A class is about to watch a film from somewhere really far away. Brooklyn far? Further. Florida far? Further. All the way from India. What happens next is the subject of this short film: educators reflecting on the moment learners meet someone unfamiliar, and the conversation that follows.
The pattern the educators describe is the heart of the practice: learners notice the surface differences first. Then, as the conversation deepens, they start naming what they share with the person on screen. One educator lands it in a single line: a big part of empathy is seeing yourself in somebody else.
For the bigger picture on this approach, see empathy in education, or watch a full lesson in action.
"A big part of empathy is seeing yourself in somebody else."
An educator, reflecting after classLightly cleaned for readability. Bracketed lines describe what is on screen.
So in order to talk about purpose today, we're actually going to step back from a book, and we're going to watch a video. This video is from somewhere really far away, Mr. Priyasi. Like, Brooklyn far? No, not like Brooklyn. Not even like Florida. It's all the way, further than Atlanta. It's all the way from India.
When you teach empathy, I think it allows the students to see that they're able to relate. And as a teacher, I think that's something that's so vital. So if you can express empathy, and they can imitate that, that would be awesome.
When you show these type of videos to kids, at this young of an age, they can change their perspective on how they see people. They can see that across different countries, with different people that do different things, that look different, that talk in a different language, they can see some type of commonality with this other individual. I think that changes the lens of how they see the world.
So I thought it was a different dynamic, a different perspective that it gave them. And I thought it was really interesting how, when we first asked them what they noticed about the video, they were saying really surface-level stuff, like differences they noticed. And then, as we had the conversation, they were talking more about what they shared. That's a big part of empathy: seeing yourself in somebody else. I thought that was really good.