Empathy Activities

A few people have commented on the empathy activities that I mentioned in the last class. For those who are interested, I thought I would briefly describe them on my blog.

They came about in a staff meeting when the grade seven teacher jokingly wished he could take his class to the Resource Room so his students could better understand what we did. Those of us in the RR looked at each other and thought, "why not?" After a brainstorming session we came up with five activities to share with a class to hopefully have them experience some empathy for those who have academic/physical struggles and explain some of the things that we might do to help. We split the class into five groups and stuck to a strict time limit for each activity. Here is a brief outline:

Visual:  We bought about 5 pair of dollar store safety goggles and scratched them up with sandpaper.  We then had the students try to copy off the board. I did this activity and I purposely used a faded marker on the white board and wrote quickly. I then proceeded to erase parts when I needed more room. I told any students who complained that they should have stopped fooling around and kept up with the class.

Speech:  We bought marshmallows and had students read a passage out loud for the class. The teacher who led this activity asked students to speak more clearly. She also asked them to repeat words multiple times. Many students started to speak more softly so she also asked them to speak up.  Several students had trouble with drooling. (This was the most popular activity by the way.)

Fine Motor:  We bought some nuts and bolts of various sizes from the dollar store as well as thick, fuzzy gloves. We had a competition to see how many nuts and bolts they could screw together in a minute. More points were given for the smaller screws. We also had them do the same activity after without any gloves to see how much easier it is.

Gross Motor:  We bought some cheap binoculars from the dollar store. Students tried to walk on a tape line while looking through the wrong end of the binoculars. They also tried skipping with twine.

Auditory:  We had the students write an "unfair spelling test" using a recording from this site.

After each activity we talked with the students about how it felt to struggle with these things. Most students expressed that they were surprised at how difficult these activities were. We also pointed out to them that they only had to struggle for a few short minutes after which they could remove their "disability". We tried to discuss with them how it might feel if your brain knew what it should do but your body wouldn't cooperate or if you found something difficult when everyone else seemed to master without difficulty. We also shared some of the activities we might do in the RR and also talked about physio, occupational and speech therapy. We talked about compassion, kindness and bullying.

It was very interesting to see that some of the students who have struggled in some of these areas spoke up and talked about how it felt for them to deal with their disabilities and what sort of things they have done to overcome them. Most students responded positively to it (only two or three made inappropriate comments and seemed unaffected by the visit--but that may just have been a social strategy for them).  All in all, we enjoyed being able to share a little of what we do in the RR and the grade 7 teacher said that it made a positive impact on his class.  I encourage others to try it at their school if space and time allows.

I also discovered this activity which I think would be fun to do with younger kids to teach why things don't have to be equal to be fair.