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Birthdays: only birthday is Christine wife of Past President Mike
Roots of Empathy is an evidence-based classroom program begun in 1996 by Mary Gordon. At the heart of the program are a neighourhood infant and parent who visit the classroom 9 times over the school year. The program is designed to build caring, peaceful, civil societies through the development of empathy in children and adults. A trained Instructor coaches the kids to observe the baby’s development and label it’s feelings. In this experiential learning, the baby is the “teacher” and a catalyst, for 40 minutes a week, to help children identify and reflect on their own feelings and the feelings of others—empathy. The instructor also visits the classroom the week before and after each baby visit to reinforce the teaching which means a total of 27 classroom visits per school year. This program has been shown to have significant effect in reducing levels of aggression.
This program has been offered in 7 schools in the Tri-Cities for the last few years. It is limited by the number of babies/mothers available and the number of trained instructors. It would certainly be valuable to offer it in more schools, probably all elementary students would benefit if it could be required. The training cost per instructor is $1,200.00