Books to Foster Empathy

As I wrote in my last post, I am on a bit of crusade to find resources to teach empathy to my students. One way I believe you can do that is through literature. We incorporate Multiple Perspectives from Kaplan's Depth and Complexity. How does it feel to be that character? How does it feel to be a butterfly compared to a caterpillar? What do you see, hear, believe, wish for?

The first time I do this lesson I literally stand on a table, of course to the gasps of my students, a la Mr. Keating in Dead Poet's Society. I ask them how my perspective has now changed-what can I see that I couldn't see before? How does it feel? When we are getting ready to write from someone else's perspective I ask them to close their eyes and imagine they are that person or thing-use your five senses, what does it feel like? Then we go write. It's something that I can definitely see growth in throughout the year. They get better and better at thinking from another perspective, comparing perspectives.

Some books that I think are great for this are:

We feel for this little house that goes through a lot as the world around it becomes more industrialized. 

A classic, but for a good reason. We are pulling for this duck family to find the perfect home for their little ones and the whole community chips in. Did you see this real-life example of a school making way for their ducklings?

Duckling Pilgrimage

A wordless book about a girl who desperately wants a bicycle but when it's sold, she thinks about her brother instead.

A really cute story told from the perspective of a hamster who mistakenly is stricken with the idea to take an adventure into the world. You can see the world from his eyes and are rooting for him in the end.

Another classic, I know! But discussions can be had about why the Poky Little Puppy kept disobeying his mother and getting his siblings in trouble as well. You feel for the puppy and his need to explore but you also understand why mama has such rules in place.

And yes, you can have empathy for teachers too! I love this book because the student finally sees his teacher as a human being and figures out she's no so bad after all.

This is a really sweet story about a bear trying to find the owner of a lost bunny. He ends up getting attached to it and it's hard for him to give it up when the real owner comes along. Don't worry-it's a happy ending! :) But we feel for him, which is important.

And if you are looking for chapter books to read to your kiddos:

This is a graphic novel, but I think a really amazing story. She becomes deaf due to an illness and we see how she copes with school and everyday tasks. She imagines herself a superhero when the teacher forgets she is still wearing the microphone plugged into her hearing aid.

I love this story! Tua sees an elephant being mistreated by it's owners and decides to rescue it. We follow their adventures and feel for what they are going through.

My all-time favorite book for showing another perspective. It's told from the perspective of a character who has cerebral palsy. She is very, very smart but cannot communicate that. There are people in her life who finally figure it out (the part where the mom confronts a teacher with low expectations is just priceless). A little challenging even as a read-aloud to my Kinder students, but with some guidance they really were able to put themselves in Melody's shoes and be grateful for the things they can do.

There are tons of books that we can use to foster empathy, we just have to guide those discussions.

Teaching Empathy to Our Young Students

Living in the 21st Century gives our kids a lot of benefits. They have access to the world through the internet. They can communicate with others in ways we didn't even dream of when I was growing up. However, the trade off to that is that they seem to care less about the feelings of others. Using so much technology, I believe, is desensitizing them in actual social situations and the feelings that come with it. Even as adults, reading comments people make on articles just make me cringe-how do you think they will feel reading that?

Watching the news today and the tragedy in Orlando, I just can't fathom what goes through someone's mind that they can not only hurt people, but to put all those families through that grief as well. It hasn't always been this way. I think if you told people 50 years ago that this would be our reality-that a mass shooting would just be a blip on the news, In 2016 alone we have had 76! I don't think the people would have believed it. So much has changed and there's not a lot we have control over-but we do have control over what we model and teach our kiddos.

So one of the skills I try to impart on my students is empathy. I teach the word and meaning. I use this video to explain it-I am a fan of Mark Ruffalo but love him even more for doing this:

There is nothing like reading a story and having a student say Ï have empathy for Winnie-the-Pooh, he keeps getting stuck everywhere". They can understand what it means. 

We also watch a lot of videos. This is a great resource-Terri is awesome at finding videos to share with the kids:

https://engagetheirminds.com/2015/06/23/inspirational-videos-for-students-update/

I also use photographs-what are these people feeling at this moment? The kids go-to words are happy or sad and I try to expand on that. I try to give them more vocabulary-frustrated, anxious, disappointed, joyful, grateful.

A great resource for pics from around the world is:  http://www.nbcnews.com/news/week-in-pictures

This is not a site I would let students view themselves, I put the pics in slideshows for them. Here are a few examples:

I like to use animals as well-they have feelings too.

This elephant is not hurt-it's part of an education program-the students are blind.

In my next post I'll post some books I suggest to teach empathy as well.

Summer Reading

Well, I am still teaching summer school so I haven't really been able to dive into my summer reading full-force yet. But I have read a few books that I thought I'd share.

I really liked this book. I didn't know it was YA until I had finished it and started reading the reviews. I think it's extremely well-written, the imagery is really haunting. And you just really feel for this main character who  didn't have a chance in life given the family dynamic she was born into. I highly recommend this one. It's one that stays with you.

I try to read classics in-between the newer fiction. I read this book in high school and really couldn't remember much about it. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Maggie Gyllenhaal (love her!)-she really was a perfect voice for the protagonist of this story. I hate to say it, but it was a little more boring than I remembered. A lot of the story was about her life at work. I am not usually one to re-read books, but it's kind of neat to read one from your past and see how as an adult the story resonates differently.

I read the book reviews in Entertainment Weekly magazine and usually they are spot on, but I don't think this book deserved the rave review they gave it. I love scary stories and this was touted as a good scary one! Stephen King was even recommending it. I thought it was an interesting story, extremely atmospheric in the descriptions. Very well-written-just not very scary. I am actually not even sure after reading the last 2 chapters twice what even happened. I wish I knew someone else who read it so they could explain it to me! :)

I also really wanted to like this book. The premise seemed so interesting. A Native American man shoots at a deer and accidentally kills his friend's son. So to atone for this, he gives them his youngest son. I love Native American history and enjoyed the legends included. But the author kept flashbacking (is that even a verb) to the father's past, his father's past, etc. I understand family curse and there was meaning to the name and all, but I found it to be very confusing and jarring to the original storyline. This was a book I felt like I had to finish after I was more than halfway through, but it was more like a chore to get to that ending.

Have you been reading anything that you'd recommend?

Backward Writing Prompts

I know usually when we give our students prompts, we use the beginning of the sentence. Years ago I started doing one of my favorite activities-which is to give them the ending of the story and have them write the beginning and the middle. I have used many different prompts over the year "and then we had a pet", "and then Christmas was over". For this one I used......and then Miss Trayers went home. After all the lessons I do encouraging them to be creative over the year, I was actually very impressed at all the different scenarios that they came up with for me. I know the handwriting is not our best, but we regressed a bit in that regard the last few weeks of school.

Miss Trayers was walking Ruby when Boom! 100,000,000,000,000 bowling bowls stopped her.

New York was a trip my teacher took. You got a house and got the good. You need ?

P.S. This student couldn't even write his name on Day One of Kindergarten-look at him writing! :)

One day my teacher went to the new school and forgot she had no school.

The Missing Tea (I drink tea all day long).

One time Miss Trayers had a day off and wanted to make tea but her ingredients were gone. When she was at a restaurant, she went back to the restaurant to get her tea.

One day Miss Trayers was sick. She is sick and the doctor said Hello Miss Trayers. Miss Trayers said hi. Are you sick? Miss Trayers said yes. Asked to have surgery, Miss Trayers said yes. Follow me to the room, ok sit down you can go home.

Miss Trayers went to school and make the tables ready for Mom's Day. She picked up the kids at 8:30 so the moms came in, the kids went home.

A long time ago Miss Trayers was a kid too. She went into the woods and she was scared. She made a friend her name was Emma.

One day  Miss Trayers went to the store to buy clothes and groceries and a dress and some food and ?

She lost the stuff, she searched and she found it and she paid.

One day Miss Trayers was at the grocery store and she bought veggies. Then her car broke down. She fixed it, then she paid and she ate snacks.

So if you ever want to change up your writing prompts think about using the ending instead of the beginning. Last time I posted this Ian Byrd from Byrdseed said he used to let them choose if they wanted to use it at the beginning or the end. So "there was a knock at the door"-they could craft their story around that happening at the beginning or the end.

Kids Deserve It

I met Todd Nesloney online several years ago. He was doing a Summer Learning Series with his staff and decided to share those lessons with the general public. I loved getting those weekly e-mails with tasks to complete. It introduced me to programs that I still use like Canva. It got me more involved in using Twitter. And I brought those things back to my own staff. In short, I was already a big admirer of his.

And then he wrote this book:

I was able to relate with so many ideas in this book. If you read my blog at all, you know I'm kind of a rebel. I am the one who will speak up in  meeting and ask-is this really what is best for our students? I'm the one who raises my hand in team meetings and says-that's a great idea, but I'm going to do it a little bit differently with my class. I have a passion for finding new ways to challenge my kiddos. I try new things all the time. Because of this I often feel like a Lone Wolf. Luckily, as the book points out-there are many of us out there and with the invention of social media, we can all connect with our ideas.

They talk about things like making people feel important-using people's names. I ensure that when my class goes through the line in the cafeteria, we know all the ladies' names there to thank them personally. And guess what-they always use my name and know the names of my students as well. The authors encourage us to be a cheerleader for everyone, to take risks and do something different, something memorable with our kiddos.

I highlighted a lot of ideas in this book and will come back to it before school starts to remind me to keep staying fresh and relevant. I actually even wrote a Donorschoose proposal to see if we can get some copies to do a staff book study-fingers crossed! :)

Pasta Insects

So the top of Bloom's Taxonomy now is the stage: Create. I try to at least once a week ask my kiddos to create something new. It's very challenging for them, but the more we do it-the better they get at it. 

When we study insects I ask them to take what they learned about the insects-3 body parts, ways they protect themselves, ways they communicate-and invent their own insect using different kinds of pasta. Here's what they came up with this year: