An Assembly on Empathy

This morning we held our monthly assembly in the beautifully re-appointed space of the Depot (if you haven't yet seen them, gorgeous new cabinets have been installed to store our collection of Orff instruments). The theme of the assembly was empathy, the experience of feeling with someone else's feelings (rather than sympathy, which is the experience of feeling for someone else's feelings), to tie into the social rules focus on inclusion and exclusion that Kate Klaire is working on with our classrooms this month.

I wanted to begin by giving students an experience that would help them understand that our brains make meaning of experiences in ways about which we aren't always conscious or in control. This is true not only in the academic and intellectual realm, but also in the social and emotional realm, and I hoped to illustrate that people sometimes get stuck in patterns or habits that they aren't even aware they are doing, or know why they are doing them. I also wanted to change up the approach I had used to open the previous assemblies ("if you X, clap once. if you Y, clap twice. etc"), and I wanted to have an interactive experience that could give students an experiential basis to understand the ideas I was raising, instead of just talking at them. And so, I started by replicating this activity by Bobby McFarrin:

This was followed by a series of carefully crafted teacher skits that Kate and I wrote together. Claire, Lyssa, Mike, Sima and Eve had volunteered to present these skits, and we rehearsed them before school this morning. Each skit was based on real-life interactions that occur in the classroom, at lunch, or on the playground. After each skit, Kate interviewed the participants about their feelings, which gave teachers a chance to model making their emotional thinking and feeling visible. Kate then restated the main experience or feeling, and gave students a chance to make the "me too" sign to connect what they had seen and heard with their own lived experience. My favorite comment overheard during this time, by a student: "I've done some teasing this week."

Following the skits, the Student Recess Council read off the list of agreements they had arrived at for the school. In the short term, these are going to be posted on the playground; in the medium term, the Extended Day program is going to offer a mural arts class this spring, and the product will be a full-sized mural featuring these agreements somewhere on the recess yard.

The assembly ended with Eve and Chris Perdue leading the school in a wonderful version of Here Comes the Sun, to celebrate the lengthening of days and the arrival of the new year.

The feeling in the room this morning was very powerful. Teachers and kids alike were buzzing with the good vibe and thoughtful learning. Ask your child about it!

In memory of George, I can't resist: