Tag: empathy

BAKE A DIFFERENCE

matthewpiercyClassroom Environment

Cosmic Cookie Class Recipe:

2 ½ cups community creation

3 teaspoons all purpose empathy into action

2 sticks of “story” 

12 ounces choice

Directions: Preheat classroom with reflection and intentionality. In a large mixing bowl, add community creation.  Combine empathy and action into community creation.  Beat sticks of “story” in medium mixer bowl until creamy.  Gradually combine creamy mixture with community creation and empathy into action mixture. Stir in choice.  Drop by rounded tablespoon onto untreated learning pan. Bake for 9 months or until golden brown. 

“Have you tried Mimmie’s Bakery? They have the most incredible Cosmic cookie!”  My octogenarian neighbor recently reminded me of a child, as she hailed my attention while I rushed out the door the other morning. There was something heartwarming about an older person getting so animated about something many would consider so simple, a cookie.  Her excitement was contagious and stirred in me a bit of curiosity.

What made Mimmie’s cookie recipe so different?

As the day went on, I seemingly couldn’t get the Cosmic cookie off or out of my mind.  Instead of heading down to the bakery, I considered how I might transfer this idea of a perfect cookie recipe to what I care most about, teaching and learning.  Could I “bake” something similar in my classroom?

Teaching very well can be just a generic chocolate chip cookie but in reality, it is so much more.  And it has the potential to get people excited. In the case of children, “keep” them excited.  I often remind myself, a big part of keeping students love for learning ignited, is simply not getting in their way.  I think about how knowledge is cheap and with the web we are saturated in information 24/7.  It is what we do with learning that matters most.  After two dozen years “baking”in the classroom, I definitely have learned many lessons.  However, an end-of-year student survey allowed for a sort of distillation or surfacing of a “recipe” for my own Cosmic cookie.

When eating healthy, nutritionists often say to choose those foods with the least amount of ingredients.  I’ve boiled my recipe down to but four “ingredients.”  It would be foolhardy to think I have perfected the recipe, though there are definitely ingredients and/or steps which I feel much more confident about.  Yet, perfection?  Even those cookies at Mimmie’s surely are a work in progress.

Summer is a time of much needed rest for educators, but I trust is also a chance for reflection. So much news in education this past year was about the abandonment of  the noble profession. With a little distance this summer, I remain hopeful that many educators might remember back to why they chose (or were chosen!) to be an educator. And I hope there is a sense of rejuvenation and excitement.  Moreover, if the “Cosmic Cookie Class” recipe is helpful to even a single educator, I will feel a sense of satisfaction.

Cosmic Cookie Class Breakdown

  1. Community creation: Community does not just happen.  Intentionality is of extreme importance. The critical skill of learning how to listen but also how to give and receive feedback are at the heart of functioning communities.  A “we do this together” sort of ethos exists. Routines definitely help.  Ideas for implementation include:

*Philosophical chairs

*Class discussion and occasional  fish bowl strategy

*Feedback loops changed up and in a variety of formats:

~Teacher to student

~Student to student

~Student to teacher (such a gift!)

~Parents (digital notebooks) and segments of conversations recorded with Mote

~Administration invited in at the start and during the process, not just in culmination

~Community (something I especially wish to improve)

  1. Empathy but also action:  This begins with awareness.  Several students commented how social studies class “was about becoming  more aware of what is happening around our world.”  Others suggested, “It is about joy, curiousity, and being inspired to create a positive impact that would affect people’s lives for the better.” And, one of my favorite pieces of feedback was how “the class is more a study of life, all subjects combined. Where we find solutions to problems in the world.”  Three ideas for beginning to transition from empathy into action include:

~Start small and add a Virtual Reality experience or simulation

~Read aloud (a book well read and discussed is appealing to learners of all ages)

~Newsela articles citing students as examples of how youth  are making a difference

*Bonus: Partner with experts in the field and they may even broaden your audience for students (eg: Inspired Citizens)

  1. Integrate the power of story:  “Story, as it turns out, was crucial to our evolution — more so than opposable thumbs. Opposable thumbs let us hang on; story told us what to hang on to” (Lisa Cron). Be okay with being vulnerable as you become “known” to students.  Someone who students can connect with.  Sharing anecdotes can add not only “reality” to the classroom but also comfort. The intentional integration of stories, like the time I tacked a horse for a teen my age who had cerebral palsy.  How I was gifted an opportunity to learn gratitude and grace from such an experience. A story like this not only connects with the equestrian lover in the classroom but anyone who might have a beating heart, if the story is one students can re-live with you as you tell it.  Skills learned this past year from a migration project based on story-telling included:

~Slowing down and really practicing what it means to attentively listen.  This can be difficult as habits need to be broken for students and adults alike.  The digital age has sped us up in numerable ways

~As learners listen, challenge them to discern where a deeper “story” might yearn to surface.  Imagine it breaching as a 150- ton whale!

~Developing questions and being prepared to interview but also to design questions on the fly

~Creatively “tell” stories through a variety of mediums (eg. video, stop animation, and podcast)

  1. Provide student choice:  Choice boards can be helpful so there isn’t paralysis amidst a paradox of choices. Further, in an effort to help with scaffolding, suggested tech platforms, as well as process steps are offered as options to follow. The emphasis is always on process yet with sufficient time built in (a calendar proposed), along with feedback, a quality final product is ensured.  Building in a sort of celebration and/or “real” audience helps up the ante and leads to more student ownership and pride of their learning. On my final survey, several students commented with regards to choice.  One student shared, “I love how we get to express our creativity in our learning.”

Power to Make a Difference

It was Maya Angelou who said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”  What matters most in our classroom is this.  How students feel. The four “ingredients” above contain tremendous power. Power to be rememembered? Yes.  But more importantly, the power to make a difference.  

Thank you for reading and for continuing to reflect and learn.

Enjoy the summer and happy “baking”!

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THE CHALLENGES AND PROMISES OF MIGRATION

matthewpiercyInstruction

How many have slipped on an Oculus or Odyssey headset and experienced virtual reality? Recently a colleague and I intentionally introduced seventh grade students to a unit on migration by seeing firsthand what life is like in a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan. Za’atari is home to more than 80,000, with over half the refugees being children. Students are exposed Sidra’s world,a tent-city where the 12-year old has lived the more than half her life. Clouds Over Sidra, available at no cost, was created to support a United Nations goal of developing resilience in vulnerable communities.

The decision to hook students through this experience was founded upon a desire for students to emotionally connect and hopefully generate not only greater interest and understanding, but ultimately empathy. As students followed Sidra through the camp, into a classroom, onto the football field, and into a shop baking a thin, flat bread called saj, curiosity piqued. Students were partnered so one could act as note taker, recording all that was wondered. For example:

*Why are there more kids than adults?
*How do the people here get money aside from donations?
*How does this affect children’s well-being?

After partners switched roles, students were asked to complete a three question survey.
*What is one word to describe how you felt, seeing and hearing about Sidra’s life?
*What did you see and/or hear that led to your feeling this way?
*Did you enjoy doing the VR?

The overwhelming majority of students responded favorably to the third question. To enhance the depth of emotional response and explanation, students were provided with the Mood Meter. Marc Brackett, Yale professor and founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence developed this evidence-based road map to emotions. In a nutshell, the tool supports building vocabulary and also measures the energy and pleasantness of a feeling. Over 50 percent of students surveyed indicated unpleasant and high energy emotions. Words like, “concerned,” “stressed,” and even “peeved” were selected.

Further, one student explained why she thought felt this way. “I felt stressed because looking at her life, I don’t know what she is going to do next. Or how she is going to survive through the war.” Another shared, “I felt angry because I was appalled by the fact that rulers can be so dumb. That they make decisions to destroy other people’s homes, just to have POWER. I mean WHY, why would you do that? To get power by destroying other people’s houses? Who does that? So mean!” The level of emotional response was clear. So too was the empathy. Exactly what we were hoping to cultivate.

But this is just a beginning.

Following empathetic awareness, students will explore the myriad reasons for why people migrate and how migration impacts people and places. Through deeper understanding, the goal is to empower students to ultimately transfer their learning in meaningful ways. As a culminating project students will create documentary films of stories from individuals in our community who have experience with migration. The films will then be submitted to the The United Nations International Organization for Migration Film Festival. Ultimately the intention is capture the multitude of challenges of migration but also the promise.

Riding the Momentum

matthewpiercyPlanning and Preparation

In a recent blog post by James Birchenough titled, Leading through the fog, we are reminded of the essential roles of kindness and empathy.  Being a leader of any organization during the trying months of COVID-19 presents challenges that no GPS could guide us through.  A seemingly shifting terrain with ever-changing weather patterns.

“Whichever camp we sit in, we need to be kind to each other, try to empathise and understand each other’s perspectives, and give each other a little extra grace: we’re all doing the best we can.”  (Birchenough)

So, in the forefront of my thoughts is this, yet occupying seemingly larger recesses of my mind, is the question many are considering; begging for time to answer.  “What will school look like post pandemic?”  I consider myself humble, yet there is ONE thing I do definitely know.  With all the speculation and ambivalence that everything will go back to normal, or a “new normal,” I flat out disagree.  There is no going back!  If nothing else, students, teachers, and families have all eaten from the “apple” that fell from the tree.  Call it the Tree of Knowledge or better yet, the Corona Tree.  In this case knowledge gained from direct experience.

 

Why an Apple?

Bing Crosby sang about apples in his 1939 hit, “An Apple for a Teacher.”  And before this, popular lore dates back to the 1700s where in Sweden and Denmark, baskets of apples were given to teachers as a sort of payment for a child’s education.  Then there are stories connecting apple giving to teachers as a result of a popular phrase, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”  Gifting a teacher with a healthy snack was a token of appreciation and a possible way to get on the teacher’s good side.  Is it ironic if we further consider that this same fruit is the name of one of the world’ largest computer companies?  Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc. is quoted as saying the origins of the company’s name were, “Partly because I like apples a lot and partially because Apple is ahead of Atari in the phone book and I used to work at Atari.”

 

Post WWI and WWII

No one would be so naive as to claim that life post either of the World Wars, just went back to normal.  Facts and stories about this have compiled volumes. Lives the world over, cultures forever changed.  The effects being almost written in the human DNA.  For simplicity sake, take the role of technology pre and post WWI as but one example of change.  “France only had 140 aircraft when war began, but by the end of it, it had used around 4,500” (https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/45966335).  But what about the role of women, medical innovations, and political borders?

The effects of the wars were gruesome and violent yet, inherent in survival was change.  A moving forward and not expecting life to be how it was.  Positively, there was a surge in arts and a sort of counter-revolution. The arts a means for memorializing the dead. Sculpture, painting, song, and memoire but a few examples.  It is possible today’s war with Corona is stimulating a similar shift.  Sidewalk art, along with rainbows and teddy bears in windows are glimpses of both solidarity and artistry.   Yet, what I imagine is more pervasive in its invisibility but also ubiquity.  The whole world over, the pandemic has forced our hand to adapt.  And humans are masters of adapting.

Whether we like virtual learning or not, and regardless of our deeming it a success or not, both may as well be mute points.  For the reality is, the wheels on the bus continue to go round and round.  The pandemic has forced our hand.  Virtual learning it is!  Many critics point to the ever-widening achievement gap and expanding inequities.  I would agree.  Yet, looking at where we are and where we want to be, seems to be the gravest consideration.  To do this, it would behoove us to answer the question, “What is the purpose of school?”

 

Why School?

The deep-seated roots of and role of tradition, combined with “this is the way it’s always been” practices of the institution, are collapsing.  At least during the reign of Corona.   Steeped in nearly 400 years of structure, compliance has overshadowed our school houses.  Virtual learning has not provided for this control.  There no longer is a “front” of the classroom, though a teacher may still be able to “mute” a student.  The lecture approach neither captivating nor effective.  For many, virtual learning is an experience of less than 8 weeks.  We cannot forget how in the scope of education as we know it, this is but a blip in time.  Yet, one that continues to leave an indelible mark.

 

I just hope we open our arms and hearts wide to the possibility of what school can be.  For me, this means continuing to expand in kindness, empathy, and creativity.