CORE KARES lesson, February 22, 2017 Walk a Mile in My Shoes CORE KARES lesson, February 22, 2017

Lesson Plan The purpose of this lesson is to introduce our students to the concept of empathy, with the long-term goal of reducing conflict on our campus. Students will view a slideshow consisting of ten real-life stories written by Safford students. While there may be some emotions involved, briefly discuss each story as a class while emphasizing that everyone deals with hardship and stress in life. Empathetic friends can help us all manage these times, while helping to reduce conflict in our lives. You will need to print a class set of back-to-back copies of the “Walk a mile in my shoes” Word document. After viewing the slideshow, students will choose two of the slides and respond to them on the handout, as per its instructions. Please consider evaluating your students’ participation/work as part of their CORE KARES grade. Now press your F5 key to begin the slideshow with your class.

What is Empathy? Today’s CORE KARES lesson is about empathy, which is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. If we all could become more empathetic with our peers, we would all have less conflict in our lives and gain more friends as a bonus! Everybody has hardships and stress in their lives. Today, we are going to share some real stories that actual Safford students have written. As we read each of the ten stories, ask yourself how you might respond and be a friend to each student. But first, let’s look at a real life story shared by a Safford teacher…

What do you think life was like for this person? From a Safford teacher… When I was 7 years old my family started cleaning movie theaters at night to earn money. Our whole family (both my parents and us 5 kids) would wake up at 1:00 am and head to the movie theaters to clean up trash, vacuum, mop, clean bathrooms etc.… We all worked until morning , even the youngest kids. Then we would all go directly to school afterwards. My main jobs were picking up trash and mopping floors. I was always tired but still got good grades and worked hard at school. We had that job for 6 years.  The hardest part was that we never got a day off. We worked 365 days a year. Movie theaters never close so we even had to work on Christmas. I was so happy to be able to sleep all night when my parents got new jobs. I was 13 years old. What do you think life was like for this person?

Now let’s “Walk a Mile in our peers’ shoes!” The following are true stories written by Safford students…

Safford student 1

Safford student 2

Safford student 3

Safford student 4

Safford student 5

Safford student 6

Safford student 7

Safford student 8

Safford student 9

Safford student 10