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Roots of Empathy

Empathy Teacher
Founded	1996
Founder	Mary Gordon (child advocate)
Type	Educational
Focus	Society
Location	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Website	rootsofempathy.org

Origins

The Roots of Empathy began in 1996 when Mary Gordon, child advocate and parenting expert, started the program with only 150 kids in Toronto, Canada. Her goal was to help create a society where people were kind to one another and thought it would be best to start with children who are just developing their social skills. Since 1996, the Roots of Empathy program has surpassed many milestones and affected over 325,000 children directly and countless children indirectly.

Mission and Goals

The mission of the website according to its website:

“…to build caring, peaceful, and civil societies through the development of empathy in children and adults.”

The Roots of Empathy program has also had an unforeseen affect on bullying. Children who have participated in the program are less likely to be bullies because they understand emotion better than other children. Thus, while the Roots of Empathy program was not originally intended to be an anti-bullying program it has had the aforementioned ripple effect. As Mary Gordon herself said, “I was just looking at how do we build (a) more peaceful and civil society through our children," she said. "The fact that the program dramatically reduces bullying, I have to say, just was a wonderful outcome that I hadn't planned on,” confirming the progress that the program has made against bullying.

Method

The idea of Roots of Empathy is very basic. Children will learn based on observation and interaction with their classmates and a “teacher.” The “teacher” is an infant, ranging from two months to four months at the beginning of the school year. The infant visits a classroom of elementary school children accompanied by a Roots of Empathy facilitator and, of course, the infant’s mother. Through the course of the school year, the children are able to witness the baby grow and change. Further, the students are able to observe several different emotions conveyed by the baby that they might not recognize as easily in children their own age. For example, the baby may start crying and the facilitator will ask the children for a reason as to why the baby is crying. From this observation, the students will understand what type of different actions upset the baby and may then relate these actions to future situations when they see that someone else is upset. In short, it develops their skills to recognize and investigate emotions; it makes them more aware of others around them and their emotions. Another tactic that helps the children learn is that they watch the loving relationship between the parent and the baby (said to be the “ideal model of empathy”). The students witness how the parent meets the baby’s needs. These visits take place an average of nine times a year per classroom. In addition to the parent-infant visits, the facilitator will stop by the classroom before or after each visit to reinforce the newly observed concepts. In the 2009-2010 school year, there were 1,867 classrooms participating in the program.

Concepts Taught

Emotional Literacy

The idea of emotional literacy involves allowing the students to watch the infant and draw conclusions on the baby’s emotions. The students are guided through the exercise by the facilitator asking a variety of questions regarding reasons why the baby may be reacting the way it is. These exercises are believed to help students better understand one another and in turn cause them to be kinder to one another.

Perspective Taking

The perspective taking section teaches students to listen to one another’s opinions. This leads to students being more accepting of one another because they are able to better understand someone by listening to the person’s opinion.

Neuroscience

The neuroscience concept is a small section that leads into the section of the development of an infant. In general, this simply helps the children understand that for brains to develop, they need to be cared for with attention and love.

Temperament

When learning about temperament, students see what type of temperament their classroom baby has. The facilitator emphasizes that each baby is different and unique. This is then related to how each student is also unique; hence, each student is taught to respect and understand one another’s differences.

Attachment

The concept of attachment is meant to show students the most long-lasting bond that exists; that of a parent and a child. The children are able to watch the development of the relationship between the parent and the baby throughout the year during the nine visits. This idea demonstrates the importance of loving relationships.

Inclusion

Along with temperament, the concept of inclusion aids students in appreciating one another’s uniqueness, beliefs, opinions and contributions. This idea is taught through open discussion among the students. The students are further shown the unfairness of exclusion. They become sympathetic and begin to advocate for one another thus reducing bullying.

Violence Prevention

Violence prevention is taught hand in hand with a few of the other aforementioned topics. By teaching students to be kind to each other and to stand up for one another, violence will be reduced. Therefore, with the help of the facilitator students learn about how to stop violence through discussions.

Participatory Democracy

Participatory democracy is taught in the classroom by encouraging students to ask questions and to listen to one another. This teaches them that everyone’s opinion is important and to make sure one always voices his/her opinion in an appropriate manner.

Teen Pregnancy Prevention

Life skills such as teen pregnancy prevention are taught by demonstrating the needs an infant requires. One exercise involves students recording their sleep habits for a week and then coming back to class and comparing it with the parent’s sleeping pattern. The children then discuss these demands in class.

Infant Safety and Development

Infant safety and development is taught to help students understand how fragile babies are and how much care must be taken around them. They are made aware of SIDS, Shaken Baby Syndrome and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum disorder as well as first and second hand smoke. These dangers are emphasized when children learn about how fragile and important infant development is.

Research and Evaluation

The Roots of Empathy program effectiveness has been evaluated nine different times by independent reviewers. Overall, the results were positive. The results showed that students who participated in the demonstrated several qualities including an increase in social knowledge, a decrease in aggression, an increase in sharing/inclusive/helping behavior, an increase in emotional perception and the results appeared to be lasting. As previously mentioned, there had also been a decrease in bullying among the students who have participated in the program.

Growth

As a result of the positive evaluations, the Roots of Empathy program began to gain both momentum and recognition throughout Canada. The program began to spread from the Canadian province of Ontario to Alberta and New Brunswick. As a result of the expansion, the program was translated in to French to correspond to Canada’s French provinces. Currently, six provinces out of the ten provinces participate in the Roots of Empathy program. The program was so successful in Canada it spread to the United States in Seattle, Washington, to the country of New Zealand in 2007. It continued to spread to Northern Ireland, Ireland and Scotland. Germany is also currently working on launching the program.

Recognition

In 2008, the Canadian Assembly of First Nations passed a resolution to endorse the Roots of Empathy program. This resolution further helped the program expand to reach Aboriginal tribes in Canada as well as other indigenous people around the world. Recently, CNN also shined a spotlight on the Roots of Empathy program by featuring on their morning show, American Morning, and then headlining it with an article on its website.

About the Founder

Mary Gordon is the President and Founder of Roots of Empathy. She has received several recognitions including being appointed a Canadian Ashoka Fellow and conversed with the Dalai Lama in person on two separate occasions. She is also recognized as a best author for her book Roots of Empathy: Changing the World Child by Child which made a Top 100 books list and has been published in both the United States and South Korea.