Social awareness… being able to “get outside” of yourself and understand and appreciate others and see things from their perspectives and experiences.
In class: “Showing concern for the feelings of others” is something that pops up in my classroom often. Daily, I check in with the students to see how they’re doing and if they say “well” or “happy” I often just let it go, but if they have a different response (“sad” or “excited,” say), I will follow up and see if there’s something more that we need to know. This, I believe, helps us all be aware of what the others in the class are feeling that day and it may, hopefully, help us to temper our behaviors towards them. We saw this “in action” at lunch recess the other day – one of the students was having a rough day and it was obvious that they were upset. As the other students passed this student (the others were doing laps around the track), several of them stopped to check in on the one student, offer words of support, a quick back rub, etc. It was so comforting to see that the other students cared about this classmate who was having a rough go of it that day.
In class: “Showing concern for the feelings of others” is something that pops up in my classroom often. Daily, I check in with the students to see how they’re doing and if they say “well” or “happy” I often just let it go, but if they have a different response (“sad” or “excited,” say), I will follow up and see if there’s something more that we need to know. This, I believe, helps us all be aware of what the others in the class are feeling that day and it may, hopefully, help us to temper our behaviors towards them. We saw this “in action” at lunch recess the other day – one of the students was having a rough day and it was obvious that they were upset. As the other students passed this student (the others were doing laps around the track), several of them stopped to check in on the one student, offer words of support, a quick back rub, etc. It was so comforting to see that the other students cared about this classmate who was having a rough go of it that day.