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University of Georgia education professor Peter Smagorinsky wrote a piece last year about a promising young teacher who chose to leave education. She has now returned to the classroom but in a different Georgia district. In this column, Smagorinsky explains how her...

Often discussed as something that we might do (or perhaps should do) to be a good person, feeling empathetic helps us make connections with others and understand them better. It’s different from having sympathy for someone, which means to look at their suffering from...

The constant need to label and pathologize everything Autistics do is part of what makes people see them and treat them as less than human, and this is a dangerous precedent to set. I remember when my son was first diagnosed, and a old friend came to visit. I had...

Bradford Elementary School in Vermont has been a Changing Perspectives partner for 3 years. In fact, this school was one of Changing Perspectives' first pilot schools. The leadership at Bradford Elementary School saw a need for this curriculum, explains Adam Norwood,...

We’re on a mission to cultivate empathy, but we need your help to keep growing! Recognizing and embracing differences is at the root of the Changing Perspectives mission to plant seeds of change and grow empathy. And this program year, our third, we found ourselves...

Depending on your point of view, Cris Beam’s “I Feel You: The Surprising Power of Extreme Empathy” might seem either laughably behind the times or naïvely, maybe even willfully, ahead — so far beyond our collective horizon as to be pretty darned invisible. After all,...

On the heels of two large Apple investors urging the company to address kids’ phone addiction, many parents may be wondering: How do I know if my child is addicted to his or her smartphone? And how can I prevent problematic overuse? There are reasons for concern. A...

As Changing Perspectives continues to grow and implement our curriculum into more schools, we’re thrilled to get to know more and more educators. One such educator is Sam Starr, school social worker at the Gildersleeve School in Portland, CT. Sam has been a school...

We now recognize empathy as the driving force behind much of human behavior, from social bonding and prenatal care to morality and human rights activism. Only recently, however, have we come to conceptualize empathy as a driving force for learning (and we’re not...

Anxiety can be tough for anyone to deal with, but add in the whirlwind of changes that come with adolescence, and anxiety can feel like an intrusive mind hog that spends way too much time squeezing, surprising and overwhelming anyone it lands on. If anxiety is making...

Casey McGill has been teaching high school English at Craftsbury Academy in Craftsbury, VT for four years and is showing no signs of slowing down! She is especially interested in creating a caring and empathetic environment and is thrilled to implement the Changing...