{"id":1617,"date":"2016-09-22T07:59:49","date_gmt":"2016-09-22T11:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/nwcenter\/wordpress\/?post_type=lessonplans&#038;p=1617"},"modified":"2024-09-24T05:45:05","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T12:45:05","slug":"how-did-you-feel-exercise","status":"publish","type":"teachertoolkit","link":"https:\/\/plato-philosophy.org\/teachertoolkit\/how-did-you-feel-exercise\/","title":{"rendered":"How Did You Feel? Exercise"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4>Materials Needed:<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Notecards<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: revert; color: initial;\">Pens\/Pencils<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>The Game:<\/h4>\n<p>This is a very simple game that is meant to encourage students to feel empathy\u2014or at least, think about feeling empathy\u2014for their fellow students. And if empathy has any role in moral development (as we think it does), then this exercise, although very simple, is a useful one.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Step 1:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Have students write down on one side of a notecard something that someone did to them. It can be something good or bad, done by a parent, a friend, a stranger, it doesn\u2019t matter. On the other side of the card, they should write down how it made them feel.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>For example: A student might write on the front of the card, \u201cMy mom punished me for something my little brother did.\u201d Or \u201cMy friend threw a surprise party for me for my birthday.\u201d Or \u201cMy brother promised to keep a secret but he told everyone.\u201d &nbsp;<span style=\"font-size: revert; color: initial;\">On the back of the card, the student might write\u2014using the examples from above\u2014\u201cI felt angry.\u201d Or \u201cI felt surprised and happy.\u201d Or \u201cI felt betrayed.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Step 2:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Divide the class into two teams. Collect the cards, keeping the cards from one team separate from the cards from the other.<\/p>\n<p>Now, imagine the teams have named themselves \u201cThe Big Dawgs\u201d and \u201cThe Winners.\u201d Take a card written by a \u201cBig Dawg\u201d and read the \u201cwhat happened\u201d side to the first team member on the \u201cThe Winners.\u201d He or she has to then guess what is written on the \u201chow I felt\u201d side. If the guess is correct, \u201cThe Winners\u201d would earn a point.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>When playing this game, it&#8217;s helpful to be&nbsp;pretty strict about having the guess match what is written on the \u201cwhat I felt\u201d side of the card. One the one hand, for example, if the card says, \u201cI felt surprised and happy,\u201d but the student guesses \u201cI felt happy,\u201d his or her team doesn&#8217;t earn the point. On the other hand,&nbsp;don&#8217;t be&nbsp;draconian about it; if the card says, for instance, \u201cI felt betrayed,\u201d and the guess is, \u201cI felt like he betrayed me,\u201d give the point.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: revert; color: initial;\">The reason for strictness here is twofold. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: revert; color: initial;\"><strong>First<\/strong>, it makes the game more exciting and leads to discussions about whether a given feeling really is the same as another. For example, in one class, a student guessed that the person (whose uncle gave him $25.00 for his birthday) would be \u201chappy.\u201d The card, though, read \u201cecstatic.\u201d This led to a discussion about whether happy and ecstatic are the same; ultimately even the person who guessed incorrectly was willing to admit that they are different.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Second<\/strong>, we&nbsp;want to encourage students to imagine how another person felt. Empathy is not just a matter of laying one\u2019s own feelings on top of what another person feels; it\u2019s a matter of imaginatively putting oneself in another\u2019s shoes and feeling how that other person feels. And because the ability to do this is so important to moral education, be fairly particular about students identifying exactly the same feeling as their classmates have written down.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Some Objections:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There might be&nbsp;two ways that someone could object that this exercise isn\u2019t particularly conducive to moral learning.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>First, it could be argued that empathy isn\u2019t an important component of moral knowledge. But this just seems&nbsp;false\u2014at least in practice. While it may be possible, in theory, for someone to be a good person without being empathetic to others, (perhaps <em>Star Trek\u2019s<\/em> Mr. Spock?) it is&nbsp;hard to imagine that someone who was unmoved by other people\u2019s feelings would consistently do the right thing. And, as a matter of fact, in the real world, most of the awful things people to do each other are a result of their not being sensitive to the feelings of the people to whom they\u2019re doing those awful things.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Second, one could say that, even if empathy is important, this exercise does little to foster it. Well,&nbsp;no doubt it&#8217;s possible that an exercise could be devised that does a better job; however, this exercise succeeds on two counts. First, it highlights the idea of empathy for students and gets them wondering about what it is and how it\u2019s important. Second, it does give them some practice in putting themselves in another person\u2019s emotional shoes. Now, this may only go so far (for many, if not most students) as imagining how they themselves would feel in the same situation\u2014as opposed to imagining how the other person would feel. So granted, that \u201cshoe-putting\u201d does not comprise a complete outfit, but at least it\u2019s a start.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Materials Needed: Notecards Pens\/Pencils The Game: This is a very simple game that is meant to encourage students to feel empathy\u2014or at least, think about feeling empathy\u2014for their fellow students. And if empathy has any role in moral development (as we think it does), then this exercise, although very simple, is a useful one. Step <a href=\"https:\/\/plato-philosophy.org\/teachertoolkit\/how-did-you-feel-exercise\/\" class=\"more-link\">&#8230;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  How Did You Feel? Exercise<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1618,"template":"","toolkitcategory":[756],"gradelevel":[46],"topics":[553],"class_list":["post-1617","teachertoolkit","type-teachertoolkit","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","toolkitcategory-ethics","gradelevel-primary-elementary","topics-empathy"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How Did You Feel? Exercise - PLATO - Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Did You Feel? 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