"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view~until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.
~To Kill A Mockingbird
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Real empathy, have you ever taken the time to really think about it? What is it? Why is it important? How do you get it? How do you show it? Again, what is it?
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Empathy~what it means to me is the ability to feel another's emotions and feelings as if they were my own.
Being able to put myself in someone else's shoes, knowing in my own mind how the situation that they are going through will affect me personally.
What about Historical Empathy? What exactly is that?
Historical empathy in my eyes is the same thing. It is imagining that I were someone else in their situation, and imagining how I would handle it, how I would feel or cope. There really is no difference to me. A situation is given and your imagination and heart is all that is needed to feel empathy for another, whether it be someone you know going through something, or someone that went through something one hundred years ago.
The $64,000.00 questions are.....
- How as teachers can we teach our students to have empathy for one another?
- How can we teach them historical empathy, for someone they do not know, that went through an event in our history long, long ago?
- How can we make that historical event, and all that happened relevant and meaningful to our students?
- How can we once again, bring our students into, and make them a part of our History?
- How can we bring History to our students?
In our Social Studies class, we were asked to contemplate these types of questions. We then did a whole class activity to simulate how to get kids connected to historical events and to the people who lived through them. This activity simulated how these people had to make very difficult decisions when forced to flee from all that they know due to an event in our history. These events can be far back in our history, such as Anne Frank and the Holocaust, or as recent as the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. The object is to help students foster empathy, which will then bring them into the History lesson, making it more relevant to them because it is now personal.
The activity that was simulated in class was called
the "Shoe-box Activity"
The only materials required for this activity was a simple shoe-box......
and everything that we deem to be so important that we could not live without if we were forced to flee our homes and all that we know.
The directions were simple and are as follows:
- Before leaving for school on the day it is due....give yourself ONLY 5 minutes to gather what you can that you can not live without, because you are "fleeing."
- However......everything that you grab, MUST fit inside your shoe-box, AND....your shoe-box must be able to close.
Sounds pretty simple right?
WRONG.......
This activity was much harder than even choosing the five artifacts that would represent who and all that I am to the world one hundred years from now.
How in 5 incredibly short minutes, basically just a fraction of a second, am I supposed to grab what is important to me, that I can not live without? Some of the things that were running through my mind as I was racing the clock were "Do I grab personal possessions, or survival things? Should I try and grab pictures? Identification? What!? What!? There is not enough time! This is impossible! How can I fit my entire life in a stupid shoe-box in 5 short minutes!?"
and........there was not any panic involved, my life was not in jeopardy, and my worldly possessions would still be accessible at the end of the day when I returned home. In a real situation.....wow, that would be a real test I hope to never have to make. If I was feeling this way without any real peril, how my heart aches for those who have actually had to live this situation and flee from their life!
Mission Accomplished
BINGO!
I now know how to answer the 5 above questions, and a great way to teach my students empathy/historical empathy. I now know how to bring History to them, and be able to make it relevant and meaningful. I now know how to take my students into History and make them a part of it.
How? By creating a simulated event where my students have to try and have the mindset of those in history that have had to flee.
We brought our shoe-boxes in and then found our "Clock Buddies" and discussed why we chose the items that we did and their significance to us.
It was great to see the different strategies that my classmates used to determine what was the most important.
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Some chose to be practical and survival....like my friend Kasey....
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Some chose their childhood......Like my friend Lynnette because.......
This holds true for my friend Maria below.......as she holds her shoe-box close to her heart.....
- How as teachers can we teach our students to have empathy for one another?
- How can we teach them historical empathy, for someone they do not know, that went through an event in our history long, long ago?
- How can we make that historical event, and all that happened relevant and meaningful to our students?
- How can we once again, bring our students into, and make them a part of our History?
- How can we bring History to our students?
In our Social Studies class, we were asked to contemplate these types of questions. We then did a whole class activity to simulate how to get kids connected to historical events and to the people who lived through them. This activity simulated how these people had to make very difficult decisions when forced to flee from all that they know due to an event in our history. These events can be far back in our history, such as Anne Frank and the Holocaust, or as recent as the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. The object is to help students foster empathy, which will then bring them into the History lesson, making it more relevant to them because it is now personal.
- Before leaving for school on the day it is due....give yourself ONLY 5 minutes to gather what you can that you can not live without, because you are "fleeing."
- However......everything that you grab, MUST fit inside your shoe-box, AND....your shoe-box must be able to close.
Sounds pretty simple right?
WRONG.......
This activity was much harder than even choosing the five artifacts that would represent who and all that I am to the world one hundred years from now.
How in 5 incredibly short minutes, basically just a fraction of a second, am I supposed to grab what is important to me, that I can not live without? Some of the things that were running through my mind as I was racing the clock were "Do I grab personal possessions, or survival things? Should I try and grab pictures? Identification? What!? What!? There is not enough time! This is impossible! How can I fit my entire life in a stupid shoe-box in 5 short minutes!?"
and........there was not any panic involved, my life was not in jeopardy, and my worldly possessions would still be accessible at the end of the day when I returned home. In a real situation.....wow, that would be a real test I hope to never have to make. If I was feeling this way without any real peril, how my heart aches for those who have actually had to live this situation and flee from their life!
.jpg) |
This activity really put a personal twist on an abstract concept. Because of this personal twist, I became very interested in the lesson, I became a part of the lesson. It was easier to imagine myself in another's shoes and situation, and what they must have felt and thought. It made me want to know more....
My shoe-box.....
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| My Marriage License...Grandmothers Hankie....My Family's Birth Certificates |
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| Journals....Pictures...My Art Pencils.....My Camera and charger...A Picture of my Family.... |
This activity put a lot of different things into perspective, as well as give strategies to make History come to life. As for myself, I realized that it is who we take with us, not what we take. I can see myself using these types of creative techniques to create empathy to entice, inspire, and engage my students in learning.
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| Retrieved from pinterest.com |
Sydney Beauchamp
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