Interpreting emotions through multiple lenses

Last week, I continued to work with a brand new group of students on "Say What?!" Since we decided that it was appropriate to spend more time getting to know each and the technology (XO laptops) we would be using, our day was dedicated to a discussion of empathy, how it helps us work together, and then starting on Scratch. During out discussion of empathy, I had a student come up to demonstrate how an empathic interaction might take place (i.e., I see that he is sad and I act to help him or I feel sad as well). I whispered in his ear to pretend as though he was sad and then proceeded to have a discussion about his emotion and the possible ways I might respond.

Right in the middle of my "great example" a few of the students disagreed that my model was, in fact sad. This gave me an idea. What would be a good way to use this instance to demonstrate how emotions can be interpreted through multiple lenses -- understanding perspectives, after all is the goal of the program. We began playing a sort of emotional charades. A student would come up, act out an emotion, and the rest would record their responses to this particular act. Then, one-by-one, students reported out their interpretations. Interestingly, with 10 people guessing we came up with up to three different ideas about what was being emoted. Students politely argued back and forth over who was correct and sometimes even tried to convince the person doing the charade that he or she was not actually doing that emotion.

The best moment for me was a student saying that, in one round of the game, he knew that his peer was expressing anger because they were in class together and he had seen it before. "Thank you!," was all I could say. He very simply said a big part of what I wanted them to see -- While emotions can be interpreted in many different ways, the better you know someone, the better you are at recognizing correctly what is being expressed. The more adept you are at this recognition, the easier it is to relate and interact with someone.

Part of our goal in "Say What?!" is to help students work better together. If we can continue to devise strategies for helping them tune into others, the the more likely we are to head down that path. All in all, this third iteration of the program is going well as we see students coming to understand each other and themselves.