Table Topics Part 2
At The Nora Project, we know that when this learning is extended beyond the four walls of our classrooms and into our students’ homes, it leaves a deeper, more lasting impact. As we discussed in last month’s blog post, we’ve created The Nora Project Table Topics Game, to bring The Nora Project to your dinner table (or den or car), making family time more meaningful for everyone.
Each month for the next few months we will reveal a new set of Table Topics that are aligned with the values incorporated in our classroom programs.
Our first set of cards provided questions to help children build a foundation for understanding simple and complex emotions in themselves and to begin to develop emotional literacy. This month, our second set of cards is intended to help children to apply this knowledge of emotions to those around them. As children gain understanding of their own emotions, they are ready to consider what emotions look like, sound like, and feel like in their peers or family members. This goes for situations in which peers are able to articulate their emotions, as well as times when they are unable to express how they are feeling with words. This emotional literacy opens students to the opportunity to empathize with one another. When we can understand how another person might feel in a given situation, we are better able to extend empathy and compassion to each other and better support each other within our community.
As you engage with the questions in this month’s set of table topics, keep in mind that there are levels of development to our empathy muscles. First, we have to understand ourselves, understand the feelings of others, and then practice expressing empathy towards others. According to Dr. Michelle Borba, from her book Unselfie, “Empathy is a quality that can be taught—in fact, it’s a quality that must be taught, by parents, by educators, and by those in a child’s community. What’s more, it’s a trait that kids can cultivate and improve, like riding a bike or learning a foreign language because it’s comprised of habits.” By engaging in conversations about how others are feeling and empathy, we are helping our children, and ourselves, to grow and flex our empathy muscles!