OUR JOURNEY SO FAR
Empathy in Action for 12 Years
A BRIEF HISTORY
Twelve years ago, Lysa and Grant Heslov started Children Mending Hearts with a dream of spreading empathy by setting up art exchanges with kids around the world. It started with several annual events, such as “Peace Please” and “Please Mr. President.”
Over the years it has grown to include curriculums for students from preschool to middle school, workshops for students, parents, and teachers, a website filled with empathy resources, and distance learning assistance programs for the neighborhood of Watts, California.
Our mission is to teach empathy through arts and service learning programs in an effort to bring an end to bullying and intolerance. We firmly believe that empathy can change the world.
After all, when we care about one another and want to make sure that others are happy and safe, we cannot take actions which would make them unhappy or unsafe. In a world where everyone does their best to act with empathy, intolerance and cruelty cannot exist.
Please Mr. President
Empathy Rocks in the USA
In The Classroom and Beyond
CMH has served students in the Los Angeles area for twelve years, but two years ago expanded to become a national organization. With the creation of Empathy Rocks in the USA, the upper elementary curriculum, we realized that we could make an even bigger impact if we expanded our outreach.
The Empathy Rocks in the USA program is now in its third year of being taught successfully in classrooms across the country.
When we select the classrooms who will win our annual grant of the curriculum and all necessary materials, we favor low-income, diverse classrooms. The curriculum is eight forty-five minute lessons that teach kids about an issue that affects or has affected children in the United States. They learn about the issue, about how empathy contributes to finding a solution, and about an amazing kid just like them who is changing the world with compassion.
Last year, Anaheim Elementary School District had both our workshops and Empathy Rocks in the USA curriculum in at least one classroom in every school.
Spreading Kindness
Teachers and students across the country have reported that after using this curriculum incidents of bullying have decreased, and 100% of teachers noted that their students were more likely to act empathetically toward others without prompting. Many teachers apply to receive the program again every year, and often we will see multiple teachers apply in subsequent years from schools where one teacher has previously utilized the program. Not only is it fun and informative, but it’s effective. Each year we also choose an LAUSD school where a CMH teacher personally teaches this program to all third through fifth graders.
Like Empathy Rocks in the USA, our lower elementary curriculum, Kindness Counts, is an eight-lesson curriculum that teaches pre-k through second grade students the importance of compassion and kindness through fun, appropriate books. Discussion questions are included for the teacher, as well as art supplies for the subsequent project that reinforces the lesson and helps kids practice fine motor skills. This curriculum was introduced in the 2019/2020 school year and was loved. We had intentions to release it nationally, like its older sister program, but the current global crisis delayed that launch.
Kindness Counts
CMH Workshops
360° of EMPATHY
CMH also provides workshops for students, parents, and teachers all around the Los Angeles area. The workshops are free for the school and last around 45 minutes. We do our best to keep the number of students in each workshop small so that we can engage them all. This often means that we will spend an entire day doing workshops at one school to ensure that every student has access to our incredible program.
The workshop for kids consists of discussions, activities, and games that keep them interested, engaged, and learning throughout. One principal noted that disciplinary referrals decreased after our workshop and many teachers have seen a difference in their students’ behavior.
Our teacher workshop and parent workshop focus on how best to bring empathy into everyday experiences, as well as serving us reminders that it’s important for us to have empathy as well. We show effective ways to teach children how to be more empathetic as well as ways to be more empathetic to children. The programs are just as engaging and effective as those made for our students.
A Changing World
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit our nation, we had to move our goalposts. As all our existing programs were in-school curriculums and workshops, the necessity of distance learning changed the ways in which we were able to reach teachers and students.
We made a full pivot to create new programs that would still spread empathy, but now required us teaching kids by example.
We started by building a website filled with empathy resources for students, parents, and teachers to use. There are hundreds of art projects, reading guides, games, and more that can keep kids having fun at home, all while developing their sense of empathy and building their kindness skills.
We simultaneously partnered with the Watts Empowerment Center who allowed us to use their facility to pass out around a ton of fruit every Wednesday. Soon these Watts Wednesdays grew to include donating other healthy foods, clothing, toys, toiletries, and more.
We were there for twenty weeks, spanning the entire summer. When fall came and the school year began, we realized we had to honor the connection we had forged with the community, and that we still had a responsibility to do what we could for the kids who were struggling with distance learning. So we built our Outdoor Learning Park, which for the 2020/2021 school year was one of the largest of its kind, where we serviced students from five different schools.
Founder Lysa Heslov at the Jordan Downs Center