Time to Teach Compassion

There are no words that describe the horrific details of the events that recently happened in South Florida. There is no such thing as the 'right words' to console hurt souls and hearts of students, parents, teachers and a community. What should have never happened, did. As leaders and educators try to learn from this event and put legislation into place to protect students, I am dismayed at the finger-pointing and blame I continue to see span across social media. Why is it so hard that ALL of us have contributed to this paralyzing event? 

I am reminded of a recent conversation I had at a conference with other faculty. I was sharing my approach to Flipped Learning and the intentional design I used to foster the 4-C's of learning - Collaboration, Creativity, Choice, and Character. And as I was sharing how I allowed students the choice of self selecting their level of confidence after watching a video, which in turn selected the type of practice they would work on each day, a few puzzled looks were sent in my direction.

"You mean you asked students to identify if they were felt they were in the basic, average, or advanced group each day," asked one of the faculty? "Doesn't that imply dumb and smart groups," joked another. It was in this moment that I recognized even these individuals lacked compassion for each and every student. "How did you handle when other students would point out or make fun of someone for being in the dumb group," questioned the other faculty? All I could do was shake my head. While it would be easy to simply refute their questions and prove to this group that their beliefs were wrong, I shared the following example from one of my classes. 

Of course this happened occasionally in my classroom. More often, it happened during the first chapter we were studying. And when it did, I took every advantage I had to create a teachable moment with my students - a lesson on compassion for others. You see, we cannot predict what someone else has encountered along their journey to come to school each and every day. We have no idea if their parents were fighting, if their grandmother is dying, if their pet is lost, or if they were sick and struggling to keep up. Instead of pointing fingers. laughing, and mocking those individuals that choose to go into the basic group, why don't we offer them a helping hand? Why don't we ask them if there's some way we can help, be it personally or with school. That's the lesson and reminder I teach all of my students when that happens in my classroom.

How do I know it works? One particular year, I had a student that chose the basic group every day for the first two weeks. She knew the content, but was struggling with school in general. She was very quiet and kept to herself. On one particular day, one of the advanced students failed to watch our video lesson. He knew he needed to be part of the basic group so that he could develop the basic understanding first. As I started with these two in the basic group, the rest of the class worked with a few students making fun of the young man. As I walked over to address the individuals and have a conversation, I turned back to the two individuals working in the basic group. I was shocked by what I saw - the young woman was actually teaching and demonstrating to the young man. 

She could see a young man struggling - struggling with the content and with being made fun of. Yet, she chose to show compassion through a helping hand. And this young man actually realized she was much smarter than she 'appeared' to be. As the weeks went by, I watched the young man often as the young lady for suggestions and to check his work. You see, she chose compassion to deal with the moment. In return, the young man displayed the same compassion he was offered to others. It was a teachable moment that I could not have planned.

"Life is full of choices," I concluded with the group of faculty I was with. "What I watched happen that day helped me to choose to continue fostering a classroom environment that learned more than math." And while I'm not trying to imply that more compassion would have prevented any events from ever happening, I am suggesting that we can help our students see and understand that everyone has their own unique story. The more we take the time to listen and try to understand someone's story, the better we serve each other in true, genuine compassion.