Walk in Their Shoes: Promoting Empathy and Understanding through Service

3. Project Overview "First of all," he said, "if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view […] until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” Atticus’ advice here is very similar to the wise saying about seeking to understand people rather than judging them, “you have to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes”. The point of the saying is to develop compassion and empathy for other people, especially those whose lives seem drastically different from our own. This helps us to move away from automatically passing judgment on others.

4. When we consider our essential questions for the year: How can art, specifically literature, be used as resistance and “how can we use our knowledge to make a difference”, it is important to understand that education without morals, without compassion, and without action based on the two, is useless. What good do we do the world if we keep our knowledge and resources to ourselves? The culminating project for To Kill a Mockingbird will be a service learning one. You will be required to “go out” in order to complete it. You will need two shoes that can be decorated and/or written on. You might decide to simply make a pair of shoes. Next, you will choose a person whose life is drastically different from your own. Think of your privileges, gender, ethnicity, age, opportunities, etc, and identify someone whose life projects the opposite. However, this should be someone who you are comfortable speaking with, and someone who is comfortable speaking candidly with you. You will need to ask the person’s permission to interview them During the interview (and the questions will need to be approved by Ms. Pitts), you will ask questions that will allow you to truly understand life from this person’s perspective. It might be a good idea for you to record the interview because you will need information from it for the next part,

5. Shoe Decoration • Decorating the shoes: • One shoe should be full of information gathered from your interview. It should include your reflections, thoughts and feelings after you spoke to the person, it should also include information about who you interviewed, as well as insightful quotes from the interview. • The other shoe should be decorated with words, phrases, and quotes that human beings need to hear, embrace, and live in order to be more empathetic and understanding of other people. Words might include: “justice” “recognizing privilege”, “tolerance”, “equality”, etc.

6. Action and Reflection • Action: • The final component requires you to act. Based on your experience, you should determine a tangible action that you will take and do in order to promote empathy and understanding in your school community. One that will be arranged for you is to participate in a day of service at your school where you will assume the roles that are often overlooked. • You might also decide on this day to participate in a shoe drive or some type of fundraiser. • Reflection • You will then write about your experiences in a reflection.

7. Deadlines and Due Dates Thursday, April 21st– the person who are interviewing and the interview questions must be typed and submitted. Thursday, April 28th– completed shoes are due!