Educators are asked to manage many demands at the same time, and when confronted with challenging behavior from students or other difficulties in the classroom, it is not easy to know how to respond. As teacher Kyle Redford writes in this Education Week article, simply listening to others and engaging them with “compassionate curiosity” often leads us to understand both the problems and the potential solutions. “Compassionate curiosity” involves engaging with students by actively listening to them and seeking to understand their perspectives and circumstances, making us more effective educators and better able to successfully guide our students’ learning and development.
Toolkit Library/
To understand your students, use “compassionate curiosity.”
Making connections:
Principled Innovation asks us to work with others and recognize the limits of our own knowledge so that we can better understand and tackle the complex issues our communities face.
Possibility thinking protocol
Tool
30 minutes
By: Principled Innovation® (PI)
Overcoming the empathy gap: overcoming a societal lack of empathy
Video
14 minutes
By: Fareeha Quayyum, TEDx
Collaborating to end homelessness
Video
10 minutes
By: Principled Innovation® (PI)
K-5 Card Deck Activity: Intellectual character
Tool
15 minutes
By: Principled Innovation® (PI)
Perspective taking
Video
2 minutes
By: RISE