Beauvoir- The National Cathedral Elementary School

Roots of Empathy

The Beauvoir School has been selected to join the Roots of Empathy program along with four other schools from the DC area.  This consortium of independent, traditional public, and charter schools will participate in a total of 27 classroom lessons focusing on raising the social/emotional competence and increasing empathy in young children.  Empirical research indicates that a rise in empathy has a significant effect in reducing levels of aggression among elementary and middle-schools students.

For nine of the lessons, students are challenged to work with a trained parent and an infant.  In these classes, they will be asked to observe, comment on, and draw conclusions on how the baby is feeling.  This helps the students not only to examine their feelings, but also to learn to recognize the feelings of others and eventually learn how to empathize with those feelings. The goals of the program are to foster the development of empathy and emotional literacy in young children and as a result see an increase in respectful and caring relationships and a reduction in bullying and other aggressive behaviors.