EduCon 2025Authentically Building Empathy in Elementary and Middle School Lessons
In this conversation we will dive into how to build empathy into a lesson plan without sacrificing all the other important elements of a given lesson, including objectives and interdisciplinary connections. Attendees will experience a mini version of an elementary-aged design thinking activity, discuss the importance of teaching empathy across all disciplines, and brainstorm ways to meet objectives with empathy-driven lessons. Attendees will then be given time to adapt a lesson they currently teach to include a client to build empathy in their own classrooms.
Conversational Practice
5 min: Introduction to a model design thinking challenge for young students. 10 min: Attendees will build 5-7 min: I will show a video of a sample Grade 1 lesson that I adapted to include the empathy step (potentially the same challenge as the attendees just completed, but maybe not). Then there will be a small frontal piece where I talk about the importance of empathy for SEL and how client-based design problems address this skill. 20 min: Attendees will participate in an activity in small groups where they rotate through posters with objectives/skills and brainstorm how to incorporate empathy and a client. 30 min: Attendees will revamp a lesson they currently teach to include empathy 10 min: Share out in small groups
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