New Year's Resolutions
What is empathy? It’s a question we ask our students over and over again, and one they answer with more nuance and care as they practice it in the context of their relationships throughout the school year.
Empathy is being a good friend. It’s listening to others, caring about their perspectives and feelings. It’s amplifying those perspectives and feelings when they aren’t being acknowledged, even when it’s scary, even when it means admitting we might not have done enough soon enough. It’s standing on the sidelines when it’s not your turn. It’s pausing and taking a moment to lend a hand, even when doing so takes you off the course you’d set out on. Empathy is so many things. More than kindness. More than good intentions. Empathy is a commitment and a challenge, and while it can become a part of our identities, it must always be practiced and adjusted and honed to be relevant. Real empathy, like all athletic and artistic and academic and professional endeavors, requires constant, relentless, never-give-up work.
We know this all too well at The Nora Project, which is why as we’re heading into the final stretch of our fourth school year, our programs continue to evolve to better meet the needs of those we aim to serve. In 2019 we piloted a new, more equitable version of our Storyteller program after students with disabilities and their parents told us our good intentions were missing the mark. This year, that version is the only version of the program we offer and we know it’s moved us closer to our vision of recentering disability as diversity. In early 2020, after hearing from teachers in city schools that the cultural relevance of some of our lessons could be more inclusive, we teamed up with Communities in Schools of Chicago to complete a full assessment of each and every lesson in all three of our lifecycle programs. Those updated lessons found their way to more than 200 classrooms this fall. And last summer, after the death of George Floyd and the protests that followed, we resolved to center marginalized voices in everything we do. We are proud that in 2020 we partnered with established disabled activists like Gaelynn Lea, Lachi, and Maysoon Zayid, and that we worked with up-and-coming voices in the disability justice movement like Jo Tolley and Trisha Kulkarni. For the past six months we’ve been working closely with the folks at Conscious Roots to examine our own biases and privilege, evaluate the equity and inclusiveness of our organization, and to improve the focus on diversity, intersectionality, and the complexity of identity in our program materials. And we can’t wait to unveil our new Pivot Points companion guide this coming fall, a collaboration between Conscious Roots and award-winning Nora Project leader Alex Parker, which will allow our Storyteller teachers to pivot from conversations about disability to other types of human diversity in a way that honors the unique identities and experiences of all our students.
As purveyors of empathy education, we are on a constant quest to listen, hear, internalize, improve, apologize, make things right, and speak out. We want to be the best friends we can be. Our resolution for 2021 is to seek diverse partnerships that allow us to see things differently--our deep commitment to the practice of empathy requires that of us. How will you strengthen your empathy muscles this year?
You can prioritize empathy in your community by bringing The Nora Project programs to your school. Learn more here!