A Daily Kos poll taken on 07/18/22. The question was, Would you participate in a Daily Kos Empathy Circle?
What is for dinner? How are you doing? What is on your mind. If you are new to Street Prophets please introduce yourself below in a comment. This is an Open Thread / Coffee Hour and all topics of conversation are welcome. For today's suggested topic lets consider Empathy Circles.
In last weeks Monday Coffee Hour I introduced the concept of an Empathy Circle and took a poll on how many readers were able to zoom. I discussed the benefits of the process and provided a link to a introduction video. A few days ago I attended a Empathy Circles in Schools session. Jump the fold and I will share a bit of my experience with everyone along with an short explanation of the process.
The Empathy Circle is a very simple concept for improving communication in small groups and can be adapted to large groups. There are four roles for the individuals to assume while conducting an Empathy Circle. There is a facilitator that is trained and initiates the circle by picking the time and the topic. The participants take turns being the speaker and listeners. The forth role is the silent listeners.
The Facilitator starts out by explaining the process. The key observance is reflection. The speaker gets 4 or 5 minutes to speak on the session topic or anything else that is on their mind. The speaker speaks a few sentences and then pauses. The listener then reflects back what they understood the speaker to say. The speaker then indicates they were understood and speaks again. When the time is up the listener becomes the speaker and picks a new listener.
As you can see from the poll taken last week 9% of the respondents said they would not like to use Zoom to attend an Empathy Circle. This is OK because the circles can also be done in person. In fact, Edwin Rutsch, the Founding Director of Center for Building a Culture of Empathy, that is coordinating the circles has a mobile tent and visits physical locations and conducts live in person circles. (More on the live Empathy Tent circles in a future article.)
A free and easy entry point to the Culture of Empathy, if you Zoom, is the Empathy Café. This is where I got started. These are held weekly and everyone is invited to visit and speak. The Empathy Café’s ongoing topic is “Building a Culture of Empathy.” But, as speaker you can speak about anything. <Link to Empathy Circles Schedule> Just view the calendar for a Café meeting time and join Zoom with the link provided at the indicated time.
At the Café I found that I like to bring an interesting story or metaphor to the group. And I also mentioned these articles I’m writing for Street Prophets. It is my small way of helping the empathy movement. It was through the Café that I learned about the group for bringing empathy into schools. There are often other groups formed with topics like, politics, religion, identity, and restorative justice. If you visit the Center for Building a Culture of Empathy’s YouTube channel you can view over 100 videos of Empathy Circles on many different topics.
What is interesting to me is the evolution of the circles. While the reflection and facilitator elements stay the same the balance between lecture on the topic and the time for speakers and listeners vary. The session I attended last Thursday had a very short introduction and links to supporting documents was provided in the text chat. The session in the video below held over a year ago a long introduction and spent 45 minutes reviewing supporting documents and also provided links.
The 45 minutes of the above video is an introduction to the process for new attendees and introductions of everyone. This was followed by a review of support for Empathy Circles in the California Core Curriculum.
… This is from the California department of education and i just want to focus what they talk about the importance of social emotional learning. So why am I giving you this. Not everybody lives in California but this is based on international research. And so if we have this in California there's probably something in the education code wherever you are that talks about something like this. And so this is basically institutional support for this sort of learning and what they say is social emotional learning reflects the critical role of positive relationships and emotional connections in the learning process and helps students develop a range of skills they need for school and life. This is being implemented in small ways …
The session continues with the facilitator summarizing an informal assessment strategy.
… We're going to use informal assessment. And so this is to help you understand when the students or the the adults and staff that you're teaching this to have both the skills and the motivation to do it because that's what is um that's what what motivates us. That's what will get us to to practice it and that's what we want we want this eventually to be a regular practice so there's two again the rationale the two ways that people motivate us to do things. The first one is sort of an external demand uh it's kind of coercive uh do this because i said so you want to get this degree you want to get this job do it. Okay! What we are trying to do, although sometimes external demand i think is is a useful tool, I'm not saying throw it out but we are trying to develop an intrinsic motivation …
This informal evaluation theme was expanded during the session by the speakers asking questions during their turn speaking. However, the response was to the questions was delayed as the reflection is not answering the questions. A new speaker then can answer any question.
The informal evaluation measures success if the student starts using critical listening and reflection spontaneously. With out it being demanded of them. Personally, after exposure the process I have found my self spending more time asking those I’m responsible for if I understood them correctly, by reflecting. Before my focus was hearing their demands and doing something to help them. Now I do things for them, physically, and slow down to reassure them in the moment that I really care about understanding them, this is spiritual.
The remainder of the session is devoted to each member of the group getting an opportunity to speak and listen. Just before the end the whole group comes together and each person is given an opportunity to make a closing statement. I must leave it up to the reader to view some of the videos to see how the individuals are transformed by the experience.
The topic introduction is important, but the practice of speaking and being reflected is the real substance of the circles. All of the participants have thoughts about the topic. They share their reason for attending. They ask questions and state problems during the session. It is the speaking and the reflection that absorbs one as a silent witness that fills in the “missing” parts of the introductory topic explanation.
The facilitator keeps everyone on track and makes sure everyone has an opportunity to be heard and reflected. There is also another important aspect to the circles. One can just talk about anything. Many attendees are isolated or work in highly structured environment. These circles may be the only support they receive or the only place anyone has every listened to them.
I almost want to say the heart of the circle is emotional support everyone gains and not the topic and all the logical and academic documentation backing up the topic. Over the course of the typical 2 hour session I have watched many participants open up and state their burdens. No one had answers and no one offered sympathy. What was offered was a group of people that listened. And somehow the burden on the speaker was lessened a little.
I wish I could covey the wisdom in shared in the reflecting part of the session, but all I can suggest is one might view some videos. Just seeing and hearing persons from around the world and different ages share as equals was affirming of my sense of community. And helped me keep my spirits up.
I remarked in the last session I attended that even the silence was powerful. For many it is hard to speak in front of an audience. Just having the group respectfully wait for the speaker to choose the right words for me was something special. Just imagine stopping time for moment so those with speaking challenges could catch up. It was magic seeing and hearing a group of strangers being kind and considerate of everyone present.
Thank You,
Jonathan Gordon (JON)
