Wow bullying stopped by using babies to teach empathy

[Maraya1969]

You kind of really have to watch the short video to see how this works. It is all over the world except here!

http://www.rootsofempathy.org/
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/stop-bullying-with-empathy

Roots of Empathy's mission is to build caring, peaceful, and
civil societies through the development of empathy
in children and adults.

Roots of Empathy is an evidence-based classroom program that has shown significant effect in reducing levels of aggression among school children while raising social/emotional competence and increasing empathy.

Stop Bullying with Empathy
Childhood aggression isn't child's play. Stopping aggression starts early, by introducing young children to empathy.

The best teachers provide love and guidance

29 October 2013: In an online debate entitled “Can We Have Education Without Teachers?” Roots of Empathy Founder/President Mary Gordon contends that teachers are still a vital part of the education process, but what they teach and how they function within the classroom must change.

Gordon argues that real experiential learning happens through relationships rather than one-way learning. This makes the role of the teacher an essential component of successful learning environments, as the teacher is the one to model behaviour, facilitate relationships, provide feedback and guide students in observation, and internalizing their learning.

And the number one skill that Gordon thinks teachers should be developing in their students? – Empathy. “It is the ultimate human trait.” Empathy can only be developed experientially, guided by a committed teacher aware of the importance of social and emotional learning and empathy. In summation, Gordon predicts:

Far from being obsolete, the teaching profession is poised to reinvent itself in this globalized and modernized world. To care is to teach, and to teach is to touch the future. The challenges and the hope of this decade would be to revisit the cultivation of relationships and empathy in classrooms and to support teachers in learning how best to capitalize on the use of technology and the power of their own humanity.

As the 2013 World Innovation Summit for Education takes place this week in Qatar, visit the 2013 WISE Summit site to review this debate and read Mary Gordon’s perspective on teaching in the 21st century (click on the "Empathy and Teaching" tab).

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Incredible, thanks

[Journeyman]

2. Thank you for the link. Tremendous possibilities there. . .

[BlancheSplanchnik]

3. marking for later

This is the most important message in Buddhist philosophy: developing compassion.

The most important thing to practice for others and the most important thing to practice for ourselves.

[Maraya1969]

6. I know that about Buddism and compassion. Did you ever hear

of the happiest man alive? Or the happiest monk? He has been meditation on compassion, (feeling warmly towards people) and they hooked him up to electrodes and saw that he had certain areas the indicate happiness light up.

Something like that.

[gtar100]

4. Teaching is one of, if not the most, noble of professions.

It's a damn shame we treat it so poorly here in the US. They are passing on vital knowledge to future generations and it just sickens me how much republicans want to screw with that.

[cer7711]

5. Without Empathy, One Is A Mere Insect . . .

. . . or android: something that looks and sounds human, but isn't.

See: the works of Philip K. Dick

[teach1st]

7. Amen

Gordon argues that real experiential learning happens through relationships rather than one-way learning. This makes the role of the teacher an essential component of successful learning environments, as the teacher is the one to model behaviour, facilitate relationships, provide feedback and guide students in observation, and internalizing their learning.

Amen.

I'm teaching a fifth grade dropout-prevention class this year in a supposed failing school (the school isn't failing, of course -- social justice is failing our studnts). I would love it if my empathy-challenged students could be involved in a program like this. Unfortunately, since it doesn't align to the standards I doubt if something like this would be approved.

We need to take back education in this country.

[lumberjack_jeff]

8. So students are taught algebra through facilitating their interpersonal relationships?

The tendency of schools to emphasize this aspect of education is why boys are failing. Boys learn academic material with more facility than girls, yet get worse grades because learning the subject matter isn't really the point of modern school.

Efforts to decrease bullying are great, but look around you; at our roads, our electronics, our buildings. Little of what humans have created suggests that "empathy is the ultimate human trait".

Intelligence, adaptability, ability to generalize knowledge and innovate are the ultimate human traits.

[laundry_queen]

12. I feel like you have missed the point.

Also, boys do indeed benefit from this type of teaching. My brother was a prime example of that. This was in the early 80's. He always had issues in class with bullying other kids and disrupting. Probably because our dad was strict, authoritarian and abusive. The school had him diagnosed with ADHD and put him on Ritalin (my mom took him off it after, at age 7, he expressed a desire to kill himself). Then he got a wonderful teacher who was all about empathy, and relationships and open communication. She took my brother aside and had chats with him about how his behavior impacted others. She gave him extra work to stop him from being bored, or she would make him 'teacher's helper' for the day and she fostered a close relationship with him and facilitated his relationships with his classmates. She had chats with my parents about how to teach him empathy. He stopped bullying, he stopped disrupting and his marks soared. Today he is a successful engineer, I have no doubt, because of this teacher. I feel like you shortchange boys when you stereotype that they succeed better in 'old fashioned' schools. Young boys are every bit as responsive to an empathetic model as young girls are.

[gulliver]

9. About time someone figured this out.

Babies in the classroom? Sure. But there needs to be a chance for all varying ages to interact.

It isn't just for bullying. The younger kids and older kids would all get something out of being together. I have always thought that the hard segregation of students by age is an absurdly terrible thing to do to our human psyches. Schools are turning more and more into factory farms.

[laundry_queen]

11. Something interesting:

The school that my kids went to that had the Roots of Empathy program also did a lot of split classes. From year to year you never knew if you were going to end up on the bottom of a grade 2/3 split one year and on the top of a 3/4 split the next (with different kids). I loved it because, like you, I feel like always slotting children in the exact same age group is doing them a disservice. During the years my kids were in that school they learned a lot about interacting with older and with younger kids. The split class idea does create a lot more work for the teachers, however.

[laundry_queen]

10. My kids have been through the 'Roots of Empathy' program

And I will say that none of the schools that they have been in with this program have bullying issues at all. It does make a big difference.

Empathy is something I think is almost more important that anything else when it comes to teaching children. A child who is taught empathy will forever have intrinsic motivation to be kind and fair. Widespread taught empathy, in my opinion, could change the world and I'm not trying to be hyperbolic here. Teaching my children empathy has always been my #1 priority while raising them.