Social Emotional Learning class on Compassion

Social-Emotional Learning is an important aspect that needs to be a part of our classes. During one such activity students of Grade 4 learned about compassion. Most often when we talk about kindness, compassion, acceptance we only tend to look towards others and our behavior towards them, but we forget to look inside and be kind to ourselves.

While learning about how do the young ones treat themselves, I was surprised to find how some of them were being too hard on themselves. One of the students shared that he is afraid of looking into the mirror as he is not happy with the way he looks, other shared that she is too harsh on herself when she is not able to achieve the goal set for herself and feels agitated and frustrated. Hence, we focussed on how we can be compassionate towards ourselves and learn to love our looks, our strengths, and our weaknesses. Failure is just a stepping stone towards success and each being is beautiful. We also realised that inculcating positive thoughts and practicing positive affirmations will help us move forward on this journey and help us to be SELF COMPASSIONATE as you cannot love others if you do not love yourself.

While the students of Grade 4 taught valuable lessons to each other, I would like to emphasise that all of us go through such negative thoughts and behaviours at one time or the other in our lives. Thus, we should also remember that an empty glass cannot quench the thirst of others. So, start by being compassionate to the person in the mirror first.