Think Like Socrates by Shanna Peeples

Author:Shanna Peeples
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Published: 2018-08-31T05:54:03.864850+00:00

Gleason: We did “Salvation Is Created” by Pavel Tchesnokov this last year, and that’s not one I’d done much ever before. It was a great tool to teach empathy because he wrote this beautiful piece, and he never heard it performed. And I asked the kids, “Can you believe that this beautiful piece, he never heard it performed in his life?” And to me, that’s a really powerful thing that kids can learn from. In fact, I made that my kind of overall goal last year. My principal wanted it to be raising math scores, and I said that’s important, but my goal’s going to be empathy.

He challenged me: “How are you going to teach that?” And I explained the piece. He said, “How are you going to measure it?” That’s the problem, I said. I’d rather aim high and fail than to aim low and succeed. I don’t want to only work on the technical aspects of music, because at the end, what good is that? I’d rather aim super high and say every kid is going to grow in empathy.

My daughter is legally blind, visually impaired, and you know you take for granted the abilities you have like eyesight. So we did some stuff like lead your friend to the water fountain and try to get a drink blindfolded. The whole idea was to get them to put themselves in someone else’s shoes: perspective-taking, the idea of empathy and of being vulnerable, and to get the kids to really go to that place. The final project was to find someone they don’t know, spend the day with them, and to really empathize and gain perspective.

Kids came back with pictures of being with their uncle who had served in Afghanistan, some kids went out to the nursing homes and met all kinds of people, veterans, a business owner who was really important in our city and was retired and in a nursing home. Kids went on YouTube and found examples of others showing empathy and how powerful that is. There are a lot of artifacts that showed they were giving this a lot of thought and understanding.

Kyriakakos: That process of painting—it’s so internal, it’s like prayer. It’s mindfulness. You’re thinking about the work and somehow it clicks, that’s you. You’re powerful. You’re beautiful. The kids start to see how beautiful and powerful they are. They start seeing, they start believing.

I’ll put their writing with their portraits. And when it goes up, they stop. Everything in the hall stops. They start to look, they start to read.

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