"I cannot do all the good that the world needs, but the world needs all the good that I can do."
- Jana Stanfield
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"Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone."
- Charles M. Schultz
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This afternoon was a big day at our school - it is D-Day - Delivery Day!
This afternoon we are delivering all the wreaths and cards students have made for a nearby Seniors' Residence, as well as the stockings students stuffed for 10 families from a partner school, and 4 families within our own community, that will be accompanied by donations of gift certificates from our generous community.
The excitement is visible as we load vehicles and take photographs documenting this year's efforts to share warmth and care throughout our community and our city!
These are two Peace Education initiatives our school has adopted as a way to build empathy, care and compassion with our students from very young ages. We believe Peace Education has a multitude of benefits - including reducing bullying behaviours, fostering positive social interactions, developing responsibility for our own behaviours and attitudes, learning the critical importance of humans caring for humans, creating opportunities to 'see' the world through the eyes of others, for example. Peace Education also deeply promotes empathy and care - two qualities essential to sustaining and advancing the human race.
But why do we need to intentionally teach Peace Education, empathy and care to our children?
When we intentionally support children in building empathy, we are offering them ideas and strategies for trying to see things through the eyes of someone else, as well as attempting to feel the same emotions. The Roots of Empathy program - accessed as a support teaching strategy at our school on a weekly basis - teaches children it is critically important to develop nurturing relationships with each other as human beings for, if we do not do this from the moments of our births, we will simply not survive as a species. Learning empathy is foundational to understanding the nature of human interactions - the essence of the human condition is reliance on each other through relationship.
Children who have lived through trauma at a young age struggle to develop empathy, requiring a significant investment in re-building this foundational belief. For it is empathy - caring for others as humans - that fosters trust, independence, autonomy, commitment.
We intentionally teach empathy to support our youngest learners with making investments in trusting, caring relationships that will yield personal well-being while also providing opportunities for others to build personal well-being too.
Care requires a person to make a personal investment in an act of kindness or concern towards another. It is possible for humans to be empathetic without an accompanying act of care - we acknowledge and feel emotions about someone else or the experiences they are living through, but we do not take the next step of investing ourselves in an act of kindness or help that will physically support them.
We intentionally teach care through visible acts of kindness or acknowledgement, sharing of physical, emotional or spiritual support as a way to both demonstrate our concern and to offer someone else something they visibly need or have expressed a desire for support. It is possible for humans to demonstrate care - through donations, letters of support, conversations, etc without actually taking the time or energy to consider their personal perspectives or emotions. We can care without being emotionally connected at all.
Compassion is the melding of empathy with care - when a person considers the perspective of another human, has a shared emotional connection and decides to invest in an act of kindness or concern in an attempt to influence and improve the other person's quality of life.
We intentionally teach compassion with all our children to foster recognition of the human connection through relationship as well as the active part we can all play in enhancing and improving each other's life experiences. Compassion - taught through experiences with empathy and care - gives presence and form to Peace Education.
I believe Michael Crawley said it best:
"Compassion is the most powerful force in the world. It can defeat indifference, intolerance and injustice. It is able to replace judgment with acceptance because it makes no distinction between age, ethnicity, gender or disability. It freely embraces the rich diversity of humanity by treating everyone as equals. It benefits both those who receive it and those who share it. Every person on earth desires it, and every human being deserves it."
Compassion extends our abilities as humans to make the best of our most human qualities - empathy and care - to foster connection with each other, to attend to the physical and emotional needs and reasonable wishes of each other as other humans, to have a deep and abiding respect for all living entities. These are the seeds and roots of Peace Education.
Through Peace Education, we foster attachment with each other, build strengths in recognizing and managing our emotions, develop clear, kind strategies for communicating effectively with each other and develop strategies for cultivating acceptance and inclusion of all regardless of our physical, cultural, emotional, intellectual or experiential life encounters. Peace Education promotes active involvement with each other; encourages children to develop a profound appreciation for each other and all of humanity, and to seek ways to help and act kindly, to share deep emotional human connections.
We teach Peace Education so children will be able to recognize when experiences are not generous, kind or helpful and intentionally know how to respond with positivity, care and empathy. These are not easy lessons to learn, and they must often be repeated numerous times to be truly understood in a multitude of situations throughout a person's lifetime. It is not an easy approach to living; it requires care and attention and thinking outside the box as often as not. Peace Education requires an abiding commitment to seeing others find happiness, joy and strength in relationships with one another.
It takes time to foster Peace Education in the same way it takes time to design a building, create recipes for new meals, prepare and launch a new artwork for the world. These are not small ideas - they are enormous, all-encompassing and truly remarkable!
In this season of giving, we reap the benefits of developing a compassionate approach to life as we see our students take such pride and enjoyment in the valuing of others' needs. These are not discussions about others who don't have enough as much as we ourselves do, as they are discussions about acknowledging widespread human needs in a multitude of ways.
I believe children change the world. They have the power to take up new ventures and ideas and make them real for humanity. They have the power to re-think quickly, re-address an idea swiftly and move to another plane of thinking without barriers. They have yet to become jaded with life and its' myriad obstacles. They have the determination, grit and desire to see things play out better - differently - for themselves. The possibility to find all of these skills rests deeply in the intentionality of teaching Peace Education.
And it is also how we develop a compassionate approach to life - one person, one connection, one interaction at a time.
May your winter break be restful as we contemplate a quiet, constrained holiday season. I am personally investing in a new tradition with our family - the Icelandic tradition of Jolabokaflod, or 'Christmas Book Flood' where everyone curls up on Christmas Eve with a new book to read, a cup of hot chocolate - and maybe some chocolate to eat as well! Sounds like the perfect new tradition during a pandemic - and it carries all the elements of compassion for humanity too :)
I invite you all to join me - and wish you the very best of quiet holiday seasons celebrated safely and healthily at home.
Lorraine Kinsman, Principal
Eric Harvie School
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