What a Wonderful World: Growing Empathy for Early Learners

Empathy

Where in the World is Empathy?

The first question I want to ask is where in the world is empathy? Empathy is actually all over the place. To prep for our time today, I Googled empathy and there were over 111 million hits on Google. Empathy is a wildly popular topic right now, some might even call it a buzzword. Ted Talks has its own playlist on empathy. There are several books on the New York best sellers list right now. Empathy is in the news. I read an article just the other day that said, "The 2020 election will go to the candidate with the most empathy."

It is all over the place, and yet, there is an empathy deficit. It is not a new topic. We have some really great people in our history and currently who are helping us with empathy. I think about people like Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, and most recently, people like Fred Rogers and Oprah Winfrey. They have helped us to understand who we are and walk a mile in someone else's shoes. They are great learners of empathy themselves and teachers to us of empathy.

Why is There an Empathy Deficit?

If we have such great role models, and if empathy is out there and we are able to learn about it and grow in it, then why do we have an empathy deficit? We know we have an empathy deficit because there is crime in our streets, bullying in our classrooms, substance abuse is at an all-time high, and our correctional facilities are full. If there is more need for empathy and care than there ever has been, why would we have gaps in that? In my research, I found four major gaps.

The first one is disease. This seems pretty obvious, disease might help or might impair our ability to express empathy, or even receive empathy for others. I am speaking specifically of diseases of psychopathy such as narcissistic personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder, but there is some evidence to suggest that Alzheimer's or dementia also impedes one's ability to receive empathy from others or express it.

The second is genetics. There is some research to determine whether or not we have an empathy gene. There is a little bit of evidence to suggest that there is a gene that helps some of us with empathy. I am speaking most prominently about those genetic disorders that might impede our empathy, such as autism. There is evidence that suggests that autism is one of those genetic markers that impedes our ability to perceive or express empathy.

The third is environmental factors, like a global pandemic, or something a little closer to home such as a natural disaster like a flood or hurricane. Sometimes our socioeconomic status plays into our ability to have empathy, or even milestones in our lives like occupational change, retirement, or divorce. Those are all areas that really impact our empathy, either to express empathy in a healthy way or to receive empathy from others.

The last major deficit of empathy is trauma. I think it is easy to see why trauma might be one of those that would be difficult. If you are undergoing a traumatic experience, it would be very difficult for you to help show empathy to others. There is also research being done around early childhood trauma and children with a higher adverse childhood experience (ACE) score who have a lifetime of difficulty both expressing and receiving empathy. Those are our major four gaps in empathy - disease, genetics, environmental factors, and trauma. 

I have some clothespins here. To me, these were a great example of where I was several years ago in my ability to both express empathy to others and be receptive to empathy. One clothespin was at the bottom of my basket and it is brand new. In fact, I do not think it is ever been used and it is pretty stiff and hard to move. Another clothespin was at the top of the basket and it probably needs to be retired. it is very loose, and in fact, before we started today, I tried to clip some papers together and it would not hold them.

The new clothespin is like a lack of awareness or where I started on my empathy journey. I could express empathy and receive empathy reasonably well, but was pretty tight and not able to really do the job well. I lacked awareness or practice building my empathy muscle. Whereas the older clothespin, where I have also found myself, is when I have over practiced or overextended my ability to practice empathy to the place where I have become what some are calling compassion fatigue. We are going to talk a little bit about that later.

In between the two of these, maybe a lack of practicing empathy or a lack of awareness and an over practice or compassion fatigue, how can we find balance? What is a great way to practice empathy and step into that role in a healthy way? We want to explore as early educators how we can do this for ourselves, and also bring this into the classroom and share it with students and have them practice and learn in a safe, balanced environment.

Born with It or Taught?

The next question I want to ask is if we were born with empathy or if it is taught? I would say yes to both of those and add it is also caught. Just like the bicep muscle in my arm, I was born with it, but if I do not flex it, and I do not use it, I am not able to grow it. We are born with the capacity for empathy. You have probably noticed this in young children and in infants. If you smile at them while you are playing with them, they will smile and respond back to you. Similarly, if you give them a frown, they probably will frown at you. If you have had an experience in an early childhood classroom where one child begins crying, you know what is going to happen. Your room may dissolve into tears within moments.

Babies are great catchers of emotion. They are great at reflecting what is going on around them. What allows them to do this is called mirror neurons. This occurs with adults too. If I start yawning, you will probably catch yourself yawning too. It is our brain catching something and imitating it. They first discovered this when they were studying young monkeys. They were studying different parts of the brain working as monkeys were doing very normal and repetitive acts. One monkey was eating and different parts of the brain were firing, but another monkey next to him was watching him eat, and then the same parts of his brain were firing, meaning that even though he was not participating in the same act, his brain was acknowledging all of the components of that and connecting the dots for him and helping him understand.

Young children are born with mirror neurons to help understand our actions and to help connect the two of us together so that they can understand how we are responding to the world and how they should respond to the world. Mirror neurons serve as an emotional contagion for them. It is easy to catch our feelings and to mirror them, but that is also being taught or not being taught. This is where our role as early educators is so important that we are able to step to the plate and to help them navigate the thoughts and the feelings behind emotions and move those in a positive way to impact the world positively. We are both born with it and able to be taught and we catch it from those around us.

Three Types of Empathy

There are three types of empathy. Remember, we are going to imagine a staircase here. Before we step on our first step, I want to say that empathy is really two things. It is being able to sense and then understand emotions around us.

• Thoughts and detached understanding, empathy

• Feel the feelings, mirror neurons

• Thoughts + feelings + action

The first part of understanding is the first type of empathy or cognitive understanding. It is having a thought or a detached understanding. It is most often what we use when we talk about empathy. If I were to walk across the room and stub my toe on a chair, and you notice that and I said, "Ouch," you would know that I stubbed my toe on a chair and that it hurt. You are cognitively aware of all of the processes and when I said, "Ouch," that made sense to you. You have something that you can connect that to in your cognitive awareness. This is important in early education because children need to be aware of their thoughts and understanding the actions of others. This is a great field of learning for us and for them as they come into our care to understand the thoughts and feelings of others. It is perspective-taking that we are teaching. It is observing and watching and understanding the actions of those around us and making sense of them.

Then there is emotional empathy. This is how I like to describe that. You are at home having a movie night and you have a big bowl of popcorn and are watching a scary movie. In the movie, there is a young woman who is home alone at her house. It is nighttime, she is asleep, and all of a sudden she hears a scary noise down in the basement of her home. She gets up to realize that there is no electricity at her house and her cell phone does not work, but she is determined to go figure out what that noise in the basement is. She takes a flashlight that may or may not work and decides to descend the three stairs into her basement, as ominous music plays in the background. If you are anything like me, you are on the edge of your seat and your heart is racing. Your cortisol levels are through the roof and you are ready to throw the bowl of popcorn at the TV at any moment and scream, "Run. Where is her sense of good judgment?"

I get emotionally invested in these types of things and you probably you do too. You have mirror neurons that are firing and you are feeling all of the feelings that this young person should be feeling. This is what happens to us when we go to weddings or funerals or graduations. We feel those feelings and we put ourselves in the shoes of another. Those emotional feelings serve as a connection piece that we can understand and truly be connected to another person.

Those emotions can prove to be positive or negative, depending on how we use them. That is what brings us to our third type of empathy or compassionate empathy. This is the part of the steps that I really want to help us get kids to. I want to help them learn about the thoughts and feelings of others. We want them to feel positively the thoughts and feelings in others and then act in a compassionate and right way. This is what compels many of our first responders and probably a lot of us as educators. We have a lot of compassion for learning and for helping others and for stepping in those gaps and filling those needs. Today, let us talk about how we can build these three types of empathy in our children and in ourselves for a more wonderful world.

As I said, part of my journey into empathy was developing for myself, and for the faculty in my center, a way that we could introduce empathy into the classroom. I did not want it to be on the periphery or on the side, I wanted us to literally write empathy into our lesson plans and bring it from the background into the foreground. How could we put empathy on the stage as part of the center of our classroom? If we could respond more empathetically to our students and to our parents, and to those around us, I felt like it would create a better environment for us to learn. In turn, if we could teach empathy to our students, they would go and move that out into our community, and everyone would benefit.

Three C's of Empathy

With the help of a lot of my faculty, we developed what I call the three C's of empathy. They are connection, communication, and capabilities. Again, these are a little bit like building blocks that are going to help us introduce empathy, practice it ourselves, then introduce it into the classroom in a way to really help students. 

Connection

The first is connection. This is not new information. If you have been around the early classroom for a long time, we are talking about secure attachment here, and again, we know that we need to connect. This is what makes our classrooms so wonderful, is to be able to connect with students and really get to know them and love them and bring them along. Now we are connecting for more than just assessments and to understand them and to know where their gaps are in learning. We are connecting to express empathy to them and to teach them how to receive and express empathy back.

Curious - who is the child. This is going to take a little bit more homework on our end. I encourage my faculty to begin journaling about each one of the students in their classrooms and take time to really get to know their students. I ask them to ask questions about their secure attachment and where there might be some holes or gaps that we need to shore up before we do some really great connection. I said, "Please let me know if you can pass a quiz on your children." Some of the questions you might want to jot down to ask about your children include:

• Can they come to you for comfort?
• Do they feel secure in your room enough to come to you and receive comfort when there is something that is challenging them or something upsetting to them?
• How do they respond when you are providing correction or redirection?
• Are they able to take that correction from you or does this cause friction in the classroom?
• What are some signs that they are working to develop this more, or maybe we need to help them?
• Does the child exhibit a sense of independence in your classroom?

If the answer to these questions is yes, you are well on your way to working towards a secure attachment. If not, there may be a little bit more work that needs to be done as far as being curious about the child and asking all these kinds of questions. You might ask:

• Who is the child?
• What makes them tick?
• What do they love?
• What are they nervous about?
• How is the classroom landing on them?
• Does the classroom feel safe to them?
• Are they able to manage any distractions or transitions within the classroom?

I encouraged all of my teachers to begin journaling and be students of their students before they taught what they really sought to teach. There is so much more to learn about the child. Who are they? What do they love? Who are their parents? What are some things that interest them? What are some things they shy away from? Ask those hard questions too such as why do they struggle to connect? Is there a learning gap or a language barrier that we need to work on? Journaling all of those questions helped our teachers develop a sense of connection with the children and know a little bit more about how to connect or how to seek more information so they can more readily connect with their students.

Culture. The next part of connection to our empathy classroom is culture. I could probably spend the rest of our time talking about culture. We know that consistent schedules are very important, but I want to talk to you for a minute about consistent routines. There is no one better at consistent routines than Fred Rogers. Mr. Rogers came in every day and had the same routine of taking off his sweater, putting on something new, and changing out his shoes while singing the same song. All of his routines were consistent every single time. While you and I might find it difficult to sing those same songs over again and do the same routine every single day, this is something that is so important for our children. It creates security and structure and lets them know that they belong. You are creating with your culture a sense of belonging, of saying this is who we are, this is the song that we sing, this is the way that we do things, and we want to invite you in. Your culture has to be five star.

Sometimes when we imagine the most perfect classroom, it is nothing like the classroom we have. Maybe we did not get to pick the tile on the floor or the furniture in the room. Certainly, we do not always get to pick the kids who come to us, but we do get to pick our involvement in the room. We do get to pick the culture that we bring and the air around us. If I lined up 10 students and 10 parents and I asked them, what is the one word to describe the culture in your classroom? What would they say or what would you want them to say? Our culture is very important.

The second part of our culture is a daily touch-base. Again, I asked my faculty to consider journaling what those little deposits in each kid meant. Maybe it is their own personal handshake when they come in the morning or letting them share in circle time. It could be asking them about their soccer game or something about their parents or their favorite superhero. It is that little thing that makes them them. I call it the respective notice. You want to develop these daily touch-bases with the kids because as we move through empathy we want them to know that they are able to come to you but also that you are going to them, that you notice them in the classroom, this is where they belong. What is that daily touch-base that each kid needs? Maybe it is a pat on the back or a thumbs up. Whatever they need, begin to build that into your consistent schedule of touching base with them every single day, acknowledging that they are there, and allowing them to really be seen by you.

Here are some questions that I have to further your own thoughts and discussion on connection. Do not be afraid to ask any of these questions.

• How can you build secure attachments in your classroom?
• Can the kid come to you for comfort?
• How do they respond to correction or redirection?
• Do they feel safe to be independent in your classroom?
• Do your schedule and your classroom feel safe and inviting to them?
• What is that one word that you would use to describe the culture in your classroom?

I am going to share my one word a little bit later in our discussion. Think about what you want that culture to be and what you are inviting the kids to participate with you in. Maybe it is a culture of fun or of exploration, but whatever it is know that your daily practices and your routines and your touch-base all starts with what you decide your culture is going to be. As we build on each one of these stairs, begin thinking about what your culture might be that you want to bring into the classroom.

Communication

The next C is communication. I am really glad that we have done some work in connection because, in communication, I put out there that we get to select the vocabulary. It is really two things, it is what we are going to communicate and how we are going to communicate it. This is important because we need to know how the kids receive communication from us. All of that curiosity that you started the year with and working towards understanding your kid more is going to play out here. Now you are going to know how they receive communication from you. It is not always how we expect. They are not always going to verbalize back with us, but we want to be able to start the small steps in communication so that we can build and again, invite them to share with us.

Complete. So what is great communication? First, great communication is complete. When I say that I mean, it is a circle. Not only are we sharing information, but we want to receive information back from them. Again, that might not be verbal, but what is their body language saying? What is their participation like? What is their tone or facial expressions? They are communicating to you something, even if they are communicating to you a gap.

The first hallmark of great communication is the art of listening, or you might want to call this empathetic listening. This is pretty hard for some of us. It is hard for me. I am always listening ready to share the next great idea or correct their thinking. But in this case, empathetic listening means that we are just listening to be curious. We want to know what the child wants to share and what their thoughts and ideas are. We are not there to correct or to have a bias, we simply are listening, because they are willing to share with us and their gift of sharing is what we are willing to receive. It is important to stop to pause, get down on their level, and listen to what they want to share with us. Again, this is an invitation that we are extending to them. We want them to be able to feel comfortable to share with us and to give us that information, both receptive and expressive.

The second hallmark of great communication is serve and return. This goes hand in hand with listening. As we share ideas with children and we are asking curious, open-ended questions, our hope is that they are going to return and share something back with us. We always have a few talkers in the classroom, but we might have those who struggle, knowing how to return information to us, and so this is where we are going to be patient and encourage them to continue to share. This might be where you have your one-on-one with children who struggle to be verbal in the classroom or to share their ideas or communicate more freely with you. Take that opportunity to pause and allow children to return information to us. This is how we are going to learn more about them, and we are going to start the process of great communication.

The third hallmark of great communication is reflecting observations. This part is two-fold. I have encouraged my staff to reflect observations instead of giving orders. Let me give an example of that. Today it is raining outside and if we are going to go outside to play today, I would say, "Everyone needs to get on their jacket and line up at the door so we can go outside." But what does it sound like for me to say, "It is raining outside today. We probably need to wear jackets before we go outside. Who thinks that is a great idea to wear jackets? I am going to wear mine." I am reflecting on the observation about the environment. It is raining. I want to wear my jacket when I go outside, and I am asking for information back from them. I am inviting them into the conversation. I am getting their perspective. This is all part of empathy and modeling the type of empathy that we want them to reflect and to give to others. Stop and make observations and give fewer orders.

The second part of observation is something that we want to do when we are connecting either one-on-one with kids or in small groups. We want to reflect on those observations and talk about what we are seeing in the classroom. You are seeing sharing, taking turns, kids stopping and listening, and doing a great job taking turns in conversation. All of those things that you are reflecting is helping build their vocabulary and helping them understand that this is a positive way to communicate with each other. You are giving them a thumbs up on the observations that you see in the classroom. You are simply a sports announcer announcing all of the plays in the room and helping them take note of what is going on. It helps them build perspective and it helps them to understand and place an order and process what is going on in the classroom. Take time to really work on reflecting observations and giving fewer orders in the classroom because it is a great way to help them build their vocabulary and do some perspective-taking.

Consistent. Let's talk about the consistency of communication. We want to model these consistencies. Maybe there are some words that you want to use in talking about empathy, and maybe you want to use the word empathy. You are going to begin modeling that and calling it out or calling out your observations as you see them. You also want to model social stories. There is no shortage of amazing picture books and children's literature to help us share empathy, discuss feelings, and understand perspective-taking. Bring this into your classroom, share those books, talk about what the stories mean, and then pair that with role modeling, which I think is so successful in helping kids navigate taking risks and working through problem-solving. It gives them a sense of play to the work of childhood, which is making sense of things that are not always easy to grasp. They get to roleplay out all of those tricky conversations and navigate those difficult things in childhood that we want them to understand in regards to empathy.

Again, be consistent by modeling and speaking those words that you want to be part of your culture, bring in those social stories that you know will help target some tricky areas in your classroom, and then encourage the kids to roleplay either in a large group or maybe one-on-one some of those more difficult problem-solving skills and communication areas that you see are lacking in your children.

Here are some questions to think about.

• What is your communication style in the classroom?
  • Maybe your communication style is more demonstrative and out loud, and that is great.
• Do you get to choose how you want to communicate in the classroom?
  • Maybe you are a little quieter in your observations and in your communication style and you allow the kids to speak a little bit more. That is great too because kids learn from each other. Helping bring forward some of the learning that one child might have to share with another is a great communication tip.
• What are some of the words and big ideas that you want to communicate?

I promised you I would share something about my culture. In my center, I was known as the story lady. Kids would come to a large group time with me several times a week and we would have storytime. I had puppets and props and all kinds of fun things. Almost every year I would start the time together with what I call my ragtag book. I wanted the word respect in my culture. That is what I wanted most of all in my culture so I decided to start every year by introducing that word. In typical fashion, I would hold my book up and we would begin talking about it. I would comment that we had no cover and so I was not able to share the title of the book or the author or the illustrator.

As I began reading, I would comment that we were missing a few pages and some had been marked over and it was very difficult to share our book together. We talked about what a disappointment it was to not be able to read or understand our book. We listed some great books that we loved and wished that we could read and we talked about how this might have happened. There was no shortage of list of potential culprits. We talked about what makes taking care of our books so important and why we like books and why they are important to us. We listed some of the books we love the most, and I talked about how I loved them and how I really wanted to take care of them. I talked about what it was like to turn pages carefully and the children helped me come up with some great ideas. I said, "It sounds like you have learned to respect the books."

I saw some faces not quite understand the idea of respect so I clarified it a little bit more. I said, "Books are important to you so you take very good care of them. You show that they are important to you by caring for them, by putting them properly on the shelf, by turning the pages, and by keeping them off the floor." They understood that. We talked about other things that we might have respect for, such as the chairs that we were sitting in or the props behind me that they wanted so desperately to play with. As we built on the word respect, we came up with some other words like taking care of or sharing. We also talked about forgiveness. Throughout the rest of the year, we modeled our respect. When we saw it, we would hold up our finger and make the letter R in sign language. We talked about how we would have respect for our building and for our materials, and then we talked about how we would have respect for ourselves, and respect for others. The idea of respect continued to grow all year long. We modeled it in the way that we listened to each other and took turns. We used vocabulary words, we had social stories, and we did roleplay. All year long, we built on the idea of respect.

Think about the words you want to communicate and the words you want to bring into your classroom that you can consistently and completely share with the kids over and over again until they become part of their own culture. What words will they use when they are not around you and what words will they take home and take out into the world. I want to encourage you to jot down some of those ideas that you have about the words that you want to communicate. 

Capabilities

We are going to move on to our third part of empathy, which is capabilities. This is the one that has me most excited because this is the step on our three steps that we really want to help children get to. We have been working on their cognitive abilities to recognize empathy in themselves and others. We have been practicing emotional empathy and how to feel and take the perspective of others and get our mirror neurons firing. Now we get to talk about where our capabilities are going to go. We have been practicing all of that in our safe environment, with everyone in our group, either one-on-one or in small groups, and now, you as the educator get to shape what kind of capabilities that you want to see in the classroom. I want to share a story from several years ago about one of my faculty. The culture word that she wanted to bring into her classroom was the word encourage.

At the beginning of the year, she noticed one of her four-year-olds was very excited about his older cousin, who was going to play college football. He came to school every day ready to talk about number 11 and college football. Some of the students enjoyed hearing that and some of the students didn't necessarily want to participate in all of the college football talk. In her one-on-one time with this child, he expressed some frustration that not everyone loved football as much as he did. He wanted everyone to be excited for his cousin and cheer the team on. She asked him to bring some materials to class such as pictures of his cousin and some memorabilia from a game.

They began to discuss this in circle time, and a couple more students became interested. Then they watched a portion of the game and a few more students noticed there were other things about football that they could be interested in. There was a band, there were cheerleaders, and most importantly, there were all kinds of wonderful snacks at the football game. This teacher took it upon herself to encourage the kids to come up with their own game. They would have football players, cheerleaders, band members, and those serving concessions. One afternoon, they all went outside and enjoyed a great football game, complete with band and cheerleaders and snacks, because all important things involve snacks. The kids had a great time. They had such a great time that they were much more interested to hear about this little guy's cousin. In fact, several of them wanted to make cards and send pictures of the football game that they had just enjoyed to this college student to share their love of football.

The big game came and many of the students watched over the weekend and the team lost, and on Monday, Miss Rogers came to me and said, "My four-year-olds are so dejected. The college team lost their game and I have a group of very sad children." She pulled all the children in and talked about their feelings and why they lost the game. Some had some concerns about the ref's ability to call the game well. After they expressed their feelings, she asked them if there was anyone else that might be upset or sad. It dawned on them that probably the college football player was the saddest of all. They decided to make cards and encourage their football player and let him know that win or lose, they were still going to cheer him on. They were still going to watch the game and they were still going to practice football in their own classroom.

Luckily for them, this football player thought that was great and sent back pictures and swag to the classroom and sent them a little certificate to become his first fan club. They were so ecstatic to be a fan club. I was so proud of this teacher for taking something that was an interest in the classroom and building upon it. She took something that the kids loved and brought it into the classroom and helped everyone share something. This helped them build empathy within the classroom and then moved out to share something a little bit broader beyond the four walls of their school.

What do you want to bring in or what is it the students see that they might be interested in participating in? These are the kinds of questions we want to ask about their capabilities. What I have observed of our youngest learners right now is that they are very ready to participate in the world around them. They are ready to share and to be compassionate with those around them. My questions for you on this are:

• What are those tendencies and capabilities that you have noticed in the classroom?
  • When you are doing all of that journaling on who the students are and what they love and how you can connect with them, you have probably noticed some things that you could bring forward that you could put on the front stage and that they could participate in together.
• How will you grow your own empathy and empathy towards compassion in your classroom?
  • It is so important that we commit ourselves as educators to grow our own empathy and to practice those things that we want to bring forward in the classroom.

I love Miss Rogers' story because she wanted to bring encouragement into the classroom and she certainly brought that forward in football. It was probably not her first thought process into writing that into her lesson plans, but it was something that presented itself in her classroom. She capitalized on that and made it something that was really impactful for the kids and for someone outside the classroom.

Maybe you want to start practicing within the four walls of your classroom or maybe you want to practice something with a classroom across the hallway or a faculty member down the hallway. You get to practice and craft those early steps for your children. Begin jotting down your ideas on what they might love and what they might be capable of stepping into.

Empathy Calendar

Figure 1 shows an empathy calendar, a practical tool that we started off in the classroom using. We adapted this from a feelings calendar when we were doing a thematic unit on feelings. Each one of the activities on the calendar had to do with a different feeling that we were working on for that week. We adapted this and brought it into the classroom, again first, to practice inside the classroom safely. How do you introduce the idea of photo albums in the classroom and how do you invite the children to participate or how do they invite each other to participate?

Figure 1. Empathy calendar.

Once we had practiced these things in the classroom and worked on our skills and our vocabulary, we sent this home with the students so that they could practice outside the four walls of the classroom with family and friends and neighbors within their community. We equipped them to practice safely with us first and then allowed them to take some of those small steps on their own. 

This was such a great way to help introduce not only their practice of empathy but also to introduce it to parents that we were working on this. It also was a way to share that we wanted families' participation in understanding more about empathy and helping their children practice this at home. This was a great parent piece that really helped us bridge that gap with our parents and continuing the learning at home. Any of those ideas that you have about the bridging that gap with parents and empathy and helping them understand that you are bringing that into the classroom as a practice is going to make the learning so much richer for your children as you move forward.

Lastly, be centered. What I mean by that is know your boundaries, know the difference between not being engaged and possibly being over engaged. Those boundaries are for your safety. When you love yourself well, you teach others how to love and care for you so you can stay in the fight and be part of a continued help for others. Put on your oxygen mask. That was what our friend shared with me when I finally had the courage to express that I was overwhelmed. She talked about and shared a video with me about when we travel and flight attendants say, "If the cabin loses pressure, please put on your own mask before assisting others." I have always thought that was ridiculous. Of course, I am going to help the people next to me, I want them to be able to be safe. I watched a video and in less than two minutes, two gentlemen were simulating what it is like to lose cabin pressure. In less than 90 seconds of talking and not putting on their masks, they quite suddenly lost the ability, even while holding their masks in their hand of putting on their own masks. There they were holding them in their hand but not quite able to get the mask on for their own safety. We do not want to find ourselves in a place that we are not able to put on our own oxygen mask, whatever that might be for us. Whether it is a break, whether it is sharing our concerns with others, and allowing them to express empathy towards us, whatever that might be for you, I would ask you to put on your own oxygen mask for your safety and for those around you. If you need more information about compassion fatigue, there is a wide variety of information online. I would highly encourage you to seek help and to know when you have reached that step.

Adam's Story

I want to share with you a story about compassion fatigue, and a little bit about Adam. A fellow educator shared this story with me several years ago and it really highlighted for me some of what we shared today and also how we can find ourselves in compassion fatigue. Adam came to kindergarten and Adam's older sister had a lot of developmental delays and medical problems. Adam's family had spent a lot of their resources and time focused on the older sister. They had some trouble earlier in Adam's life. His father had been incarcerated off and on in his early childhood and their socioeconomic status was very difficult.

On the entry form into kindergarten, his mother listed that Adam's favorite things were to watch violent movies and eat snacks in front of the TV. Having not been a part of any kind of early childhood program, kindergarten was one of the very first entries into social interaction that Adam had. As you can imagine, it was very difficult this first few days in kindergarten. He was very nervous and scared. His tactics for his fear were to scream, turn over bookshelves, throw chairs, and spit anytime someone came near him. As you can probably imagine, it was very difficult for this teacher in his classroom to know exactly how to help Adam.

A lot of people were called upon in his early days in the classroom to navigate Adam's distress and to help him succeed in the classroom. As the weeks grew on and he did not quite get any better, Adam's teacher found herself in a very precarious situation. She was super frustrated, worried about all the other children in her classroom, and mostly worried about Adam and how she might best reach him. In fact, she did not think that she would be able to connect with him at all. Every single day, the classroom was completely distraught and disrupted with Adam's outbursts, and frequent attempts to help him or to remove him from the classroom only seemed to make the situation worse.

By Christmas, our teacher was seriously considering writing her own resignation letter. She was so upset, overwhelmed, emotional, frustrated, and wanted to hang up her hat. Again, she was worried about all of the kids in her classroom, but mostly Adam. She was frustrated with herself and very critical of her inability to be able to connect and really love him well. Christmas came and went and they returned to the classroom and no miracle had taken place over Christmas. Adam came in ready to destroy the classroom all over again. Something happened in this teacher that first day back from Christmas and she decided she was not going to give up on herself. Part of not giving up on herself was she was going to reach Adam.

After his first outburst, she went to him, and not even knowing what she was going to say, she put her hands on his shoe shoulders and said, "Adam, I know that you are upset, and I know that you are scared, but you are safe here. I am your teacher and I am glad that you are here." She said she did not really know if any of those things were actually true, but she decided to say them anyway. The next day, something else happened. She went to Adam and she put her hands on his shoulders, and she said, "Adam, I know that you are scared and I know that you are upset, but you are safe here. I am your teacher and I am glad that you are here."

This continued on and sometimes it worked. Sometimes Adam would stop abruptly in his distress and walk towards her ready for her to come and put her hands on his shoulders. He learned that he can go to her and receive comfort and correction. There were some good days and some bad days, but the best day came at the very end of the year. This teacher had purchased Adam a picture of the class. As it was his last day, his mother came to pick him up. He excitedly held up the picture and said more words to his mother than he had said the entire year in the classroom. He said, "Mom, look, this is a picture of my class, and this is my teacher, Mrs. Stimson. She's always really glad that I am here. I belong in her classroom."

Summary

There cannot be enough said about the work that you do as educators, about how you love well, how you support, how you seek to reach children who sometimes come from difficult places. You are a gift and a difference-maker. I am so glad that you joined me and I hope that you have learned something valuable. I hope that you have been seen and I hope that you will step into empathy and make a difference in this world.

Thank you! There are not enough praises and accolades we can award those of you on the front lines in education. Never underestimate the value you bring and the life-changing moments you create in the lives of those around you. YOU… ARE A GIFT AND A DIFFERENCE MAKER.

I hope today has challenged you to think seriously about the idea of empathy; the role it plays in your life personally and how to best show yourself compassion and how to sow the seeds of compassion in the lives of our children through connection, communication, and together continuing to build our capabilities.  One small step at a time.  In doing so, one small step at a time we can live in a truly wonderful world.

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