Inside Atrium newsletter, December 2020

Empathy

INSIDE Dear Atrium Community, At Atrium, empathy is valued with equal importance alongside “excellence with joy”. Newcomers here as well as longtime community members speak often of the omnipresence of kindness, compassion and empathy. Like light through our windows and fresh air through the halls, active empathy flows through all we do, giving shape to the culture of the school. Taking another’s view, and acting kindly and inclusively through such perspective-taking is essential to the growth of each Atrium student, and is a deliberate choice we make. As articulated in the school’s Strategic Plan, four interconnected capacities form Atrium’s vision for young people. Among these essential four: the development of leadership through empathy and inclusivity. As a direct result of their learning here, Atrium students can understand multiple perspectives, in both academic and social contexts; they cultivate kindness, courage and compassion in themselves and others, and they embrace human differences as a source of strength.

We work hard to ensure this capacity in our students, directly teaching empathy across the curriculum, in all grades. In this Inside Atrium, you’ll see how empathy is often taught through social/emotional curriculum, such as the third grade Trailblazers’ recent week-long exploration of World Kindness Day, during which they highlighted each others’ acts of kindness and moments of “walking in someone else’s shoes”.

What makes Atrium special, though, is that the teaching of empathy is not limited to social/emotional curricula. Empathy is a powerful and integral interdisciplinary thread unifying our program and deeply woven throughout our academic curricula––so much so that it is utterly natural for children here to explore empathy

December 2020

ATRIUM through literature, math, and history, among other realms. As you’ll read in these pages, artistic early childhood explorations of self yield powerful insights for children about their peers, “an important building block to…understanding the perspective of others” according to first grade teacher Ariana. Then, foundational and extensive second grade work to shatter stereotypes leads towards fourth grade literature studies that expand a student’s sense of “fairness” into the practice of perspective-taking. In Middle School, students deeply dive into trying to understand cultures of profound political opposition and injustice through their study of the rise of Germany prior to World War II, so that they may navigate the profoundly conflict-filled global climate we live in today.

How do students live Atrium’s value of empathy? I close with a seventh grader’s recent reflection, which powerfully reveals the way empathy shapes an Atrium student’s mind and heart: “This trimester...I have learned a lot and others have given me a lot. People have shown more kindness, more patience and more empathy to others because we are all in this pandemic together.

I feel we are all just waiting for this to be over and coping with it in our own ways, so sometimes if someone does something you dislike you have to think that maybe this is their way of coping with their challenges.”

Indeed.

Warmly,

Empathy Through Literature by 4th Grade Teacher Julie Empathy, inclusion and social justice are often the focus of our literacy choices. Reading is a powerful way to build empathy and the understanding of others. By guiding our students with questions such as, ”What do you think the character is feeling right now?” or “What would you do if you were in their situation?” students learn to consider a character’s emotions, behaviors and thoughts. It is much easier for a fourth grader to analyze a literary character than themselves. This perspective-taking is the foundation for empathy.

Furthermore, these rich conversations help students build the social emotional vocabulary they need to express their own thoughts and feelings.

One of our favorite book group books is Front Desk by Kelly Yang. This story touches on a variety of themes including family, bullying, poverty, racism, perseverance, and activism and solidarity. This rich text about a spunky and resilient character, Mia Tang, leads to animated discussions about her experiences, feelings, thoughts and behaviors.

Fourth graders are at a great place developmentally to learn about empathy. “Fairness” is a major issue on the minds of most fourth graders, whether they are debating the rules to a game of four square or declaring whose turn it is to run a Morning Meeting. Our first class book this year was The Wild Robot by Peter Brown. It is about a robot who lands on an island and is initially misunderstood by many of the inhabiting animals. Nothing teaches empathy to a fourth grader better than a character that is being misjudged! Our fourth graders wrote letters to us weekly, responding to prompts, providing them with a safe space to explore these emotions.

Taking Perspective Amidst Conflict Who are you voting for? Why won’t you wear a mask? What kind of person supports the Nazis? In our deeply divided world, it has become more important than ever for students to be able to understand other people’s perspectives. For students to feel empathy, they must closely consider a view opposed to their own. While morally repugnant to support Hitler, there were various factors that led to the rise of the Nazi party. To understand how Hitler came into power, Atrium eighth graders recently took a deep dive into the psyche of German citizens in the 1930s.

With foundational knowledge about the impact of the Treaty of Versailles that formally ended WWI and brutalized German society, the worldwide effects of the Great Depression, and the distrust of the democratically elected Weimar Republic installed after WWI, students examined the choices that the German people had to consider in choosing a candidate in 1932. They were given a biography of a German citizen living through that time that revealed the person’s hopes, dreams, needs, political leanings, family life, work life, and many more aspects of their identity. From all of this knowledge, eighth graders briefly stepped into the shoes of these people and created character studies, depicting the real concerns that these individuals had at this place and time. The assignment was to answer the following questions with regard to their individual character and place the responses next to the specific part of the person connected to the question: • • • • • • • •

Head: What do you think this person was thinking/wondering during the Weimar Republic years?

Eyes: What do you think this person was seeing in the Weimar Republic? How did he/she view the world?

Mouth: What do you think this person might have been saying during this time period (beliefs)?

Ears: What do you think this person was hearing (ideas, support/criticisms of the government, etc...)?

Hands/Arms: What political actions do you think this person might have taken in the 1932 election?

Heart: What do you think this person was passionate about? What did he/she care about?

Legs: What worries do you think this person had during this time period?

Feet: What do you think this person thought about the future of both his/her life and the Weimar Republic?

In giving students the foundational skills to consider different societal and personal influences, we give them the tools to look past a simple opinion. Instead of immediately dismissing a conflicting view, eighth graders are able to stop and consider the reasons behind it, which is a useful lifelong practice. Middle School social studies teacher Paul said,“From their written text and also their drawings on their character studies, students showed empathy for the difficult choices these people had to make with regard to this history-defining election.”

Shattering Stereotypes

The theme for second grade at Atrium is “What is a human being?” In addition to studying human resilience and the importance of risk-taking and conquering fears, students also consider the different kinds of smarts and the importance of neurodiversity. The ultimate goal is to teach children the significance of respect, allyship and appreciation of each individual’s unique gifts. To reach that goal, understanding of stereotypes is an essential lesson.

And so, Explorers are learning about the ways in which stereotypes prevent people in a stereotyped group from

being understood. Students learn that a stereotype is an idea about a whole group of people, and that stereotypes are dangerous because they are not true of everyone in a group and they prevent people in a group from being seen.

Stereotypes are often negative and damaging. They can hold people back and create unwarranted fear and suspicion about a whole group.

“Breaking down stereotypes is essential to understanding that others are just like us in the essential ways,” explained second grade teacher Jill. “Really knowing that all human

Jackson, 5th grade

At Atrium, when people are sad other people try to comfort them.

Emma, 5th grade

In engineering I learned how you can think of someone’s needs and portray that in your invention.

Where do you see empathy at Atrium?

Levi, 5th grade

Atrium taught me empathy because everyone was so kind to me when I came here and so whenever I saw them sad I would come to them and play a lot. Before I didn’t really do that because people weren’t really that nice at my old school.

Violet, 5th grade

At Atrium, people share their ideas, and a lot of people listen and feel what they’re feeling.

Starting With a Week of Kindness On November 13, third graders celebrated World Kindness Day, a day that promotes the importance of kindness to each other, to oneself, and to the world. In preparation for World Kindness Day, third graders spent the week focused on kindness, starting in morning meeting.

Each morning, the class read books like I Am Enough and Each Kindness, which introduce the concepts of respecting others and loving yourself, and the way kindness spreads through society. To help kindness spread through Atrium, Trailblazers printed inspirational quotes to hang on their lockers. On World Kindness Day, the class presented school staff FIlemon and Juselma with thank you notes for their efforts at keeping Atrium clean and safe.

A month later, the stream of kindness is still running through the third grade. A kindness tree sits near their teacher Alyssa’s desk, and when someone spots an act of kindness, they write it on a note and hang it on the tree. At the end of the week, as a class they take all of the acts of kindness off the tree and read them out loud, inspiring others to continue to be kind and it really brightens up someone’s day when they’re called out for their kind action. Through proactive daily classroom conversations, students now have the vocabulary to understand how to be empathetic and put themselves in someone else’s shoes. Alyssa explained, “They are able to be brave and stand up for someone if they notice someone is not being kind, and they are also braver to take risks because then they know that their peers are going to be kind to them and not make them feel bad for making a mistake.”

beings have feelings, dreams, and needs, for example, reminds children that others suffer when they are oppressed, put down, ‘othered’, or not accepted/included.

Second grade teachers Jill and Kristin use literature about children from different cultures and racial backgrounds to illustrate that children are similar the world over. Jill said, “Every child is able to see that a child is a child. Children “This work helps children develop empathy when they learn want love. They need to play and learn and have enough to about situations where a person or group of people is mis- eat. When a child does not have what they need, it causes treated,” she continued. “It also helps them to understand suffering. This kind of suffering could happen to any of us. that their friends and classmates are just like them. They It creates a feeling of wanting to help and wanting to stand want and need friends, they deserve support, respect and a up for other kids who are being treated unfairly in any way.” feeling of belonging.”

Early Childhood Self-Discovery

For young children, a strong understanding of their sense of self is essential to develop relationships with others. Without understanding their own wants, needs and emotions, it becomes difficult for them to consider the needs of their friends. With that in mind, teachers in grades PreK–Grade 1 developed a new self-portrait project to get to know their students, and for their students to better know themselves.

Kindergarten teacher Mia and first grade teacher Ariana, both in new roles at Atrium this year, led the self-portrait project to get to know their students at the beginning of the year. Ariana explained, “We realized that the entire piece was really about the process for the children rather than the final product. We wanted them to experience as many different mediums as they could and we wanted them to spend time with each of their features; to spend time really looking at just their nose, and then model it with clay. We also wanted these to be a reflection of their personalities, a snapshot of who they were in September of 2020.”

“A guiding goal was to have children really focus on each part of their identity and of themselves and spend time thinking about what makes them unique,” Ariana added. “Isolating each feature led to big discussions about culture, about race, about the things we all share and the things that are special about each of us.”

Each week the classes read a book that might introduce a big concept and then processed these ideas through the lens of their own identity. Throughout the process, children were ready to think about the perspectives of others by listening to classmates and through discussions of read-alouds. And even considering their own identities could be a challenging process; many children had to be vulnerable and stretch beyond their comfort zones to have big discussions or even really look in the mirror.

Classroom teachers used books like People by Peter Spier, Who Are You? by Brook Pessin-Whedbee, and The Story of Ferdinand to jumpstart these conversations, leading to the conclusion that all humans deserve to feel safe and loved, and how important it is for all of us to get to be who we are, and to feel safe doing what we love.

As students worked on the features of their faces, the colors of their skin, their emotions, and the accessories they love, they compared their work to their classmates’. The final step was for each child to write a Bio Poem about their hopes, dreams, loves, things they are working on and wonderings. In the end, each portrait captures each child’s sense of self at this specific moment in time.

“In terms of empathy, I think this project is an important building block to more work on understanding the perspective of others,” Ariana explained. “It is incredibly powerful for children to think through their own experiences, to study themselves. This process of reflection opens the door to noticing the differences and the similarities between each of us. I think these conversations empower children that they can make a difference and that this work can and should be done together. Children are acutely aware of fairness and are ready to learn about what ‘fair’ means. They are ready to do this work.

In many ways they feel connected to the concept of a global community and want life to be fair for people, near and far.”

The Humanity of Math In every profession, there are legendary icons. For mathematicians, fame exists largely around their academic prowess and less about their personal identity. In seventh grade, students engage in a mathematician project, in which they are each assigned a historical mathematician to research. Mathematicians span time and place, with students presenting their projects as a narrative through monologue, short animation, or children’s book. The project culminates in the Mathematician Mingle, during which students personify their mathematician in clothing and personality, discussing their lives and accomplishments with other seventh graders and (in pre-Covid years) students from other grades.

Instead of merely focusing on their mathematician’s achievements, students also consider the challenges they faced, including poverty, racism, sexism and homophobia. “First, the students must think about how each mathematician’s identity affected their experience as a mathematician,” said Middle School math teacher Liz. “Like Sophie Germain, were they a female who had to assume

a pen name to get published? Like Ramanujujan, were they from a poor family and had to teach themself because they could not afford to go to school? Were they discriminated against based on their race like Dorothy Vaughn? Or did they come from privilege, such as the scholar al-Khwarizmi during Persia’s period of enlightenment?”

Another part of the project asks students to make connections between mathematicians. How did the work of Pascal influence Leibniz? How did Hypatia learn from Apollonius? Liz’s goal is for students to see math as something that has been contributed to over time by brilliant minds that span continents, cultures, and genders. In understanding the ways that mathematicians’ genius and passion were able to overcome hardships, students are able to understand the human elements of math as well.