Sundre High School students participated in challenges last week to create awareness about empathy and how their actions affect each other.
The challenges included introducing themselves to someone in the school they didn't know, doing good deeds for others and random acts of kindness.
“Initially the ideas came from groups of people that might be affected by other people's behaviour in the school, without people really even knowing,” said Ryan Sande, family wellness worker at the high school. “Like derogatory terms toward minority groups or language that people use that they don't even realize they're doing it, like ‘oh that's so gay'.”
Another challenge the students participated in was wearing a hat to symbolize something important to them, like raising awareness of bullying, cancer or suicide.
It provided the students the opportunity to ask each other why they were wearing that hat, he said.
“It's giving us an opportunity to get to know the students a little bit better, on a deeper level, maybe on something that we didn't realize that they had to deal with,” he said.
“But it also allows us to use it as a teaching tool. There's students that don't think about these things and maybe there's a student that does wear a hat but doesn't know why – like they're wearing a hat because they just want to wear a hat.
“It gets the students thinking about other people.”
The idea was organized through the high school's Leo club. It was the first time the school has hosted “empathy week”.
A performance by Robb Nash coincided with empathy week, which Sande deemed fitting. Nash, as an individual, is a motivational speaker, but Robb Nash is also the name of a band, formerly known as Live on Arrival. The Robb Nash project is to encourage teens to make positive choices.
“I think a week like this gives the students an opportunity to consider others and not just themselves. And I think that's just a good learning tool in general – to help them understand that even if they're going through things and things are happening, maybe by doing something nice for someone else you feel good by doing that,” he said.
The challenges went over well, and because it was a student initiative, there was more student buy-in, he said.
“It's about learning, and learning how to look at things in different ways, and being able to reach out and do things that you're maybe uncomfortable doing.”
