Renowned British novelist and the most popular writer of children’s books Roald Dalh, once quoted, “I think probably Kindness is my number one attribute in a human beings. I’ll put it before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity or anything else…Kindness-that simple word. To be kind it covers everything, to my mind. If you’re kind that’s it.” Why compassion and kindness is the most important attribute? Why it is important to bring it into our classrooms? How it can be practised in the classrooms? The article would address these pertinent questions and suggest some of the strategies to make our classrooms a little more compassionate and empathetic.
One of the biggest challenges faced by school teachers is to deal with students’ reckless anarchic behaviour on daily basis. Research data supports that, the children who pose challenges in the classroom are the ones who mostly come from the difficult family backgrounds and suffers disharmonized relationship with the parents, teachers or the ones who are often socially inactive. How do these factors matter? These factors matter, as the growth & development of the child is influenced by her/his immediate environment.
Early childhood experiences shapes the self-esteem of a child, her belief system gets established and solidifies for her own self and about others. Children’s disruptive behaviours are merely the symptoms of challenges they face socially, psychologically and emotionally. The root cause of these symptoms lies deeply and connects with his/her significant adults who play vital role in unwinding the possibilities of a child. Schools and educators play a significant role in determining a child’s sense of self-worth and dignity.
In most of the cases where children turn aggressive and rowdy, unfortunately none of the adult comes forward to see the situation from a child’s eye. Conventionally, to deal with such challenging issues, school adopts punitive measures against children. However, punitive measures are like quick fixes that don’t go long way as the reasons behind each disruptive behaviour have diverse reasons.
As each child is unique, their needs, their issues and challenges are also unique. Therefore, discipline too needs to be as diverse and unique as the children themselves are! Grace Dearborn—the author of the books Picture This! Conscious Classroom Management discusses about a compassion based classroom management. Children reflect and replicate the behaviours they see around them.
A classroom culture that value compassion, empathy and cooperation will inculcate similar set of values amongst children. If the culture is oppressive and uses corrosive measures to combat disciplinary issues, children will inherit the same behavioural traits. One of the fundamental goals of education is to externalize the potential and finer humane qualities of humans that contribute to harmony, peace, joy, growth & development to the human and nature. Are the schools are attaining these broader educational goals? Are they putting sincere efforts aligned with stated goals?
The question arises, what is the need of practicing compassion, how to build a compassionate classroom? In words of Dalai Lama, “Love and Compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.” This quote underlines the importance of bringing compassion into the classrooms, because the entire educational efforts are directed towards better survival of humans and humanity. Let’s explore some of the strategies that could possibly help us in cultivating a compassionate classroom.
Cultivating a Compassionate Classroom
A teacher enters in staffroom almost yelling “Arhan (anonymous) is just impossible! I cannot tolerate this child anymore in my class. Today he snatched lunchboxes his classmates and ate their lunch”.
Probing the child about the incident, the child informed, that the mother is admitted in the hospital and there is no one at home to cook. He was hungry! A child’s challenging behaviour is located in a context! We just need to be little patient and empathetic towards our children’s need and despairs. If a child shows a self-defeating behaviour, such as not putting his/her effort into learning or creating ruckus in the classroom, we must recognize these are ineffective coping strategies that often mask feelings of vulnerability, low self-esteem, and hopelessness.
Rather than imposing punitive consequences, teachers should be sensitive towards the issues underneath and try to maximize the coping mechanism strategies and develop resiliency. There are simple ways to model and promote compassion which is important for children with challenging family backgrounds.
Model Compassion in the classroom
Compassion, kindness and empathy cannot be taught but can be learn or better to say can be externalize. To develop and build a culture, the entire climate of the school should be set in such a way that children imbibe the value of compassion modelling inbuilt in the school culture. Children need appreciation, approval and assurance for all the efforts they put in for various activities. Like adults, children do want to be successful and achievers.
Teachers should be instrumental in identifying the uniqueness of the child, reinforcing her/his strength and providing them opportunities to show their unique talent. Gaining confidence in any of the academic and co-academic aspects will boost the morale of the child and percolate into others areas as well and develops a sense of fulfilment which is ground for sprouting compassion.
Positive Affirmation
During interaction with parents who were concerned about their children’s low academic achievements, it was revealed how badly they treat their own children because of their incapability to perform as per the standard. The same is true for the teachers as well. In staffrooms, in corridors and in the classes they can be found talking unkind about some of the children tagging them with batches of shame! Parents are asked to re-script their negative dialogues to positive one if they genuinely want their children to gain confidence, do better in their life and overall to develop as a good, and positive human.
Similar approach, teachers need to take up to set the right tone of the content while interacting with the child, especially in the classes where the shame, fear and aggression of child gets doubled and the bitterness lasts for a long. The Language of adults becomes the internal dialogues of children. Therefore, it is important to repeat those positive words that helps to develop children with a positive mindset.
Classroom Companion
“Sejal is not paying attention the classroom. He is not completing is his classwork, his homework is being done by either his tuition teacher or parent”. The 7 year old child comes from an unfortunate background. He lost his father a year back, mother is emotionally and psychological devastated since her husband’s sudden demise. Children who show aggressive behaviour actually need more help and compassion from the people around him/her.
Compassion is about being sensitive towards other’s need and challenges and to support the individual. This is not about helping others out of pity but supporting the individual to empower him/herself. Children can be invited on voluntarily basis to support one of their classmates in academic and in dealing with emotional issues. This is intrinsically holds value to develop children not only as an empathetic individuals but socially responsive too. As children to always feel privileged in helping each other in the classroom until it becomes a habit. Practice is the key!
Community Care
Teachers can design assignments wherein children get scope of interacting with communities to get aware about their needs, challenges and issues. Such experiences help children to think beyond the self. It develops a sense of social responsibility. Such experiences could make shifts in the attitude of individual’s perceptions and in identifying, defining and designing their purpose of life.
Board of Kindness Act
Teachers, children and other school members can be motivated to share their stories of incidences where they helped others, their feelings and emotions after helping others and what was impact of the incident on their own beliefs. Their stories can be displayed on display board to inspire others to model the same. It is based on the law of attraction wherein the board of desire is received as reality and human minds begin thinking in the desired direction.
Practice of Mindfulness
The big question is not just how to develop a compassionate class but why do we need to do that? We need to do it as we are rapidly undergoing changes at all social, economic and political fronts. The pace of change is too fast to pause and think the direction of future of humanity. Our children are more anxious and stressed that ever. We keep on getting unfortunate incidences of suicide and criminal acts where children of ages less than 10 are involved! The situation is alarming and it demands to take it seriously.
Presence of multiple stimuli grabs student’s attention and as a result their concentration power is being affected badly. Mindfulness is about connecting oneself with the present moment. Mindfulness-based practices can be integrated in the classroom that leads to bringing in the awareness, peace and joy that originates from within.
To cultivate and grow compassion in the young hearts prerequisites awareness of one’s own feelings and emotions, conflicts and anxieties by careful observation through mindfulness based practices. Mindfulness can reduce depression, stress, anxiety and difficult behaviour amongst children. These traits are reasons of agony and indifference. Simple practice such as focusing on one’s breathing helps in calming down from emotional imbalance. Regulation of one’s emotional state leads to generate more positivity in terms of compassion, empathy and togetherness.
Connecting subject learning with developing humane values
School is the potential space for inculcating values that are inevitable for of a cohesive society. Lesson plan in different subjects can be designed in such a way that the learning objectives not only caters the cognitive domain but also includes the values that is inherent underneath the idea… More than that teacher’s own behaviour, her interrelationship with children is determining factors to shape children’s behaviour. Children mirror the behavioural traits of adults who play significant role in their lives.
There are numerous opportunities to model compassion and love in ways teachers interact with children in the classroom, in designing the classroom as a learning resource, the way they interact with fellow teachers and staff and the way they react to children’s unruly behaviour. Teachers can discuss on global issues with children in classroom on ideas such as diversity, tolerance, unity, global citizenship. Such deliberation broadens once perception and helps in breaking the stereotypes and biases. Creating spaces for dialogues in the classrooms bring about changes in children’s worldview and helps in being more humble and compassionate.
During reading sessions such stories can be read and shared with children where the value of compassion helped to strengthen the trust in the bond of love and togetherness. We need to create opportunities for our children to practice more acts of kindness. The future world needs people with more kind and compassionate heart than best of the intellectual minds. Let’s make our school as hub for cultivating compassion in young hearts. As aptly quoted by Daisaku Ikeda, there are no greater treasures than the highest human qualities such as compassion, courage and hope. Not even a tragic accident or disaster can destroy such treasures of the heart.
