The following is written by consultant David A. Levine who has been working with the students and staff of Stissing Mountain MS/HS throughout the 2009 - 2010 academic year on concepts surrounding "empathy education". More commonly known as "character education", this work has focused on creating a socially responsible education community aware of their perspectives, understandings, and overall impact of personal views and choices on the environment as a whole. "The School of Belonging" (below) explains more about this work:

The School of Belonging

By:   David A. Levine

In The School of Belonging, the fundamental belief is that all members of the school population deserve to feel connected through the cultivation of helpful and positive relationships.  The School of Belonging establishes a system of feedback that is natural, integrated, and connecting.  Daily academic and social stressors will be managed effectively when people are conscious of their thoughts, actions and words about and toward others and when they are given opportunities to help others and build bonds of acceptance instead of barriers of rejection.  This will result in a safer, more productive school where everyone is working together toward a unified goal of trust and emotional safety.

Common Sense Not Common Practice

This phrase by emotional intelligence specialist and author Robert Cooper has become the rallying cry for the work of The School of Belonging. It is critical for a school to live under one culture, meaning that all staff members must enter the school each day with the same mindset;

That all students and staff have the right to be accepted and supported rather than  to be judged and labeled.

While this might seem to be common sense it is not always common practice.  In the School of Belonging, the primary cultural norm is that all people have a place and are honored for who they are and what they can offer.  The behavior that brings this norm to life is compassion. One definition of compassion is …”the ability to be exceptionally empathic, to appreciate and honor another person’s feelings and point of view, and to be forgiving of yourself and of others.” (Cooper) Compassion is fueled by non-judgment with the intention of helping all people feel as if they have a role to play in the school and classroom. 

Risk and resilience

Many adults, when looking back on childhood and adolescence, point to a teacher or other significant adult who helped them recognize the unique talents they could offer the world. Literature on resilience often makes the point that when a teacher believes in a troubled child, that teacher invites the child to believe in him-herself at a time when the child may feel that no one does.  The School of Belonging is staffed with significant adults who consciously pave the way for their students' new life trajectories-and who help students learn how they can believe in each other and become  equal members in a culture of caring.  

Micro-interactions

It has often been said that the little things are the big things and according to the emotional memories that many adults have from their school experiences this has shown itself to be true.  Young people will remember specific events when there is an emotion or a strong feeling attached to the event.  When adults in the school are conscious of the littlest of moments, these micro-interactions can make all of the difference for the recipient. In the resilience literature,  the notion of protective factors is raised. A protective factor will overcome a risk factor,  and one of the most significant external protective factors is the perception that an adult in the school cares.  It doesn't take a lot of time but it means a lot to the student when micro-interactions are part of the norm of the school's culture.

Pro-social skills

Resilience researcher Emmy Werner calls social skills the "great protectors." When a student has the pro-social skills to "manage" the multitude of life's challenges, demonstrates those skills and is recognized for it, there will be less "anti-social" behaviors. The idea is to foster pro-social skills rather than to react to the anti-social behaviors. Dr. Arnold Goldstein (Skillstreaming and Aggression Replacement Therapy) identified forty social skills. I focus upon five as the primary pro-social skills in the School of Belonging.  They are:

1.      Listening

2.      Responsibility

3.      Conflict Resolution

4.      Empathy

5.      Goal setting

Emotional Safety

Often the idea of safety within a school conjures up images of single points of entry, name tags, sign-in desks and zero tolerance for fighting or other violent acts.  These images focus solely upon physical safety.  In the School of Belonging, emotional safety is paramount, as emotional needs often are not seen in the same light as the physical ones. William Glasser's work provides us with a blueprint for emotional safety.  He points out that when an emotional need is unmet, motivation will be low and anti-social behaviors will result.

The four emotional needs are: 

1.  Belonging: affiliation, having a place, being honored and feeling connected

2.  Power: recognition, feeling significant and competent

3.  Freedom: having a voice, making choices, feeling independent and being trusted

4.  Fun: being engaged in the learning environment and having healthy relationships

When these needs are met, this is what Dr. Glasser refers to as the Quality World: The collection of pleasurable memories that we accumulate during our life.  The School of Belonging in its most effective form is a quality world experience, meaning that it is emotionally safe.

Empathy Education

I have had many conversations with teachers and other education and youth professionals about whether empathy is a skill and, if so, how it can be taught most effectively.  Some feel that it is an innate gift that is more touch than skill.  In their book Executive EQ: Emotional Intelligence in Leadership and Organizations (1997), Robert Cooper and Ayman Sawaf offer compassion as empathy's companion, stating:

Through feelings of empathy and compassion we help ourselves learn and grow, and we also enable others to begin to feel safe enough to talk about what is really going on in their lives-to tell their stories-without fear of being judged, criticized or abandoned. It is then that we begin to empathize with them, and extend compassion and support to them (p. 48)

Empathy has become such a common term in so much of the literature about preventing and reducing aggression and violence in schools that what empathy really  means can become a bit clouded at times.  Empathy begins as an emotional or visceral response to another person's anxious or painful event, and then moves to feeling as if that event is one's own-that it is actually happening to oneself.  The feeling of empathy evolves into a skill when the empathizer wants to help the other person with compassionate words or responsive acts, such as listening intently. It is quite natural to have an emotional response when someone else is in distress or feeling confused or frustrated.  The empathy process in its simplest form takes place when a person's emotional response translates into a caring action. 

Communities of Practice (COPs)

A Community of Practice refers to the process of social learning that occurs and shared socio-cultural practices that emerge and evolve when people who have common goals interact as they strive towards those goals. (Wenger) 

There are many schools who are either implementing or looking into implementing the Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) framework, and  COPs are one variation of a Professional Learning Community. PLCs  seek to create high functioning planning, assessment and work teams within a school while meeting the needs of all students. My favorite description of a PLC comes from the Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement. They state that:

PLCs shift the focus of school reform from restructuring to reculturing (Louis 2006).  A PLC is an ongoing process used to establish a school-wide culture that develops teacher leadership explicitly focused on building and sustaining school improvement efforts.

Ettiene Wenger and his colleagues from  Harvard University use the term Communities of Practice to articulate how a staff within a school, who have both personal and professional relationships  with their colleagues, can maximize those relationships for the betterment of all, (the staff, students, and parents).  Their framework is based on the success of the apprentice relationship in which both parties hold a significant place in the relationship; it is a "win-win".

The School of Belonging builds capacity in teacher driven professional development whose success is driven by the trusting relationships that reside within the school.  When healthy professional relationships exist, the cultural norms of caring, compassion, empathy, and honor are as a natural as the air we breathe.  We can't see the air but we know it is there as it sustains us.  In a high functioning COP, the norms are evidenced by the level of consciousness that exists: the "air we breathe" is the caring that is evidenced by the choices people make as they help each other rise to their highest level professionally and personally.

Dialogue

I first learned about dialogue through the work of MIT professor and systems change specialist Peter Senge. In his book The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (1994), Senge presents dialogue as a group exploratory process. Its purpose is not necessarily to come to an agreement but rather to come to an understanding of all points of view, thereby creating a common thread of connection within the group. This is achieved through high level listening.  In high level listening, as a team member speaks, all others focus on what he-she is saying, following up with open-ended questions.  These questions begin with who, what, where, when and how and invite more information. These questions are interspersed with summary statements to clarify for understanding.  Check out the Teacher Tube video on dialogue and facilitative responses to help clarify the essential practice of dialogue.

Check-in

One of the most effective and simplest forms of dialogue is the Check-in.   Always remember that "simple does not mean trivial."  In the Check-in, the group does a quick go-round to see where everyone is: how they are feeling, what is going on for them, and what thoughts feelings or ideas they might be holding. This is done at the beginning of a meeting or if there seems to be some tension, a check-in can be requested or called for in the middle of a meeting.  When a check-in is done, the emotions that are hovering within the group, most often dissipate and the team can get back to the task at hand.

Feedback

Feedback is a critical relationship and  community building skill and in its own way, models caring and belonging.   Feedback is often confused with criticism or assertiveness but it comes from a very different place, a different intention. The intention of feedback is to help an individual or group grow. It provides information that is observational: what was seen and what was heard and how those behaviors are affecting others, including yourself.  It does not judge, label, minimize or threaten.  It is logical, specific and useful.  There are two forms of feedback: negative or growth feedback and positive or status feedback.  Although positive feedback feels good it is more helpful as far as personal growth goes to receive negative or growth feedback. (Turney)  It may not feel good in the moment but it is important to let a person or a group know if what they are doing  is counterproductive to a relationship or the class experience. In the School of Belonging praise or encouragement (positive feedback) is delivered to a student in front of the group and mediation or correction (negative feedback) is delivered in private. This subtle yet critical practice is one of the pillars of an emotionally safe learning environment. (Nierney).

Often, when a teacher or other staff member gives negative feedback to a student, it is expressed in the form of a “you” message as in: “you are being rude”.  This is not feedback but judgmental and accusatory criticism and often takes place in front of others.  Feedback sounds and feels very different as in: “I feel frustrated when you interrupt. Please let me finish my thought before you share yours.”  Tone and volume of voice combined with physical proximity to the student is just as critical when giving feedback. If you speak in quiet and relaxed tones, with strong eye contact while giving the student some space and boundary, and  you deliver the message with a compassionate intention, you will most likely be giving productive and helpful feedback. If on the other hand, your  emotions get the better of you, you take the behavior personally and you become angry and upset as you are trying to stop a behavior and you become sarcastic in do so, the student will most likely shut down, become defiant or escalate in their emotions and behaviors.

Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

EQ is all about awareness of self and others in terms of feelings and needs and applying this awareness, responding appropriately to others in sometimes stressful situations, in a way which enhances success and happiness in work and life. This takes a great deal of self-reflection within a supportive and nurturing school culture in which caring, compassion and trust are the norm and connection is the outcome. When people feel connected to themselves (understanding how they feel and why), and then seek to create empathic and compassionate connections with others, success and achievement will flourish because motivation will be high. EQ in practice helps people have what psychologist William Glasser calls a needs satisfying experience, one in which a person’s emotional needs are met. 

Often, when people think of measuring a person's abilities and performance, IQ (intelligence quotient) is initially what comes to mind.  IQ, which on some level is a part of the paradigm of standardization and high stakes testing, lives at the surface in what is often considered to be the hard path towards gaining a competitive advantage: how smart you are. EQ, which is sometimes referred to as how you are smart,  lies beneath the surface, along what many consider to be the soft path. EQ skills are not soft at all but ultimately necessary, not only as a measurement of success but as an entry point to meaningful school, work, and life experience.

You will notice that President Obama in his educational vision, speaks of innovation in education which is very different than the focus of our previous president who often spoke of scientifically-based, "best practices" programming for schools. The difference for me is that innovation invites new ways of meeting old challenges: like engaging the diverse learning needs of the students who are walking into our schools every morning.  EQ as an intention, articulates the truth, that we are working with human beings, each with his-her own life story, skills, talents and interests. It is our great challenge and opportunity to engage these learners by being emotionally present as we work with and for them.  EQ is the doorway to such presence-fostering empathy, compassion and resonance in the relationships we build with our colleagues and our students.

I have been trained in delivering and interpreting an EQ Map which was developed by Robert Cooper and Qmetrics in San Francisco California.  This map is a self-assessment tool for adults and essentially is a snapshot of the last thirty days in a person's life.  It highlights 16 EQ competencies and helps to identify a person's strengths and vulnerabilities-providing a guide to managing one's emotions under pressure while becoming more self-aware and skillful with others.  Some of the schools in The School of Belonging initiative will be using this tool as I work with them. 

Emotional Literacy

Emotional literacy refers to a person's practical ability to apply his or her EQ competencies in a way that builds helpful, caring and empathic relationships-that is, to develop one's EQ competencies to the point where they are accessible in one's daily interactions.  This is especially crucial in times of stress when most people tend to respond through their emotions rather than through their rational thoughts. A person who is adept socially is essentially someone who can apply EQ principles and has high EQ competencies, whether the person is aware of them or not.  Daniel Goleman, (author of Working with Emotional Intelligence), defines an EQ competency as "a learned capability based on emotional intelligence that results in outstanding performance at work." (p. 25)  I propose that a student with high emotional intelligence will have outstanding performance at school socially, emotionally, and academically.

Topics covered:

1. Social decision making and perceptual diversity

2. Courage and moral dilemmas

3. Emotional intelligence vs academic intelligence

4. Effective listening and feedback

5. Empathy

6. Emotional imprinting

7. Building a healthy learning community

8. Systems change

9. Meeting the emotional needs of students

10. Building a culture of caring