Classroom Culture

Instill a sustainable, positive culture in your classroom with these lessons and activities.

Elementary - 8 Activities for Building a Compassionate Classroom Culture

Middle School - 7 Activities to Foster Decision-Making and Character Skills

High School - 6 Ways to Embed Mental Wellness into Classroom Culture

In love, we fall. We're struck, we're crushed, we swoon. We burn with passion. Love makes us crazy and makes us sick. Our hearts ache, and then they break. Talking about love in this way fundamentally shapes how we experience it, says writer Mandy Len Catron. In this talk for anyone who's ever felt crazy in love, Catron highlights a different metaphor for love that may help us find more joy and less suffering in it.

Introduce core SEL competencies to teach students how to practice compassion and empathy, identify emotions, and exercise growth mindset.

Compassion is an important social-emotional skill that begins to develop in early childhood and is essential for lifelong health and success. Learning compassion increases a student's sense of wellbeing and improves the learning environment for all learners. By developing empathy in children, educators lay the groundwork for long-term understanding of diversity, equity and inclusion in the classroom(opens in new tab) and in life. Compassion education is important(opens in new tab) because it helps to build key social-emotional learning competencies, such as:

- development of the understanding of self
- social awareness, and
- relationship skills

With interactive online activities and robust offline lesson plans, The Compassion Project provides invaluable resources for teaching empathy in the classroom. The Lower Elementary Compassion Course has three online lessons; Compassion Playground, EmpathEyes, and Mindful Maze.

Sun West School Division: To access The Compassion Project: Lower Elementary, log into EVERFI through your clever account.

"The Compassion Project is a web-based learning platform focusing on social and emotional learning (SEL) strengths like compassion and empathy. It begins with a tutorial, which students can always access by clicking the help button in the upper left corner. Each lesson starts with a pre-quiz to assess what students already know. After that, a bright and colorful two-minute video with cartoon characters describes the topic for the lesson. Four characters (Tye, Brandon, Alex, and David) narrate the videos in story format. After the video plays, there are reflection questions in the format of a text messenger app that students can click to answer. Characters introduce the SEL skills by describing what the skill (e.g., compassion) looks, sounds, and feels like.

Each skill has three activity lessons. For compassion, students identify when someone needs help and learn how to act with kindness. For empathy, students "see" life through the perspective of different characters. For mindfulness, students practice a breathing technique. Teachers can then provide debriefing and offline extension activities.

The teacher dashboard allows instructors to manage students, add classes, and re-teach when needed. Quiz grades are automatically uploaded and students can access their score by hovering over each lesson." (Common Sense Media)

Sun West School Division: To access The Compassion Project: Upper Elementary, log into EVERFI through your clever account.

Leslie Dodson's research focuses on the intersection of micro-enterprise and digital technologies in developing communities. She brings more than 25 years of experience and insight from a career as a broadcast journalist to the academic community. Leslie has been posted to Tokyo, London, New York and throughout Latin America, where she covered high-tech and bio-tech for CNBC and MSNBC, and international finance and the global emerging markets for CNN, NHK-Tokyo and Reuters. Along with covering international business, Leslie has reported on environmental issues from the Arctic, India, Nepal, Ecuador, Burundi and Uganda. A quiz, thought provoking question, and links for further study are provided to create a lesson around the 21-minute video. Educators may use the platform to easily "Flip" or create their own lesson for use with their students of any age or level.

Courses for ALL grades and ages!

ELEMENTARY
*Word Force - teach reading skills to Gr 1-2
*Compassion Project - teach empathy Gr. 2-5
*Healthier Me - Gr. 1-4
*Vault - Financial Literacy Gr. 4-6
*FutureSmart - citizenship & finance Gr. 6-8
*Ignition - Digital Citizenship Gr. 6-9
*SaveUp - Saving for the Future Gr. 6-8
*Future Goals - Hockey - STEM Gr. 4-7
*Sustainability Foundations - many options Gr. 5-9
*Endeavor - Career Exploration Gr. 6 to 9
*Character Playbook Gr. 7-9

HIGH SCHOOL
*Get Digital - Safety in the Metaverse
*Venture - entrepreneurship
*Data Science
*Money Moves
*Vaping
*Prescription Drugs
*Mental Wellness
*Honor Code - Bullying Prevention
*Alcohol Edu
*Financial Literacy
*Financing Higher Education
*College & Career Readiness

Access all Everfi programs via the Clever portal at Sun West.
For help launching programs with your students contact Jesus Grisanti Clavier

These websites/apps for cultivating compassion are completely free! Teaching ToleranceThe WondermentThe Compassion Project Learn Storm SDG's in ActionCharacter Playbook Story Corps Sit with Us The Harry Potter Alliance Liyla and the Shadows of War 

Resources
Free Activities organized by age

*under education offerings....
168 activities to explore the 12 scientifically proven attributes of kindness.
Activities for prior-to-school, early years, primary school, middle school and senior students
Ambassador video’s
Teacher resources including attribute posters for the classroom and teacher support documents

*Be sure to explore the Resources tab at the top of the pages for supporting posters and the resource library

Self-compassion involves being aware of our own pain and suffering, and understanding that this is a hard, but normal human experience. Directing feelings of kindness and care towards ourselves, and focusing our attention and energy on how we might alleviate our pain, are also crucial components of self-compassion. Self-compassion can bring great benefits for our mental health and well-being. Particularly, self-compassion can activate our soothe system, which calms the threat and drive systems. Our threat and drive systems tend to be overactive for many of us much of the time, and responsible for the difficult emotions we may be struggling with (e.g., anxiety, anger, depression). The opposite of self-compassion is self-criticism. This very negative thinking style often links to difficult emotions and mental health problems. Those who are highly self-critical particularly need to develop the ability to relate to themselves in a compassionate way.