LearnKind’s reach has extended to all 50 states and over 80 countries over five years. One Paris-based art teacher is using the lessons in her school, and for senior citizens, to learn empathy and feel comfortable expressing themselves freely.
Louise Damiano, 1-8 art teacher at Ecole Elémentaire Ferdinand Flocon in France, doesn’t have a set curriculum for her classes, but wanted students to understand the importance of support in the arts.
To assist her educational planning, she has been utilizing LearnKind – particularly the in-depth lesson plan on building empathy – and the results have been amazing.
Damiano introduced a playful drawing “warmup” to the students, and explained that they would be gifting their art to someone to make them smile. When the students were finished, she invited them to share who they made the drawing for and why they think that person could use a smile.
“After implementing parts of the empathy module I have noticed that my students are better at noticing when their peers are getting frustrated, and they come get me or offer to help,’ Damiano said.
One story in particular touched Damiano’s heart.
“I have a very reserved student; she’s very good at drawing but tends to keep to herself and not interact with the rest of her group very much. She is particularly good at drawing trees, and in the first year I had her in my group I showed her tricks to draw even better trees,” she recalls.
“During a class this year, the girl sitting next to her was trying to draw a tree and getting frustrated after several attempts. I was about to step in, when my reserved student started gently explaining how to draw, step by step, in a calm and patient tone and repeating almost word for word what I had told her over a year before. I was very touched to see the exchange.”
Damiano practices what she teaches, too. She tells the story of another art student who was always full of energy, and was getting into trouble with some of his other teachers. She knew she wanted to encourage the boy’s artistic abilities and focused on paper engineering with him.
To thank her, he made her a three-tiered paper cake.
“It was the first time he was told he was great at something that wasn’t soccer. This picture always makes me smile,” she said.
After seeing how powerful the LearnKind lessons were for her students, Damiano decided to utilize them with her non-profit work at Art-Exprim – an artistic and cultural association that offers visual art workshops to the elderly.
And the results were clear: LearnKind works for all ages.
“I used the empathy exercise in a retirement home and noticed a huge change in the residents’ behavior. They started helping each other much more freely than before,” Damiano says.
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