Today I’m grateful for the invitation to write a guest post at The Kind Voice blog. In the piece, called Because Kindness Knows No Calendar, I detail why it’s important to model and teach empathy before we jump to “be kind.”
Empathy is the theme of both of my picture books, and it’s got a chapter in What’s Under Your Cape as well. It’s a glorious virtue that I think the world could use more of, especially in our schools. Want more integration ideas? Check out Empathy In A {Shoe} Box, Happy ShoesDay, Empowering Empathy, and Sesame Street’s Empathy clip with Mark Ruffalo and Murray.
Speaking of Sesame Street, the most-recent Elmo clip deals with grief, which has an underlying empathy message; watch Andrew Garfield and Elmo {here}.
Need some empathy titles for your #SEL shelves?
By the way, when empathy goes up, guess what goes down? That’s right, anxiety! Talk about your win-win.
Happy November, dear reader; thank you for checking in with me periodically. If I can ever help you in your character building, please reach out and let me know how.
Barbara Gruener 