4th Graders are Heroes of Empathy
Happy Tu B’Shvat, 4th Grade Parents!
MW students talked about climate change, and designed inventions that could help address the problems they saw in the world. (Ask them what they invented, they have awesome ideas. Ray guns that shoot ice to help the polar bears have somewhere to walk. Stylish cars that run on carbon and shoot out cool clean air. All their ideas are different and rad.) MW students also enjoyed playing a game and snacking with Elal, our shinshin, to continue learning about important Israelis in history.
On Tues and Wed (yesterday and today), we’re all discussing empathy.
(My theory is that, when tricksy Jacob gets tricked by Lavan, he figures out that tricking people is not so great, after all. Because I found that, when Jacob gets tricked, that’s when he stops tricking other people entirely. Spoilers: Jacob’s newfound empathy will prepare him to eventually make up with his brother Esau. Jacob later even tells his children to be honest. He’s really learned something, here! Anyway.)
Just like Jacob, we’re practicing our own empathy. We’re making empathy maps – deciding what various characters in all the stories we’ve learned so far FEEL, THINK, SAY, and DO. It’s a powerful life tool — imagine always knowing the inner motivations of yourself and everyone around you, what a supremely useful skill that would be!
Students chose from among the many Torah stories we’ve covered so far, analysing the motivations of various characters together. For example, Morah Leora’s class began with Cain, who got jealous of his brother Abel, and killed him! Even though we’re absolutely clear that murdering his brother was the wrong action, we can still try to understand why somebody acted how they did. Then, each student chose their own Torah character to understand in this way.
For a bonus, we noted that our thoughts and feelings are usually unbidden, but that we CAN control what we choose to do with those thoughts and feelings. Students who were doing exceptionally well with their analyses were further challenged to keep a character’s FEEL and THINK the same, but to create an alternative choice for this character’s SAY and DO. This way, the students found a new path, from within a character’s perspective — the character could feel their feelings and think their thoughts just as strongly, but might still choose to have a different result in the world. (For example, what if the brotherly-jealous Cain had chosen to talk about his feelings with his parents, Adam & Eve? Maybe they could’ve helped him work through it!)
Feel free to continue exercising these essential muscles at home, by analysing and discussing anybody’s motivations — as split into feelings, thoughts, words, and actions — whether from stories or (even more usefully), from your own lives together. Can we feel empathy within ourselves? Can we imagine the perspectives of people who made wise choices, and wrong choices, imagining new perspectives and feeling empathy for everyone?
Have a wonderful break. See you upon your triumphant return!