Here in St. Stephen’s we are proud to participate in the Roots of Empathy programme! We look forward to seeing the hugely successful programme running in our school every year. The Roots of Empathy programme began in 1996 when Mary Gordon, child advocate and parenting expert, started the program with 150 kids in Toronto, Canada. Her goal was to help create a society where people were kind to one another and thought it would be best to start with children who are just developing their social skills.
The programme teaches the class to understand other people’s feelings – and the class is taught by a baby. By watching and seeing how the baby reacts, we will learn about how to deal with our own feelings. The Roots of Empathy programme runs across 9 themes, with each theme broken into 3 parts – the pre-visit, the Family Visit, and the post-visit. We extend our continuing thanks to the Roots of Empathy organisation, with whose permission we are able to use the RoE logo on our school’s website. Read more about the programme on the Roots of Empathy website* (*opens in a new window).
Unfortunately, the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 cut the programme short for our then-5th Class, but this wonderful programme returned in September 2022.
See photos from the different years of Roots of Empathy on the links below:
> Roots of Empathy 2024/2025
> Roots of Empathy 2023/2024
> Roots of Empathy 2022/2023
> Roots of Empathy 2014/2015 – unfortunately, due to a technical fault, we do not have any photos from the Roots of Empathy programme that ran in 2014/2015.
