I’m a dreamer of sorts.  I believe that every day we have the potential to live in an increasingly sympathetic world — a world where we not just tolerate our differences, but a world where we accept and celebrate each other.   Some days I see progress, and other days I watch the news on TV.

I remember very few things from my teacher training in the mid-80s.   One thing I actually DO remember spending a TON of time learning and implementing was a teaching model of Science education.  The model outlined various actions to be accomplished — the ‘boxes’ that we were required to fill-in were called ‘teacher actions’ and ‘student actions’.  It was elegantly simple, but also particularly time consuming to write out for every lesson.  At the time, it seemed to make some good sense as it laid out the lesson really well — and for a newly minted teacher, I was grateful for the structure it provided me and my lesson planning.

However, even back then I felt like it was missing the point in a big way —  it never considered the students as people with different traits, needs, emotions and perceptions.  It was completely missing the importance of empathy.

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