Sky & Trees Class Blog: Showing empathy through kindness

"The ability to empathize affects our kids' future health, wealth, authentic happiness, relationship satisfaction, and ability to bounce back from adversity.

It promotes kindness, prosocial behaviors, and moral courage...

...it is an effective antidote to bullying, aggression, prejudice, and racism. Empathy is also a positive predictor of children's' reading and math test scores and critical thinking skills, prepares kids for the global world and gives them a job market boost."

— Dr Michele Borba, Ed.D.

Did you know that kindness has a
sound?

"PLUNK!"
goes a glass bead into the jar on the block shelf in our room...

Someone is celebrating kindness!

Whenever a Sky or Trees student sees kindness in the Trees classroom, this is how we celebrate it. Maybe someone was kind to you, maybe you were kind to someone, or maybe you saw two other people being kind to one another. Wherever it was that we saw kindness, we are free to get up and drop a bead into the the Kindness Jar — during snack or a meeting or music music or activity time — anytime at all! By letting the bead and its "PLUNK" sound throughout the classroom, you are celebrating kindness.

When children hear this sound, they are reminded to keep an eye out for kindness, and also to be kind.

We never count the beads, and we have no prizes for a full jar — the beauty of the beads and the sound they make are a simple reminder that kindness is its own reward.

A few children has said that they have started a Kindness Jar at home.

At the end of the half day, we often talk about kindness in our closing meeting, each adding another bead when we reflect on the kindness we saw.

"I saw kindness when Cabot helped GiGi help me on the climbing structure."

- Alex

"I saw kindness when Zoe was leaving and gave me a hug."

- Ellie

"I saw kindness when Camila worked with me at Collage."

- Penny

"I saw kindness when Jason forgave Cecily."

- Viviana

We have heard what kindness sounds like, but what does it look like?

The Sky Class has also been working on kindness in a way that might answer this question. They know that one of the many ways to be kind is to listen.

And this is what listening looks like ...

Still body

Sounds off

Watching eyes

Listening Ears

One day, the Sky students watched as Ms. Jordan pretended to be a bad listener. They gave a thumbs down whenever she was not showing kindness by having a listening body, and a thumbs up whenever she got better.

Some thumbs-down comments:

"You were not looking at the book!" - Harper

"You were playing with something." - Milania

"You were talking to Jerry." - Ali

Here is what they said once her listening skills improved:

"You were looking at the book this time." - Jerry

"You body was still." - Izzy

"You put your listening ears on." - Harper

"You were not talking to anyone!" - Cole

Then the Sky Class Students practiced listening to each other by picking things out of their nature basket and describing the things that they saw in partnerships. The other children showed that they were listening with their bodies.

Do you see listeners?

We are discovering that when we listen well to one another, we are showing kindness.

When we step back and look at our whole year, we realize that we have been talking about listening since the first few days of school...

When God spoke, all of creation listened, and so the world was made. From this we learn that listening is not merely kindness, it is a way that we can serve God.

We also know that creation talks to us! We wonder if God is talking to us through creation ...

"RUSTLE, RUSTLE"

"Splish! Splash!"

"Whoosshhhhh"

Our kindness jar also connects to our worship time. When the light of our prayer candle reflects in our kindness beads, we can remember that when we are kind, we are reflecting God's light.