E-M-P-A-T-H-Y

A question to teachers, parents, and other educators out there -- how do you teach/help students to have empathy?

All year long I've been frustrated by kids not respecting each other -- standard classroom stuff like talking while others are talking, goofing off and not paying attention during other kids' presentations, etc, etc. I chalked it up to kids just being kids and having short attention spans, but lately, I've been rethinking it. I mean, we've had those discussions about "How do you feel when your friends are talking when you're giving a presentation?" but the effect is not at all long-lasting.

A few weeks ago, I tried an activity with my after-school club and some of the kids' reactions to it completely shocked me. My friend, a 5th grade teacher at an international school here, recommended that I make birthday cards with my students for a boy in Canada who has leukemia and is trying to break a world record for the number of birthday cards received. There have been numerous news reports about him and apparently cards have been coming in from all over the world. It sounded like a great activity where the kids could read a real news article in English, watch a video clip from the news, learn about someone close to their age, do some arts and crafts, and help the little boy achieve his goal.

I was really surprised then at the responses from some of my students, especially the boys. While watching the video clip, some made horrendous and really disparaging comments (in Cantonese, of course). When I tried to press them to tell me what they were saying so that I could address the comments, no one spoke up, essentially tying my hands. I'm glad this deaf-mute pretending game is almost over.

At first, I wondered if there was a language gap that was making it hard for them to understand/relate to the boy, but when I talked to students one-on-one, they all seemed to be clear on the situation; some just didn't seem to care all that much. A few students, in fact, tried to hand me zero-effort pencil scrawls of 'Happy Birthday' on folded pieces of construction paper and pass them off as cards. Have they no hearts at all? How could they even consider giving someone a card like that? Of course, there were some students who were genuinely interested in the activity and spent a lot of time making cards specific to the boy's interests.

The few 'this isn't about me' kids really worry me, though. It's the same thing with the kids who refuse to adhere to the rules of good sportsmanship and chant "lose, lose, lose" to the other teams, or who point and laugh at people across a stadium during a performance.

Really, what can we do?