Volume 4, Issue 5: November 2010

Theme of the Month: Caring

Compassion, empathy and caring can often seem like ethereal ideas, unobtainable by children and teens. The news is starting to show that children and teens do care. It can be easy to instill the idea of compassion and caring into all lessons. It's important for students to understand that acts of caring don't have to be large and world changing, but that caring can be small, random acts of kindness. Helping a brother or sister with homework, collecting money for charity, these are all actions of caring. Remember, it is by doing caring things that we truly become caring people.

Daily Dilemma

Peter’s longtime close friend, Bridget, is wrapped up in an online relationship with some older guy on MySpace, a social networking website. Peter senses danger, but Bridget resents his warnings and wants him to butt out. What can he do without risking their friendship?

What should Peter do? Here's a hypothetical dilemma to discuss with your class.

Lesson Plans and Activities

Elementary School

In this web quest lesson plan, students look into adopting a class pet, which is a great way to teach kids how to care for other living creatures. Students take on the role of an expert by researching different aspects of petkeeping, and work together to choose a pet and make plans for its care.

On Good Character, we have a lesson plan for students on the concept of caring that includes discussion questions and activities.

This three step lesson plan has students look at caring within their community, and if there are ways for them to do more.

Middle School

The lesson plan, “Let Me Tell You A Story” creates a classroom environment where students are brought together to tell their own personal experiences, and in doing so, to learn about diversity and caring for others. The setup and guidelines in the lesson plan are very thorough, and are great for a discussion group, so be sure to check them out. (PDF)

Compassion in the Ghetto is a lesson about how people, even in the harshest of times, can help each other. This lesson plan uses lessons from the Jewish ghettoes of the Holocaust to show students how there can be hope through helping others.

Here is a lesson focusing on the U.S. history of slavery to teach compassion by reminding students that “statistics about humans provide valuable historical information” but that these numbers represent human lives.

This four step lesson plan explains to students the idea of philanthropy and explores the idea within Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol”.

High School

In the lesson plan, "Caring for Cambodia" students read the book "Children of the River" and then understand how in tough times we must all care for each other if we want to survive. "Children of the River" can be found at your local library, or students can learn to be more compassionate by researching the tragic events of Cambodian history.

This lesson plan here on GoodCharacter.com has discussion questions, writing assignments and homework. It also includes a self-evaluation quiz to help your students (and you!) find out if they are caring people.

This lesson plan looks at compassion using George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and discusses Nelson Mandela and Cesar Chavez in regards to compassionate farming.

The United Way offers a “Day of Caring” each year, organizing thousands of volunteers to work with local companies to help people who are less fortunate. Use this news article to inspire high school students to help in a “Day of Caring”.

This teen raised a pig to auction off so that the money could be donated to the local food bank. Use this article to see if your class can raise their own animal, or have younger students collect canned food for their own local food bank.

This NPR article explains how humans learned to cry in order to show compassion and empathy with others. Use this article to start a discussion with students about how they feel when they see others cry, and how they show they care.

Think it’s too early for your elementary students to visit a hospice? Here’s how one school showed their younger students what caring for the elderly can really mean.

Many think that emotional intelligence can’t be taught, but the teachers in Harlem are proving them wrong . This article explains how the teachers are using a variety of techniques to teach emotional intelligence to their students.

Tips and Resources

PBS’s recent documentary “The Buddha” has an accompanying website that has lesson plans on how to increase compassion. “The Buddha” DVD can be found at your local library.

Kids Caring 4 Kids is a charity started to help kids raise money for other kids who need help. This could be an excellent Service Learning project.

Compassionate Kids is a non-profit organization that gets kids to think of ways to be compassionate and caring people for animals, plants and people. This website has articles, book reviews, activities and information on how you can start your own chapter of Compassionate Kids, or how to get them out and caring for others.

The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation has articles, discussion boards and inspiration on how to show kindness and caring in everyday life. Check out their Educators section which has PDF suggestions for all grade levels on how to show a random act of kindess.