Leading With Compassion
Hi, my name is Susie Fahrer, and I am the Executive Director of Rainbow Community School and Omega Middle School. Several years ago, I ran a workshop in partnership with a friend called “What If We All Just Led with Compassion? That title has stuck with me over the years as an educator, considering all the ways that school has the ability to cultivate compassion within our young people.
Cultivating Compassion at Rainbow
At Rainbow, we have lots of intentional strategies for building the capacity of our children to think, communicate, and learn with compassion. So it all begins in our earliest childhood classrooms and our preschool with a program called the “Zones of Regulation.” This is a program that was adopted at Rainbow because it so beautifully provides a foundation for understanding the emotional experience of a human.
Understanding Emotional Experience in Early Childhood
As you know, we all experience a really wide range of emotions. And for our littlest learners, we really want them to build a relationship to all the ways they express themselves, as well as understanding the nature of each emotion that they experience. So to that end, we make sure that our young students understand that there are no bad emotions.
The Zones of Regulation
There are just emotions that really are not meant to sustain them for long periods of time. So the Zones of Regulation provides a map that’s color-coded and allows our students to see different types of emotions that they experience, and code them to a color. So, for example, sadness might be a blue emotion. While frustration might be a red emotion.
Learning Strategies for Regulation
And really, our goal is to always give them strategies to come back to the more easeful experience of the emotions within a green setting. And so they learn things like breathing. They learn things like pausing and expressing their needs. They learn things like tuning into their body and seeing what their body is telling them that they need.
Building Toward Nonviolent Communication
And all of these pieces begin a really strong foundation that then builds as students matriculate with us and move into a more formal understanding of nonviolent communication. Now, for many of you, you might be familiar with the strategies of nonviolent communication, but this is not just a tool for young people. It’s a tool that all of us adults included at Rainbow Community School practice and utilize regularly.
Emotions, Needs, and Conflict
It allows us to build on the idea of understanding the different types of emotions and matching them to the needs that we have. The reality is that so many times when we experience conflict, it is because our needs are not being met. And one of the nuances of nonviolent communication is this understanding that our needs can never be in conflict with one another.
Practicing Nonviolent Communication on the Playground
It is merely the strategy we’re using to meet those needs. So for our students, when they experience a conflict out on the playground, perhaps they’re playing a game, and someone feels that they are unjustly called out of that game, or “They’re not playing fairly” is often a term we hear across those elementary ages. And maybe they walk away from the game upset, or perhaps they’re told they’re not allowed to play with their friends.
Expressing Feelings and Making Requests
Well, this is all a great experience for our young people to practice nonviolent communication. It asks them to express what they’re feeling. Perhaps they’re feeling disconnection or confusion, or worry because they’re afraid of the impact this conflict has had on their friendships in the classroom. And maybe their need is for a little bit of understanding, or patience, or to be heard, or to have an understanding of the exact rules we’re playing by.
Compassion, Scholarship, and Learning Readiness
And ultimately, they learn to make these requests so that we can build a more inclusive culture for our students. And the capacity for them to move out into the world and build conversations of regulation, support, and clarity. These skills that we’re cultivating in our young people are not just about social-emotional development. They are inherently impacting our students’ ability to be scholars and thinkers.
An Invitation to Visit and Connect
You know, let’s consider for a minute how critical it is for your emotional status to be regulated, for our brains to be grounded in order to truly learn and understand the knowledge that’s being imparted to us in school, in our workplaces, right? And so these skills are enhancing the experience of every child within Rainbow Community School, not only to lead with compassion for themselves and for others, but also to be ready for the powerful learning experiences that come when we are regulated, grounded, and ready for a day of classroom discovery, wonder, and awe. Thank you so much for listening to a little bit about how we cultivate compassion at Rainbow Community School. We welcome for you to visit our school. If you haven’t had a chance to swing by, or if you’re already a member, you know my door is always open to have conversations that further our ability to work in partnership towards cultivating compassion, care, and a culture of belonging.
