Enacting Empathy

By Jake Burnett In the Middle School, we have been helping to focus on how we can demonstrate kindness, be caring and explore the complexities of empathy. In order to put this thinking into action, many Middle School students asked for a canned food donation instead of candy when they went trick-or-treating this Halloween. The results were fantastic! With the help and guidance of our Round Square group, we have continued our tradition of making a significant donation to the Mustard Seed’s food bank every year. It has also been great to see how our Grade 6, 7 and 8 students have involved themselves in another wonderful way of sharing kindness, as we have fully involved ourselves in the ‘Warm-a-Soul’ campaign, which sets the goal of filling a stocking in time for Christmas. The stockings will be given out to Middle-School-aged children who might not otherwise receive gifts like this during the holidays. Thanks to our wonderful prefect team for running and coordinating this awesome initiative, and for sharing the power of helping others. And finally, on a much broader level, we have been exploring elements of empathy and how we can effectively understand and control our own actions and words. Our prefects ran a wonderful assembly this week, which led to much follow up in Conference Groups as we discussed what it meant to be empathetic. There is a renewed sparkle in the eyes of our students, and we continue to see politeness, careful engagement, focused conversations and doors held open for others. We’re also helping to realize and foster the power we have in each of us. If you get the chance to talk with your children, please feel to reference the story i which our prefects beautifully shared in assembly yesterday.