C U LT U R E I S S U E

In their shoes
Nearly 20 years ago, Mary Gordon created a program to bring
moms and babies into school classrooms. How empathy can
create kinder kids, better adults, and a more equitable society
by Blair Mlotek
Mary Gordon believes in the power of empathy. It
can, she says, stop patterns of abuse, draw the curtain on generational
cruelty, and create kinder, better worldsespecially if we instill its
importance at a young age. Thats why, in 1996, the former teacher,
as well as creator of the first Toronto District School Board daycare
for teen parents in Toronto, created Roots of Empathy. Her goal: To
rid communities of cruelty through teaching children empathy at a
young age. Today, volunteers run 2,477 programs in Canadaand
worldwide more than 2,000 volunteers have expanded the program to
10 countries. An independent program, Roots of Empathy is designed
to fit into any schools curriculum, and in a variety of subjects: using
graphs to facilitate math lessons, for example, or literature to work
with language arts.
The programs approach to teaching empathy is uniquely creative.
Far from what we see in traditional learning, Roots of Empathy facilitates interaction between students, a baby, and the babys parents. The
idea is to encourage children to see the perspective of other children:
what the babys needs are and how the mother responds to them. This
is the beginning of understanding empathywhat others are feeling, how to feel with them, and then how to treat them accordingly.
Gordon doesnt, in fact, like to use the term empathy teaching, and
prefers empathy reaching. Although shes fought to get her program
in schools, she maintains empathy isnt something that can be formally
taught; it must be caught.
Students, for instance, must imagine themselves making various
decisions for the baby. When faced with a problem as simple as what
diaper to buy, they are pushed to think: What does this mean for the
baby? What does this mean for the parent? What does this mean for
the environment? The idea here is to help them understand emotional literacyhow to explain what they are feeling. Once they know
how to do this, the theory goes, they can compassionately understand
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how someone else might feel. Scientifically, it makes sense: empathy

is something we naturally want to do. Research has shown that mirror neutrons make people react to emotions that others produce
similar to recoiling in imaginary pain after seeing someone else get
hit by a Frisbee.
Teaching empathy in the classroom has been gaining momentum
in education, along with the teaching of different literaciesa term
that now applies to emotion, technology, or even social skills. More
and more, teachers are encouraging students to put themselves in each
others shoes. In Ontarios York Region, a teacher has started resolving student disagreements by literally having them step onto different laminated illustrations of shoes, share their feelings, then switch
to put themselves on the other side of the conflict. The picture book,
Have You Filled a Bucket Today? has become a popular classroom staple, complete with corresponding lesson plans and school-wide programs. Its lesson: children need to fill, rather than empty, one anothers
bucket with love, kindness, and empathy.
And it doesnt stop there: The Empathy Factory, founded in 2010
in Halifax empowers youth to make social changes in the world. They
do this by touring Nova Scotia delivering workshops that ask students
to execute an idea that makes the world a better place. The organization also does work outside of the classroom, including a program
called Accelerating: Empathy, where 100 high school students from
around Nova Scotia are brought together. The students are asked to
find a solution to a social issue of their choice, pitch it to the other students and eventually to a panel of judges, who give winners a chance
to bring their ideas to life.
Then theres The Empathy Library, the first online collection dedicated to imagining yourself in someone elses life. The sites collected
works show others what it would be like to, say, have a disability or to
live in another country. Anyone can access it and members can add to

the database. The Empathy Toy, by Toronto-based Twenty One Toys,

invites players to create a shape out of different pieces, while the other
imitates it. The catch: both are blindfolded and need to patiently fall
into tune with the other. Even Facebook has got in the game. Recently,
it revealed plans for something similar to the often-requested dislike button. People arent looking for an ability to down-vote other
peoples posts, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg has said, What
they really want is to be able to express empathy.
Everywhere we look, it seems, empathy is gaining tractionreflecting the idea of social change in Canadian communities. Proponents of
empathy learning hope that by starting with children, the next generation will promote a more accepting way of life that focuses on celebrating difference. Children learn that each individual in their classroom is
different from one another, to value those different experiences, and
that although people can never have the same experiences, they can
empathize with them. Its a skill many of us may wish CEOs or politicians hadwe could be living in a very different world if, as Gordon
says, we had leaders who saw others as they saw themselves.
And, in some cases, students are already starting to teach their
Illustration by KATIE CAREY

adult instructors. Marion Kitamura, a trainer at Roots of Empathy for

16 years, was working with a Grade 7 class in 2005 when she got a
request from a teacher that went outside the bounds of her usual
work. The students wanted to talk about a sad news story: a man
had committed suicide by jumping off a bridge in Toronto, carrying
with him his 5-year-old daughter. Kitamura expected that they would
share some of the same sentiments shed heard from adults about the
storythat theyd hate the father.
Unsure on how to start the discussion, she asked the students what
it was about the story that made them feel so strongly. One student
answered, Were really sad that the father was so sad that he felt he
had to kill himself and bring his baby with him. Another wondered if
maybe the man was new to the country and hadnt made friends yet,
or if he didnt have enough money and thought that dying was better
than being poor. The children had done something that none of the
adults could do: think about how other people are feeling. It showed
Kitamura that the students knew how to apply empathy outside the
classroom. It was a moment for me when I was likewow, she says,
this program is really making a difference.
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