Empathy Day teaches Weiser third-graders about the challenges some peers confront
Third-graders at Pioneer Elementary School in Weiser learned about some of the challenges and struggles their fellow students face in learning during “Empathy Day.”
Stations were set up in five classrooms recently to let students experience what it is like to be vision, speech or hearing impaired or unable to speak the language.
Members of the Weiser Lions Club set up a demonstration that allowed students to try to accomplish tasks without sight. The students were blindfolded then led to a table where they were asked to identify objects and stack blocks.
Members of the Lions Club assisted the students with the tasks. The students found that one of the more difficult things to do while blindfolded was to try to button a shirt or stack some blocks.
The exercise in developing understanding for the vision impaired fits with one of the core missions of the Lions. The international organization is known for its efforts to promote vision and sight and has for more than 100 years.
The third-graders spent about 15 minutes at each station to learn and experience what others live with before moving to the next station. There were demonstrations in speech and learning difficulties, hearing, upper body, eyesight and lower body and foreign language.
Counselor Denise Lundberg has organized Empathy Day at the elementary school for the past 20 years or so. Some classrooms had group sessions, while others, such as the vision impaired, had hands-on activities for the students.
The feedback she gets from students is that they learned a lot about disabilities and how they affect the way some students read or spell or pronounce words. When they see other students struggling with different things in the classroom they have a better understanding of why.
Principal Wade Wilson said the students are receptive to getting the opportunity to experience the challenges that other students face in school. Promoting empathy and compassion for others is a good thing right now in society, he said.
At one table, students were introduced to a learning disability like dyslexia by trying to write their names and read from a book while looking into a mirror. It was not an easy task for most of the students.
Volunteer parent Christina Aburto discussed learning challenges with the students.
She said some students see words on the board as jumbled images and that can lead to difficulty with reading and writing.
It’s not that they are not smart, she told the students, but their brain is not connecting to their hands and eyes correctly.
“Can you imagine having to read like that all day long?” she asked the third-graders sitting around the table.
In another classroom, a teacher from the Idaho School for the Deaf and Blind talked to a group of students about how important hearing is and how life is different for deaf people.
Students were also taught another language other than English by adults in another classroom.
The students who knew the language felt special to hear their native language, while others who don’t speak the language found it difficult to understand.
Lundberg said the many parents who volunteered to help out are invaluable in helping out during the Empathy Day.
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Weiser, ID 83672
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