May 14, 2015
This is the week of Advanced Placement testing across the nation and at MPA. For the last several days, students have been taking the AP exams in the Porter Conference Room next to my office. The AP English and Composition exam alone will take students five hours to complete. Advanced Placement courses and tests have a high degree of rigor built into them and lead to success in college.
However, I wonder whether we devote enough time fostering the Emotional Quotient, EQ, of our children as we do attending to their IQ? According to a recent study from Harvard University, 96 percent of parents say they want to raise ethical, caring children, and cite the development of moral character as “very important, if not essential.” However, 80 percent of the youth surveyed reported that their parents “are more concerned about achievement or happiness than caring for others.” What do we as parents and educators do to help our children develop empathy and become more caring and compassionate?
One shining example of how MPA succeeds at this is our fourth grade play, “Social Skills: How to Interact with Human Beings.” Led by Theater Director Melinda Moore, fourth graders learned lessons on how to positively interact with their peers and shared them with others through music and dance. Key lines and messages of the play included:
- You don’t have to be friends with everyone, but you should always strive to be friend-LY!
- It’s not okay to go online and heckle, tease or vent.
- No matter where I go, you see, it’s ME I represent.
- Friendships work much better when we think of others first.
The presentation was delightful to watch as the fourth graders sang, danced, and delivered their lines with confidence and enthusiasm. “I have to say that I had tears in my eyes and the biggest smile on my face during the performances yesterday,” said Mrs. Moore. “Sitting in front of my fourth grade students and seeing the growth in every single one of them – it was a reminder of the value of a whole child education, and more specifically, an arts education.” The play has been so well received that students have taken the show on the road, performing at several area public elementary schools.
According to author and child psychologist Michele Borba, studies show that the ability to empathize with others affects childrens’ health and authentic happiness as well as their emotional, social, and cognitive abilities. “Empathy activates conscience and moral reasoning, improves happiness, curbs bullying and aggression, enhances kindness and peer inclusiveness, reduces prejudice and racism, promotes heroism and moral courage, and boosts relationship satisfaction. Empathy is a key ingredient of resiliency, the foundation of trust, the benchmark of humanity, and core to everything that makes a society civilized.”
Academic rigor and intellectual ambition are at the core of our mission at MPA. But an MPA education goes far beyond academic goals. With a focus on not just what we know, but who we are, character development—grounded in the teaching and modeling of equity and inclusion—reaches students of all divisions. Woven throughout the curriculum and embedded in co-curricular opportunities, character development is cultivated through collaborative tasks, creating an environment where students are respected, valued, and heard.
