Teaching Empathy: A Blueprint for Caring, Compassion, And Community

Teaching Empathy gives educators the tools to teach the pro-social skill of empathy to help create a culture of caring in their schools.

Teaching Empathy has four sections.

•Section 1, Teaching Empathetically: When Teachers Make Connections—helps educators learn to connect with their students; model pro-social skills; and build trusting relationships through storytelling, symbolic teaching, and other strategies.

•Section 2, Learning Empathy: Facilitating Social Discovery—focuses on how to teach students empathy and the behaviors that accompany it, such as listening, compassion, honor, and generosity. Strategies include social skills learning, cross-training and rituals, and the fishbowl.

•Section 3, Living Empathy: The School of Belonging—asks educators to concentrate on building a school culture of empathy through the 10 intentions of the School of Belonging.

•Section 4, Courageous Conversations—a mini-curriculum that combines lessons on dilemmas, the power of choice, and other empathic skills with 8 thought-provoking songs (on CD) by the author.

David A. Levine is a teacher, author, and musician who has been working with schools in the United States and around the world since 1984. He uses music to enter into dialogue with teachers and students and seeks to facilitate the creation of emotionally safe schools where all people have a sense of place and purpose. Levine was previously chief trainer for the Northeast Regional Center's Safe and Drug Free Schools Program for the U.S. Department of Education. He is the author of The School of Belonging Plan Book and Building Classroom Communities: Strategies for Developing a Culture of Caring plus numerous articles for educational journals.