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Empathy Conversation transcriptMiranda McKearney: Hi everyone and welcome to Empathy Day! I’m Miranda McKearney from EmpathyLab and I’m here with three pretty amazing people for The Empathy Conversation. EmpathyLab’s work blends approaches from the worlds of psychology, children’s books and education, and I’m delighted to welcome such a fantastically cross disciplinary panel. We have the Children’s Laureate with us, Cressida Cowell; much beloved for her passionate advocacy of children’s books and her totally gorgeous How to Train A Dragon books. Then we have Professor Robin Banerjee, who is Head of Psychology at Sussex Uni, and is active in very many important forums, including advising the Welsh Government on their new curriculum which has empathy featured 39 times. And then Muhammad Khan, author of Kick the Moon and former maths teacher. Kick the Moon was an absolute must-have for our Read for Empathy collection and we’ll be hearing more about why later.So, EmpathyLab’s strategy is based on two key areas of research. Firstly, that empathy is a learnable skill and secondly that books are a potent tool to build it, and this is scientific research. Our vision is of a new generation of empathy-skilled young people who are leading an empathy movement to create a much better future. Empathy Day is one of our key programmes and we founded it to spark a whole new conversation about why empathy is so important, and how to help children explore, experience and practice it. Today has been just full of really inspiring children’s contributions. It has made me feel very hopeful for the future and also very moved.So, in this finale event we are providing a reflective space, a space where we can all learn more about the psychology of empathy, the author’s craft in building it, and how we can use stories more systematically to help children build amazing empathy skills and then put them into action. And goodness, what a time to be having an Empathy Day, when the tectonic plates of society seem to be moving very fast right now. The crisis we’re in, I hope, is also an opportunity. The act of imagining ourselves in someone else’s lockdown shoes has sparked a great burst of community and connection and kindness, and we really mustn’t let that fade. Empathy is surely a foundation for a better society. A society that values everyone equally and I don’t see it as a fluffy thing at all. I see it as a vital tool in the fight against racism and a driver for radical social change. And we know we have to change, and need urgently to mobilise, don’t we? Because empathy is so often in horribly short supply as evidenced agonizingly by George Floyd’s death, and here at home in the rise in hate crimes.Barack Obama has a favourite quote of mine which is “empathy is a quality of character that can change the world”, and in this conversation we’ll be exploring how we can use reading more deliberately to raise that generation of empathy-skilled children.So we’ll start with a very quick sharing of our empathy-boosting books, because all day there’s been the most massive crowd-sourcing of recommendations going on, buzzing around. So, can I just ask our panellists to share theirs? Muhammad, what’s yours?Muhammad Khan: My Read for Empathy recommendation is Rose, Interrupted by Patrice Lawrence. It’s a fantastic book about two siblings who have been excommunicated from a religious sect. Rose can’t wait to enjoy her freedom and Rudder just wants to go back. We don’t often find YA books that deal with faith, it’s quite strange because I know it’s pivotal to the lives of so many of my students. So I love this book and I think it’s fantastic because it engenders empathy.Miranda McKearney: That’s a powerful recommendation, thank you. Cressida, what is yours?Cressida Cowell: My book is The Boy at the Back of the Class by Onjali Rauf. I just love this book, this is a beautiful, beautiful book. There’s another beautiful book I wanted to recommend if you want the other side, which is called Illegal by Eoin Colfer which is a graphic novel and I often talk about graphic novels as a way in for a lot of children who struggle with reading, with dyslexia or something like that. Illegal is a story of the refugee story. And this [The Boy at the Back of the Class] is the refugee story as well, but it’s also the story of the children who the young boy comes into the class of, and they’re trying to find out his story. I love that two-way where you’re telling the story of the boy coming in, Ahmed’s story, but you’re also telling the story of the children who are welcoming him into their class. It’s very heart-warming, it’s a really, really moving story. Miranda McKearney: And the author, Onjali Rauf, with Sita Brahmachari has been leading the most wonderful empathy in action section of today. Robin, what’s yours?Robin Banerjee: My one is Cloud Busting by Malorie Blackman, who’s a favourite. We know Malorie Blackman is just such a fantastic supporter of EmpathyLab and it really, really shows in this book. The power of empathy is so strong in it. It’s set in the context of children’s peer relationships which is what I’ve been studying for the last 25 years. And there’s something in there which is so universal about the challenges and complexities, the joys, but also sometimes the heartaches you can get in children’s peer relationships. I think it’s something we can all identify with and it brings out the theme of empathy just so strongly. There are issues to do with difference, there are issues to do with respecting people who are not the same as you and don’t necessarily fit into the cookie-cutter mould of what people ‘should be’. I really like the way it gets at something so deep inside you that we’re all familiar with, that is all about connecting with each other, and the trials and tribulations that come with that. So, it’s really emotional but in the end such an importantly heart-warming read as well. And written all in verse as well!Miranda McKearney: Yes, I think it’s such an amazing book. Thank you. Tonight’s format is this: we have an hour until 8:15. Each panellist will start us off with some thoughts and then we’ll have a discussion between them, and then around 8 o’clock we’ll take your questions. And if you do have any, please send them our way on Twitter using #EmpathyDay, and here on Facebook in the comments section. So, Robin could I invite you to open things up for us?Robin Banerjee: Absolutely. First of all, I just want to thank you for inviting me again. It’s such an honour to be on a panel with such wonderful, wonderful people. Muhammad and Cressida, it’s been an absolute joy to meet you both today, in this new, very strange virtual world that we inhabit now. Also it’s a great opportunity for me to share what we’ve been doing for the last 25 years, which is learning more and more about children’s relationships with each other, their social development, their emotional development - and empathy is just a huge part of that. I want to open by saying how through the work that I’ve been doing and the conversations I have with people in EmpathyLab, we’ve learnt so much about just why children’s wellbeing is so critical and it is so relevant to the long-term development of every human being. Not just to their wellbeing and mental health, but also to academic achievement and work life. For a long time to come, through into adulthood, I don’t think we ever stop learning about empathy. So, what is empathy? Well empathy manages to be simple and complicated at the same time. The reason it is complicated is because I don’t think it’s right to think of empathy as just one thing. It’s not a simple uni-dimensional construct where you’re either high or low on empathy. Actually, it has three different components to it and all those three components work together. There’s an emotional dimension which is all about sharing other people’s emotions, that affective connection we have with other people. But there’s also a really important thinking part to it – that’s cognitive empathy which is about understanding emotion; why is someone feeling a certain way? What is it that made someone feel a certain way? And as well as the emotional and cognitive parts, there is a third part which is a motivational part. What you might call an empathic concern. Not only might you feel something when you see someone else is in distress, not only might you have a good understanding of what’s going on, but to be really empathetic there needs to be this third motivational component which is that you have to care about people’s feelings as well. You have to want to help other people. So we have a situation where all three ingredients of empathy need to come together to produce what we regard as empathetic behaviour. So if you see someone behaving in a way that you think it quite empathetic, actually what’s going on underneath is quite complicated. You’ve got quite a lot of things going on. But the reason I said at the beginning that although it’s complicated it’s also relatively simple is – I guess it comes back to that word universal – it has that simplicity to it in that it’s very human. It’s the way we connect with each other. And that human connection is fostered by our empathic characteristics; by understanding emptions, by sharing and feeling other’s emotions and by caring about other’s emotions. That’s where it really comes from.We know that this is something that develops in childhood right form the very beginning, from the word ‘go’ really. We know it develops when children are babies and they’re learning to tune into each other. They’re learning to tune into human beings and that grows and grows as they get older and of course it’s not long before we start seeing very young infants – and it’s always very cute when you observe toddlers doing little helping behaviours and responding to other people’s emotional characteristics as well – you really see children tuning into other people’s facial expressions, to what’s going on for other people. We really are such social creatures.The important thing about the development of empathy is that it’s not the same for everybody. We know the environment plays a role in the development of empathy. Empathy is not a fixed quantity, it’s not that every person is born with a certain pot of empathy and that’s it, “that’s all you’ve got mate”. Actually, there’s a huge amount of learning that takes place. Children don’t come ready made with empathy that’s just there as a fixed quantity for the rest of their lives; they’re learning from their environment constantly. I would say that process goes on throughout life. It’s there throughout childhood for sure, but it carries on into adolescence, it carries on into adulthood, it carries on all the way through your life. The reason I’m so excited about the partnership with EmpathyLab is that EmpathyLab is bringing together this scientific notion of empathy, really trying to understand what it involves, with the basic idea that this very ubiquitous experience that we have of reading, of sharing books with each other, can produce something really, really magical and I think that’s really exciting. Books are all around us and I think sometimes we have to protect that status. I think the work that you’re doing, Cressida and Muhammad, is absolutely invaluable for making sure that we hold onto these really important things around us. When a parent is reading a bedtime story with their children, when you have two friends at school who are talking about what they encountered in a book they read, when you have an adult who is sharing what they read over the weekend with someone else, actually those conversations are taking the empathy-building character of books and taking it to a new level because when we connect socially with other people around books, it becomes even more powerful. Like what you said Miranda, this year empathy and the vehicle of books to foster and engender that growth of empathy has never, never been more important. So, I’m just so excited to be here. We’ve learnt so much about empathy and how it can be built through reading. In our own research studies we’ve actually found that children have been able to develop their empathy skills, both the emotional aspects of it and the cognitive aspects of it through reading and I think what we’ve seen throughout today is the third element; that motivation, the translation of empathy into action. It’s just such an exciting combination for me and I’m really happy to be part of it. And I’m so looking forward to hearing from Cressida and Muhammad about their perspective on how books can be harnessed as a really powerful force to build that empathy. Miranda McKearney: Oh Robin, whenever I hear you talk I wish I was a student at Sussex University having wonderful psychology lectures. Thank you, we’ll hear much more in a bit. Muhammad, could we hear from you now?Muhammad Khan: Of course. It’s really different to follow up on that, that was amazing!As both an author and a teacher, I’ve seen the important role books play in instilling empathy in young people. Emotional, Cognitive and Compassionate are the 3 aspects of this vital skill which can be learned at any age. Learning outcomes across the board improve when there is a strong sense of community and the stakes for failure are lowered. In short: creating a safe space through empathy brings out the best in everyone. I often quote Dr Rudine Sims Bishop’s metaphor about children’s books being like ‘mirrors, windows and sliding doors’. For those who haven’t heard her genius quote, she compares books to mirrors which reflect the reader’s own life and provide affirmation. With windows you are looking into someone else’s house, seeing how your own life matches up to theirs. With sliding doors, you are fully immersed in someone’s way of life, walking in their shoes, seeing and experiencing the world as they do. What better way to promote shared values and not just inter-cultural tolerance but an avid appreciation for it? That is the inherent power of books.Britain has been multicultural for decades yet inequality still endures. A spotlight has been shone on this with the untimely death of George Floyd. But Britain has its own problems with cases like those of Mikey Powell and Darren Cumberbatch. Black people represent 3% of the population but account for 8% of deaths in police custody. Shukri Abdi was a twelve-year-old refugee who died last year and justice has still not been served. If we don’t talk about these things, even if they might make us feel a bit uncomfortable, we can’t hope for improvement. This is why I think it is so important for us to read stories by BAME and minority writers, to provide representation for those we traditionally don’t hear from. It’s not sufficient to have a tick box for one Asian writer, one black writer or one LGBT writer because that places a huge burden on those few writers to be all things to all people. Even within a single community, there are different experiences and opinions. Those nuances are beautifully brought to the fore by Own Voice authors. They speak from the lived in experience. After reading Kick the Moon, many children told me they felt ‘seen’ and a few even said they wanted to be in a live screen adaptation!In Kick the Moon, the vast majority of characters are Asian yet their outlook on life is quite different. Even within a single family, we see that variety reflected. Ilyas’s older brother is on his way to Harvard to study business management, his seventeen year old sister is carving a career out for herself as a YouTube influencer and his own passion is comic books but he’s afraid he doesn’t measure up to the rest of his family. A feeling shared by many young people.Then we have Imran who is trying to navigate through life after his father walked out on his family. He creates a hypermasculine identity for himself in an attempt to prevent ever being put in a position of vulnerability ever again. He compounds this by forming a gang based on the tenets of toxic masculinity. There’s a ‘Them and Us’ mentality at work – a dividing of community and a fierce anger that stems from feelings of being ‘left behind’. It’s a window into what stokes the fires of gang culture among teens. And finally we have the cool, hijabi maths teacher – Ms Mughal – who is very much encouraging Ilyas to be brave and forge his own path. Though she comes from a STEM background, she tells him the arts are just as important. From a cultural point of view, this holds huge significance. Some children of Asian or African descent tell me their parents would like them to become doctors or engineers or lawyers. Ms Mughal affirms that all of our natural talents are important and worthy of nurturing. It’s a message I could have done with as a child.Kick the Moon is not just for Muslim kids or Asian kids but for everyone to enjoy. When we read about a character from a different culture or gender or ability than our own, we learn the skill of perspective taking, and understand how our lives are all interconnected. We’ve recently seen the power of empathy in bringing diverse communities together during the global pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests. While some politicians have been busy trying to assuage blame, communities have stepped up to support our most vulnerable and show appreciation for the NHS staff campaign together for an end to racism. Once the pandemic is under control, we must continue to support all communities with the same kindness and compassion; we must continue listening to them. The empathy we develop from reading will ensure the important messages learnt are never forgotten. Thank you.Miranda McKearney: Thank you, Muhammad. We’ll come back to all of that. Thank you. Cressida, now you.Cressida Cowell: Oh well it’s already really fascinating. I’d agree with both of you that we’ve never needed this wonderful skill of empathy more than we do now. When I became Laureate, my speech centred around these words: ‘reading is magic and magic is for everyone.’ I tell kids that reading gives you three magical powers: creativity, intelligence and empathy. Empathy is in many ways the most important because it is the one that links you to your community. If you have creativity and intelligence alone, then frankly you’re a very creative and intelligent villain and we need less of those, rather than more! I was delighted to be asked to speak to begin Empathy Day because empathy and trying to see things from other people’s point of view is not only a theme running though all of my writing, but one of the reasons I write books in the first place. I think books are particularly good at bringing empathy out in children. I often get asked whether I wanted to write the How to Train Your Dragon movies, and obviously I’m very proud of those movies, but my answer has always been that writing books for children is my own personal quest because of the unique capacity of books to encourage empathy and creative thinking. I think this is because things on a screen happen out there, but in a book they are happening inside your head – you are that person. The best way I know to climb into somebody else skin and walk around in it, to quote Atticus Finch from Harper Lee.You can be given endless history lessons on World War I but when you read a book, you are poor old Private Peaceful, walking out to the fight. I wanted to talk about a few books that really opened my eyes, that were like, as Muhammad talked about, windows or sliding doors for me when I was a child, which really inspired me to become a book writer. One was called The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig. I was read that by a teacher. A lovely teacher read that to me when I was a nine-year-old and read it to our whole class at school, and it was about another nine-year-old; a nine-year-old girl whose family were sent into exile in Siberia during the Second World War. That experience of having that book read aloud about another life, another world, really opened my eyes to a way of seeing somebody else’s experience. I am David by Anne Holm was another one, all about a boy escaping from a concentration camp. And a more humorous book, a very different take on empathy but equally important one for me was Freaky Friday, which was about a teenage girl who turns into her mother. Again, that’s about a personal relationship but seeing things from her mother’s point of view. And another one called The Twelfth Day of July by Joan Lingard about two children growing during the divide in Northern Ireland. They were all books which made you think about what it might be like to live in somebody else’s shoes.A book is an empathy exercise in itself, and I’m a big believer in reading for the joy of it, and that a book is worth a thousand spelling tests! It’s no coincidence that in the case of the two heroes of my series, which are How to Train Your Dragon and the Wizards of Once with Wish and Hiccup, their superhero powers are creativity, intelligence and empathy. So stoic Hiccup’s father is of the generation where when he comes across a problem he punches it, whereas Hiccup and Wish use their powers of creativity and empathy to think their way out of difficulties. One of the major turning points in the How to Train Your Dragon series is in book 11, when you have this villain character, Snotlout. This is something that I love doing in books, I love it when I come across it in books – a villain character, Snotlout, suddenly in book 11 you see his point of view. Hiccup sees his point of view. And that’s one of the ways I try to encourage children to try to look through other people’s eyes. I also try to use specific writing techniques to get them thinking different ways. So the language of Dragonese, which is a language you can learn in How to Train Your Dragon, on the face of it is just a way to be funny or to make them laugh, but many of the words give you an insight to a dragons-eye-view. So they invite you to see things from a dragons point of view; mice are ‘squeaky-snack’, human beings are ‘no brains’, dogs are ‘dim-woof’. And these are all ways of a child being invited to look at things from a dragon’s point of view, encouraging empathetic thinking. In the Wizards of Once, the whole premise is structured around empathy. Wish and Xar are from different tribes and have been taught to hate each other from birth. So, when they meet in the forest, their first instinct is not to be friends, they have to learn to work together towards a common goal. And this doesn’t always go smoothly, like relationships in real life, their adventures together are a learning experience. Empathy, as Robin said, is a learned skill. Together, Hiccup, Xar and Wish have to question a lot of the assumptions and teachings about each other’s tribes. The great thing about magic, is that you can literally put your character through empathy exercises such as when Xar and Bodkin drink a magic potion that makes them change faces with each other and therefore they literally have to see things from each other’s point of view.Two of the points on my Waterstone’s Children’s Laureate charter are that every child has the right to see themselves reflected in a book, and every child has the right to access advice from a trained librarian or bookseller. This is so important because these are people who can help children access a wide variety of books about different people and different experiences. This world we live in today has so many challenges. We need children to be more creative, more intelligent and most importantly more empathetic than ever before. I’d like to say again, like Miranda, empathy is not a soft skill, it is a vital tool that our children need, and books are one of the best ways for them to develop it.In the Wizards of Once there is a magical spelling book that can fly. Books really can do that, and I’m echoing Muhammad, books really can do that. They can fly across continents, you can fly back in time. But even more importantly, a book is a window into somebody else’s soul. Open that window or open that door into somebody else’s heart, that is what is so important. And the more books you read, the more lives you lead. So I’m back at the beginning again; reading is magic and magic is for everyone. It’s transformative magic.Miranda McKearney: Oh my goodness, Cressida, thank you. That’s just wonderful. I’m very struck by how you writers are just naturally doing, through your crafts, some of the things that Robin you talk about, when you talk about how we build children’s empathy skills, and very specific things like you both talked a lot about perspective-taking. It would be interesting to hear more thoughts on how we can really develop this skill in children.Robin Banerjee: Can I ask a question? First of all, Muhammad and Cressida, that was absolutely brilliant, and I’m blown away by those really beautiful ways of expressing the power and magic of empathy in books. It’s just so beautiful. One of the things I’m wondering about is what it’s like, this is going to be a hugely naive question, but what is it like from a writer’s perspective in terms of creating the characters in the first place? What happens to your empathic relationship with your characters? Is it there from the beginning or does it develop as you write the stories of the characters? I’m curious to know what your experience has been.Cressida Cowell: Well, I put a lot of myself into the characters so that happens quite naturally without really intending to do that. So, I don’t set out to say ‘right I’m going to write a character just like me’, but I put a lot of myself into Wish and Hiccup. That happens quite naturally, but I find myself quite empathetic to even some of the characters who are more villainous! And some of that is intentional like Snotlout, I’m intending for you to try to see things from his point of view in the end. Sometimes even with the characters who are irredeemable, I can feel myself being quite empathetic towards as well but there are a few who I just can’t empathise with at all. But mostly I find I am empathetic. It’s very difficult to write and bring things to life without inhabiting the characters in some way. Would you say that’s true of your writing Muhammad?Muhammad Khan: No, mine is different. I don’t think I could write if I wasn’t a teacher. Because I am a secondary maths teacher, I’m surrounded by all these wonderful children and they all have such different personalities. Some of them immediately want to learn and some don’t. But I found the more that you get to know them, the more they are willing to give you and your subject a chance, and then you get better outcomes from them. As they grow to like your subject they grow to like you too, they see you as linked together, They tell you things about themselves and a child who for half the term has not engaged with maths and has been messing around, suddenly things click for them and they’re the ones who stay after school and want to keep talking to you and tell you about their lives. You just discover so much about them. Sometimes I’ve had teachers say to me, ’how do you manage to control your classes because you’re quite slight and small and very softly spoken’, but for me it’s not about disciplining them, it’s about getting them on side and the way to do that is to show that you’re genuinely interested in their lives and who they are and what they think is important. Because there are so many issues, obviously the world is so full of issues at the moment, but for a child or teenager, they’re experiencing this so much more than we do and there are so many stimuli all over the place and it’s difficult for them to make sense of it all. So when you form this strong relationship with them they begin to discuss these things with you. One of the things I really enjoy is when I have a tutor group and they talk amongst themselves, and that’s when they do perspective-taking and from that you learn so much and that’s where my characters come from. I guess I cheat, I take some of their personalities and put them together to create a new person! So not as creative as Cressida unfortunately.Cressida Cowell: Actually, I do that too! You take characteristics of people you know, and then they take on a life of their own and become their own character, fictional I know, but they feel like a real character! I feel like the characters are real. Often the starting point is somebody you know, someone you remember from school, or in your case a pupil you’re working with. Xar is the kind of kid who means well but is always getting into trouble and I remember a lot of kids like that at school, so you take something from someone you know. It’s really interesting how the things that you were saying Robin, about the firstly how young these things develop. I’m really interested in babies, for instance, how you can encourage babies to be empathetic. As you were talking I was thinking about a book series called Wibbly Pig. It was about a little pig and there were about 7 or 8 books, but the one that all my babies focussed on at a very young age, was one book called Wibbly Pig is Upset, It was about Wibbly getting upset because he drops his ice cream. At that level, Muhammad, the problem is quite easily solved! Wibbly is made happier by getting a new ice cream! But it was really interesting how little the children, how very young children and babies really focused in on that one particular book and were really upset for Wibbly when he lost his ice cream. They could really empathise with that and I thought that was really interesting, they were so young. Even reading stories like that with very, very little babies that you think are too young to understand a concept of empathy, actually maybe they can. Children are often smarter younger. The other thing I was thinking was how interesting and important it is that we read as many different books, as Muhammad was saying, from as many different authors as we can, and to expose our children to as many different voices as we can.Robin Banerjee: What was interesting, hearing you both talk just now, was that really profound point of feeling like you’re making a connection with someone else and getting to know them. That business of getting to know a character, to really know a character and to understand where they’re coming from and to see what their life is like, and to make a point of connection with them, that seems to me to be a really profound point. As I said, my background is in social and emotional development and that’s become a really big focus in schools. There is a lot of work being done to build social and emotional skills in school settings. There are tonnes of fantastic lesson plans and resources out there to help schools to structure activities, to foster the development of these different skills, but it’s not a simple matter of a teacher just standing up in front of a class and saying ‘right I’m going to teach you all how to be empathetic today’. Actually you have to create these conditions that foster empathy, and what you were both saying just now is that really important point about wanting to get to know someone else. To go past the surface, to go past the two-dimensional appearance of someone, and really understand them as a person. Of course, that isn’t just a matter of a lesson plan or a resource that a school teacher is using in a PSHE class, even though there are some really fantastic resources out there. There’s something really fundamental operating at a human level as well. I always say that in a school context you have the formal structured activities happening in class, but I think equally important or maybe even more important are the informal, everyday activities that happen when you’re in any class. It could be like you were saying Muhammad, in a maths class, or a PE class, or a drama class, or a history class. In any class, or outside of the academic context as well. Just those informal, everyday interactions where people are bothering to get to know you. People are making that effort to connect with you as a human being. That’s what so many books really convey powerfully and the examples of Wibbly Pig you just gave, Cressida, as well as your own Kick the Moon, Muhammad, they’re perfect examples, with different age groups and different audiences, of in simple or more complex ways, pushing past that two-dimensional barrier and getting to know somebody else as a three-dimensional human being.Miranda McKearney: We’ve thought a lot this Empathy Day about how important authors are as role models for children, and so there have been these incredible authors leading all the activities for Empathy Day. But Muhammad I was very struck about how you in teaching, you were talking about role modelling empathy. I thought that was extraordinarily powerful. As well as being a writer and doing it through your writing, you’re also a teacher and doing it through your teaching, so it’s an extraordinary double hit. So the things Robin, that you often talk about, about empathy in education and empathy through books in education and using that much more systematically, that really fitted with what Muhammad and Cressida were saying.Robin Banerjee: Absolutely. I’ve got to ask you the question, Muhammad: you know you were talking about how you connect with the students in your class, has that idea been spreading with the other teachers around you once you talk with them? Or is that a difficult skill to develop? I’m just wondering about how teachers respond to each other in that context.Muhammad Khan: It’s funny really, every teacher has their own strengths and they teach to those strengths. So myself and another teacher might end up with the same results, or rather our students end up with the same results, but the way we go about fostering that is a in a very different way. I’m not saying I’m the only teacher who goes down the empathetic route, but I know I have some colleagues who are fantastic disciplinarians and it works for them and the students are grateful for the way that they teach. But my teaching style is different, I don’t like to be a disciplinarian, well I can’t because I’m not particularly scary to look at anyway! I couldn’t be a disciplinarian. So we make the most of what we have. I find that I enjoy teaching maths a lot more if I have everyone on side, if they’re having just as good a time as I am. Unfortunately, maths is a subject that is thought of as being austere or difficult to relate to. So what I do is what Ms Mughal does, I bring in a lot of celebrities, or stories, or films and I try to weave them into the lesson and I try to make the lesson like a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. That’s something that primary school teachers do so well. Back in primary school they teach through stories and the outcomes are fantastic. For some reason when students come to high school it suddenly becomes very serious and you don’t have that warmth and empathy anymore. But for me, I don’t think I could teach without trying to relate to those students, to engage with them and relate to what they find interesting and bring that into the class. Similarly with my books, I listen to what they’re talking about. I’m not a teenager and haven’t been for a very long time, so it has to come from them! If it’s important to them, it becomes important to me because I can’t teach otherwise and then I want to put those interests in books so it opens up conversations to a wider audience.Miranda McKearney: Wow, that’s incredibly powerful. It’s time for questions. This doesn’t feel like nearly long enough!Robin Banerjee: I know!Miranda McKearney: We’re going to invite Laura from EmpathyLab to join us, and Laura had been collecting the questions that have been coming in. So Laura do you want to chuck our panellists some questions?Laura Scott: Yes, there’s been some really interesting questions. I’m going to open up the floor for these two questions. Both are very topical at the moment. The first one, Pik Rawlings commented that ‘It is interesting that the youth are experiencing empathy due to the social media exposure to the tragic death of George Floyd. Could the panel discuss how the Black Lives Matter movement and its presence on social media relate to empathy. That’s the first question.The second question is from Katy who is from one of our partner schools in Wales, and she talks about the pandemic at the moment. She asks “can you recommend any ideas for empathy-boosting socially-distanced games and activities you can do with pupils in school?Miranda McKearney: Oh wow, those are two very different questions! Who would like to start?Robin Banerjee: Well can I say something about the first one, because it is something that is really important to me, and I’m sure to everybody on the panel. We’re in such an extraordinary situation where so many different things have come together in 2020 and I think we’re all reflecting on our lives and society. To me it feels like, maybe it’s not a guarantee, but I feel like there’s a tremendous potential that this is a turning point. I think empathy does have a really big role to play here. To my mind when we start talking about the hugely important work that’s being carried around all across social media and of course and in everyday life in all the extraordinary and powerful protests we’ve been seeing around the world, there’s something in there which seems to me to be about the boundary between ‘self’ and ‘other’ which is dissolving. We’re beginning to recognise that actually, the categories we put ourselves and other people into – sometimes unwittingly, sometimes not even in a blatant or explicit way, but we do it – that we are beginning to ask ourselves, actually what do these mean? Are we really separated from these ‘other’ categories? And is it the case that people who are in our category deserve more attention than whatever we call the ‘other’ category? It seems to me what has been powerful here is that we are engaging in real time in a very, very powerful process of perspective taking, where we’re trying to understand each other. It’s not easy, because we don’t share each other’s history. But we are finding a human connection and recognising something in a universal sense about either the horrors that have occurred in the past and are still accumulating every single day in the black community, and how they connect with our lives and how we can’t just separate ourselves off and say ‘ you know what, that is ‘other’, that’s beyond the boundary and that’s a different category to me, it’s not my problem, I’m not going to think about it’. Now we’re saying ‘actually you know what, it’s our problem, it’s all of us because we are human beings and we are connecting with each other’.I think empathy has such a powerful role to play in it. I don’t know if that made sense to you but I think there is something very powerful about ‘self’ vs ‘other’ and how that’s shifting at the moment and I think empathy has got a role to play in that.Miranda McKearney: I’m always so interested to hear the psychologist’s take on things. Muhammad would you like to say anything on this?Muhammad Khan: I’d like to say that one of my resolutions was that I want to do more listening than talking. I think it’s really important at this point in time that we listen to what black people are saying. I’m a person of colour and I have experienced racism, but it’s going to be a different perspective to what black people are saying. This has been boiling away for a very long time and it is a shame that it’s had to get to this stage where people are so angry they’re having to protest and there are heightened tensions, but this has been ignored for far too long so I’m really glad it’s finally being forced upon people that we have to have this discussion now and we can’t go back to the way things were before. We have to make things fairer.Cressida Cowell: Robin, are you thinking that it’s actually the pandemic that has made people have that joined experience, that you’re hoping, and that my goodness I’m hoping with you, that joined experience will make people more likely to empathise? And that these two things are related? Or do you think this is just a thing that people feel like just has got to change and they’re unrelated? I want to believe things will change, and you have to look at the past and Gandhi and other moments that happened where things did change and I hope that this is going to be one of them. I always want to travel hopefully.Robin Banerjee: Yeah absolutely. We have a whole constellation of factors that are coming together in 2020, it does seem to be a momentous year. I wonder in the future what historians and in everyday life laypeople will make of 2020. It feels, as we’re living through it, that we’re going through an extraordinarily turbulent time when some very important things are happening. I think what Muhammad said about the importance of listening during this time is absolutely crucial. As for the question of the pandemic at the moment and what that’s doing, I think there is a real challenge about how we connect with other people during this time. If we all think about ourselves in a very individualistic way and think ‘for me, what’s the impact on my life?’, if we don’t allow that blurring of boundary between ‘self’ and ‘other’ and only think in terms on the impact for me right now, then I think the whole experience would be totally different. I think in some cases in recent weeks that has been a big thing we think of. Are we considering the world from an empathetic perspective where we think of all of us being in the same space as human beings, even though we have dramatically different histories, dramatically different life circumstances, but we are all human and we have that connection in place? Or are we just prepared to put up walls around us, and we know with recent current affairs there’s a whole thing about people literally putting walls up around them.I think one of the difficulties, Muhammad you were saying it has been a long time coming and we should have been able to deal with this sooner, and I completely agree with you about that. One of the interesting things about it though, if you look at the kind of society that we have, I think, and this very much comes through in child development work, so much of what we do in supporting our own children’s development is helping them and encouraging them, explicitly sometimes, to carve out their own identity, to be an individual. Who are you going to be? How are you going to prove yourselves? Whether that’s proving yourself in exams, getting the right qualifications, having the right job, having the right stuff. It’s all about you as an individual. Sometimes I think that carries a risk as it makes people build walls around themselves. As soon as you put walls up around yourself, there’s a real problem because you don’t pay attention to the needs and the concerns of other human beings. You’re only focussing on people like yourself, the people you allow through your wall. So I think maybe the pandemic, and certainly I think the outrage that we all share at the moment in relation to the really atrocious, brutal police killings of black people including George Floyd, I think what that might be doing, at some level, is making us at least think about the walls that are around us. And think about maybe taking some of those bricks down and making connections with other people.Miranda McKearney: Oh, what a rallying cry that is. Guys we’re running out of time and we must answer Katy’s question. Laura, could you just remind us what it was?Laura Scott: Yeah of course, it’s from Katy who is from one of our partner schools in Wales, and she asks “can you recommend any ideas for empathy-boosting socially-distanced games and activities you can do with pupils in school?Cressida Cowell: Can I leap in and say I’m going to cheat? But I’m going to say…books! Reading books with children. This is all just solidifying in mind, absolutely what Robin was saying about what happens with empathy, how you have to experience what it might be like to be somebody else, but then you have to act on it. That’s why I love Onjali’s book The Boy at the Back of the Class so much. Because the children in the classroom act on their empathy to Ahmed. And that’s all presented not in a lecture-y way to a child, it’s just presented as a joyful thing, as they’re enjoying the book. So books are very complex, wonderful things that can address all of these things that we’ve been talking about in a joyful way that children can absorb without feeling that they’re being told. So I would say, I am cheating a little, but that’s the best empathy-building exercise you can do. I’m always trying to say, teachers please, because I know so many teachers are so pressed for time that they don’t have time in their schedule to read for ten minutes with their class, let alone ten minutes a day, maybe not even in a week. I’m just trying to say, it can be so valuable, that act of reading a book. You’ve talked about it Muhammad, even with older children, secondary school children, that act of sharing a book can be so important for building empathy, and in children’s learning, and developing their creativity and intelligence as well as empathy. So reading!Miranda McKearney: Yes! Katy, I think you have your perfect answer. I feel like everybody here and everybody on Facebook should go away for a weekend and really chew through these issues. Really big stuff.So I need to start to draw things to a close, we’re getting towards the end of our hour. But I can’t end without doing two things, and this is very relevant to what we’ve been talking about which is how are we going to – all of us and encouraging the children in our lives – to put empathy into action. One of the things that Onjali was doing at the end of empathy Day with Sita Brahmachari, was sharing Empathy Resolutions. They’ve been going up in windows everywhere. Mine is to listen 100%. I find it really difficult to listen 100%, I’m always trying to do a million other things at the same time, and I’m always far too busy dispensing advice, so I’m really going to practice listening 100%. In a minute I’m going to ask these three for their Empathy Resolutions. I just wanted to share there’s been so many amazing ones coming through from children and there was one I really liked, and I think it was from Wales and it was ‘to be an empathy hero I’m going to listen to others, understand others’ feelings and never look down on people.’ That is that empathy generation! Those kids are amazing! So Muhammad, what is yours?Muhammad Khan: Okay, mine is slightly greedy in that I have three! My first resolution is grocery shopping for my elderly neighbours, and I’ve already started doing that. My second one is donating to our local food bank. My third one is doing more listening and less talking, which I’ve already mentioned. So similar to you Miranda.Miranda McKearney: Are allowed to talk to each other though sometimes?Muhammad Khan: Just occasionally!Miranda McKearney: Robin, what is yours?Robin Banerjee: Mine follows on really nicely what you said Miranda and what Muhammad said at the end about listening more. Mine is to tune in. You know what I was saying earlier about how children learn to tune in to each other and make that connection on a psychological level? One thing I’ve realised in the crazy busyness of everyday life, and I seem to be spending hours and hours on Zoom calls and Microsoft Teams calls every day, is that it’s too easy to tune out. One of the things that I want to do, and it’s my Empathy Resolution, is to make sure that when I’m connecting with someone, that I actually get myself into a space, give myself the time to then be tuned into them. I think that’s a really important aspect of making that empathic connection. So tuning in.Miranda McKearney; Lovely. Cressida?Cressida Cowell: I like all of your ones! I’m going to do all of your ones! My one was: ‘I’m going to continue to read and share books about experiences different from my own.’Miranda McKearney: Yes, yes, oh yes. Yes, and yes again! Brilliant!Cressida Cowell: I have a whole pile of books here!Miranda McKearney: So finally, my final thing is that I really have to say thank you. I hate those things where you have endless thank-yous, but there are some people we really have to thank. So, Cressida, Muhammad, Robin – you are really, really amazing. Thank you. I know we can’t hear the audience on Facebook, but I hope you can hear a virtual clap.Secondly, I’d like to say thank you to the audience, because I know it will be chock-a-block with our partners, teachers, librarians, all sorts of people doing incredible empathy work out there in the community. We see you.And then to the incredible authors and illustrators who led Empathy Day today. Videos from their bedrooms, empathy charades, Rob Biddulph with an empathy draw-along. They stepped up at such short notice to lead an empathy drive and I think it will have really lasting results.And then I have to say thank you to the EmpathyLab team, I might get a bit choked up here. They are truly awesome, they’ve been up all night loading videos nearly everybody is a volunteer. It’s the tiniest, tiniest of teams and they are truly awesome.If you’d like to help EmpathyLab do more, please get in touch with me. We are the tiniest of organisations, with the tiniest of budgets! We need everything from a sponsor with a million pounds, to more activist partners like the Scouts who have just come on board this year. These are the contact details. Our website is empathylab.uk and the Twitter handle is @empathylabukSo, let us resolve to make every day an empathy day. If you live or work with children, as Cressida has said, simply reading and talking about books through an empathy lens is a really great way forward and a very powerful springboard for helping them develop their empathy skills in a very natural way. Then to put that into action, there’s lots and lots of help on our website, so do use it, we’d love you to.Robin Banerjee: Miranda, can I just interrupt for one second, because there’s another very, very important thank you to say. That is of course, to the whole of the EmpathyLab team but especially to you. None of this would be happening without you and we are so grateful to have the work that you’ve put in, the energy that you’ve put in, and let me also be really clear, the empathy you bring to it every single day. So thank you very much.Miranda McKearney: Thanks Robin, you’ve made me cry!So, with all of you, we’re going to drive an empathy revolution. Let’s go do it. ................
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