Syeisha Byrd has strong connections to the Syracuse City School District. She is a proud graduate of Fowler High School, a member of the superintendent parent board and a mother of three. Her 10-year-old son will be moving on to a Syracuse public middle school, and she says she is “petrified.”

“My son is really small and petite, and now he is going to middle school. I don’t know what to do. I want to homeschool him, but I want to believe in the Syracuse City School District,” said Byrd, director of community engagement for the Office of Engagement Programs at Syracuse University. “It’s tough — schools are tough right now. You have 12-year-old kids bringing knives to school.”

So when a group of Syracuse University and State University New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry students came to her with a proposal for a new community outreach program called Empathy Matters, Byrd was overjoyed.

Empathy Matters’ mission is to teach elementary school children in the Syracuse Public School District what empathy is and why it is important. The founders created a curriculum that includes meditation, puppy therapy and team building exercises, all geared to teach the students how to empathize with one another.

Beginning this February, the group will be working with second graders at H.W. Smith Pre-K–8 School on Tuesdays and Fridays from 1:30–3 p.m.

“We define empathy as being able to put oneself in the emotional shoes of another person,” said Fareya Zubair, a junior biotechnology major at SUNY-ESF and one of the co-founders of Empathy Matters.

When she was a student at Fayetteville-Manlius High School, Zubair saw the need for a program that stresses empathy at its core. She said many students in the Syracuse City School District don’t have stable homes, come from low socioeconomic backgrounds and have behavioral and developmental issues.

“All of these things combined, kids don’t have a sense for what empathy is and don’t understand feeling for other people,” Zubair said. “A lot of studies show that once students are taught empathy, not only can they feel for other people, but they can become better leaders, because they can put themselves in other people’s shoes.”

The group will work with “red and yellow flag students” — kids who are identified by their teachers as ones with the most academic and behavioral issues. Each volunteer will work individually with one of the students as they go through the Empathy Matters lesson plans.

H.W. Smith, like other elementary schools, does not run after-school programs anymore due to budget cuts. Instead, it has extended school days, so teachers can focus on certain subjects or offer tutoring, said Byrd, the director of community engagement for the Office of Engagement Programs at SU.

“It’s hard when you have a full classroom to work with individual students, but that’s where Empathy Matters fits in,” said Robert Swanda, a junior biology and nutrition sciences dual major at SU and a co-founder of the organization.

Zubair said Empathy Matters chose to work with second-graders because those students are at an age where they can start to understand what empathy is and begin to practice it for the rest of their lives.

Zubair said the reason they feel that empathy is lacking today is because kids have an overexposure to technology. As a result, people are losing the ability to communicate with one another.

“If you don’t know how to talk to other people, then you can’t feel what another person is feeling. So if someone is going through a rough time, it’s harder for people to relate to it,” Zubair said.

Empathy Matters will hold its first informational meeting Feb. 4 at 7:30 p.m. in 205 Hall of Languages. They plan to give an overview of the program and hope to get 10–15 volunteers.

If the pilot works this year, the group hopes to branch out to other schools in the district.

Said Byrd: “I hope for the schools, I hope for the kids — we need to bring programs like this into the schools and to teach kids how to feel again.”

Published on January 28, 2015 at 12:01 am

Contact Jacob: jagedets@syr.edu