Da Capo, 2007). “By learning to identify and label their feelings, and express them, children are better able to recognize the feelings of others.”
For our second graders, we have not yet determined how we’ll assess the success of our lessons. In truth, we are educating children to function in the 21st century and may not see the fruits of our labors for many more years. Nevertheless, we know that qualities like courage and empathy are essential to navigating life at school right now and will be increasingly important in the world our children will inhabit as adults.
