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Looks & Sounds Like ... Students celebrating each other

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Looks Like ... Students using calming strategies     Sounds Like ... Students sharing their feelings

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Looks Like ... Students taking risks Sounds Like ... Students using a growth mindset

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Looks Like ... students working together
Sounds Like ... students encouraging each other!

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It takes a village to raise a child. In my school we have students who are coming from homes with all wide variety of family dynamics. They come from homes with 2 parents, blended families, single parents, parents who are still in other countries. We have students who currently live in a shelter or who are living in foster care. As teachers we must do our best to navigate through what can sometimes be difficult situations. This makes communication with home very important. While in the case of my school it can be very difficult to get a parent to answer phone call or return forms it is up to us as teachers to do our very best to keep the lines of communication open. We must make the adults in the students life feel welcome in our school community just as we do with the students. We use a variety of techniques including open houses, reminder app, notes, phone calls and even just catching them at the door at pick up time for a quick chat. Communication is key!

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Four Frames: Self- Regulation and Well Being

In any space I work in at school including my resource room and the kindergarten classroom we have created a "safe" place. In order to learn effectively students first need to be given the tools to self regulate.
My understanding of Safe Place comes from the Conscious Discipline Program.

OE6: "demonstrate an awareness of their own health and well-being"

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Ontario's Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy Document (2009) is very important especially because I work in a very diverse school. I have many students who have come from other countries in hopes of creating a better life for themselves. I have one kinder in particular that I think of; he was diagnosed with PTSD because of the trauma experienced in his home country. He then came to us for Year 2 of the kindergarten program. It took until April before he would open up and speak more than a few words with teachers and peers. He now speaks with the help of his bear; a very special Beanie Baby that has helped him to find his own voice. I look forward to seeing how he continues to grow!

"Ontario is Canada’s most diverse province" pg 11
"The strategy recognizes our province’s growing diversity as a strength. It aims to promote inclusive education, as well as to understand, identify, and eliminate the biases, barriers, and power dynamics that limit our students’ prospects for learning, growing, and fully contributing to society" pg 11

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As a resource teacher a huge part of my role is to support the teachers/students. Many of the students I work with are  identified with an exceptionality. It is my role to support the students who need it and make sure that each student has what they need it order to succeed.
"every student has the opportunity to succeed, regardless of ancestry, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, language, physical and intellectual ability, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, or other factors." Special Education in Ontario, Kindergarten to Grade 12: Policy and Resource Guide (2017)

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I work in a Child Support School; one of approx. 10 schools in our board with a designation identifying it as a low income school who requires extra funding and support. One of the things we do is provide breakfast club and a snack program for students who need it. In order to create an inclusive learning environment we need to ensure that we are meeting the needs of each of the students in our classroom.

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The First Nations, Metis, and Inuit Connections document (2016) gives explicit connections to the kindergarten curriculum. Our kindergarten were introduced to the Grandfather principles through a grade 6 project going on in the school.  They wanted to learn more so they started to explore turtle island, the Jordan Principle and more ....

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Four Frames: Problem Solving and InnovatingOE13 "use the processes and skills of an

inquiry stance"

Students who have empathy for a problem are more likely to be engaged. Giving the students opportunities to look at real world problems will help them to make connections and better understand the diversity of the world around them.

Marilyn Price-Mitchell (2015) tells us that not only can empathy help to students to learn skills for the classroom but also to become better citizens.

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Developed through emotional attachment with other human beings, empathy is our ability to recognize, feel, and respond to the needs and suffering of other people. While the digital age has given children more ways than ever before to connect with others, many researchers are concerned with how social networking and decreased face-to-face relationships may have contributed to a 48 percent drop in empathetic concern for others over the past few decades. Studies have linked low empathy to increased bullying, narcissism, rigid belief systems, and civic apathy. As educators, we have a moral imperative to rethink how we teach kids to care in a more hurried, impersonal, data-driven world.

The Foundation of Caring and Engaged Citizenship

This is the last in a series of articles on how to apply eight core principles of positive youth development in the classroom using The Compass Advantage™ as an organizing framework. Empathy is situated at "true north" on the compass because it is the driver of caring and compassionate actions in the world. By developing empathy in children, teachers help them feel valued and understood while impacting social change and innovation for decades to come.

Empathy is systemically related to all of the abilities on the compass, particularly to self-awareness at "true south." Research suggests that the more children become aware of themselves, the better they become at understanding others. Volumes have been written about how to teach empathy, and there is still much to learn. In an excellent article from the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, author Roman Krznaric, Ph.D., claims that highly empathetic people:

1. Cultivate curiosity about strangers

2. Challenge prejudices and discover commonalities

3. Gain direct experience of other people's lives

4. Listen and open themselves to others

5. Inspire mass action and social change

6. Develop an ambitious imagination

All of these behaviors foster personal growth and lifelong learning while contributing to the growth of society, particularly empathy's role in inspiring social change. As William Deresiewicz underscored in his recent book, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life, the goal of education should always be "to leverage learning as an agent of social change -- the kind of objective that makes leadership and citizenship into something more than pretty words."

This post focuses on the intersection of empathy and citizenship, an area of research that I have pursued for almost a decade and the topic of my book, Tomorrow's Change Makers: Reclaiming the Power of Citizenship for a New Generation. In-depth interviews with students who became engaged in social and environmental causes in middle and high school showed that each was motivated to serve the greater good through an ability to empathize with individuals and feel compassion for victimized, oppressed, and marginalized groups. The six habits below derive from my research with students who spoke about how their greatest teachers not only fostered empathy, but also inspired them to put empathy into action in the world.

6 Empathy-Building Habits of Great Teachers

1. Create meaningful relationships with students.

For children to develop the capacity to feel empathy for others, they must feel seen, felt, and understood regardless of how they learn. Teachers who know, appreciate, and respect students beyond academics help children feel cared for and increase their ability to care for others.

2. Nurture children's self-efficacy through mentoring.

Young people who transform empathy into community action attribute mentoring by teachers among the primary reasons that they developed a belief in self. Without this sense of self-efficacy, students claim they would not have come to believe that they could help others or change the world. According to students, teachers fostered self-efficacy by:

Supporting and encouraging

Listening

Setting high expectations

Showing interest in students as individuals

Fostering decision-making skills

Providing another perspective during problem solving

3. Teach values associated with good citizenship.

Teachers who emphasize caring, cooperation, compassion, kindness, service, teamwork, and the importance of getting along with classmates are powerful empathy builders. From elementary through high school, children should evolve through three developmental stages as they take on roles in society:

1. Being responsible citizens

2. Improving their communities

3. Contributing to solve societal problems

These civic roles are intertwined with developing empathy.

4. Inspire students to become their best selves.

Ryan, a volunteer making a difference in Boston's Chinatown, said of his teachers, "The fact that they are so dedicated to teaching, helping, and empowering students . . . that's such a meaningful gesture. They are always trying to give back to the next generation. That really inspires me." Most students who developed high levels of empathy named teachers as their primary role models. They learned to become their best selves from teachers who exemplified the following traits:

Passion and ability to inspire

Clear and articulated set of values

Commitment to community

Selflessness

Ability to overcome obstacles in life

5. Expose students to different opinions and worldviews.

When teachers cultivate curiosity about how individuals and groups of people see the world differently, they expand children's intellectual, interpersonal, and emotional boundaries. They help students see and understand differing perspectives. When challenged to explore prejudices, find commonalities, and glean meaning from what they imagine life would be like walking in another person's shoes, students build a greater capacity for empathy.

6. Link curriculum to real-world service activities.

Teachers who weave meaningful service learning into their classrooms help students turn empathy into action by building skills in critical thinking, planning, organizing, and problem solving. Youth gain the most from service projects that push them out of their emotional comfort zones and allow them to see the world differently. For example, when Danielle participated in a geography class project that teamed up with Heifer International, it ignited a passion for environmental stewardship. She said, "It changed the way I saw service from something you did on the side when you had time, to a lifestyle."

Call to Action

As educators, we must offer core principles that inspire teachers, parents, and communities to move beyond modern notions of success -- to instill abilities that matter most for healthy youth development. We must bring attention to the relationships and experiences that shape the caring, curious, sociable, resilient, self-aware, honest, resourceful, and innovative adults that all youth are capable of becoming. When children chart their own paths through life with empathy at "true north," they not only discover personal success, but also contribute to the betterment of society.

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Empathy in Action: How Teachers Prepare Future Citizens | Edutopia

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Developed through emotional attachment with other human beings, empathy is our ability to recognize, feel, and respond to the needs and suffering of other people. While the digital age has given children more ways than ever before to connect with others, many researchers are concerned with how social networking and decreased face-to-face relationships may have contributed to a 48 percent drop in empathetic concern for others over the past few decades.

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This is an example of a text I would use to continue to promote inquiry based play in the classroom. The reading from Kashin tells us that students benefit from "interesting, open-ended materials that can be used in many ways, inviting investigation and complex play." (Loose Parts, 2016) Giving students open ended activities and a variety of materials means that all students can participate with no prerequisite knowledge required. All students can then extend their learning through their zones of proximal development with the support of teachers and peers.

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Four Frames: Belonging and Contributing Each classroom in our school this year was tasked with turning their class into a village. The kinders turned themselves into the "Love" village.

OE5: "demonstrate an understanding of the diversity among individuals and families and within schools and the wider community"

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Four Frames : Demonstrating literacy and mathematics behaviours

The kindergarten class co-constructed a number wall. It included a ten frame, the numeral, english and french word. The students/parents then provided the number in whatever language they spoke at home.
OE5 "demonstrate an understanding of the diversity among individuals and families and within schools and the wider
community"
OE15 "demonstrate an understanding of numbers, using concrete materials to explore and investigate counting, quantity, and number relationships"