Post written by Madeleine Rogin for Ashoka's Start Empathy Initiative, a whole child partner organization.
Leading educational theorists such as Howard Gardner and Tony Wagner have written about the importance of cultivating our students' abilities to communicate across "networks"—skills that are crucial to success in our new global reality. And indeed, there's already been a popular acceptance that teaching around the topics of race, racism, and communicating across differences is an essential part of education in the 21st century. But in many classroom conversations, racism is framed as something of the past rather than a present reality. In addition, white children often think of slavery or the Jim Crow laws as something horrific that happened to "them," but do not see these events as something that is bad for "us" as a whole. To avoid this mistake, we can focus on empathy in the classroom as a way to prevent exclusionary behavior and "othering," which may move students to stand up against bias and prejudice.
Looking towards the future, the next step is to ask ourselves, as educators and parents: how do we go about
10-29-13 Whole Child Education - Putting Early Childhood Education into Action
Putting Early Childhood Education into Action — Whole Child Education: THE WHOLE CHILD BLOGPutting Early Childhood Education into ActionOctober 29, 2013 by ASCD Whole Child BloggersA whole child approach to education ensures that each child, in each school, and in each community is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. With our interactive Whole Child Examples Map tool, you can find e