Relationships, Empathy & Community

Objectives

• D02.S1.09.01 Communicate respectfully across differences of opinion, culture, or background.
• D02.S1.09.02 Practice healthy relationship skills, including consent, trust, and honest talk about feelings.
• D02.S2.09.01 Use empathic inquiry to understand another's feelings and needs before responding.
• D02.S2.09.02 Examine how empathy can be limited or expanded by distance, media, and technology.
• D02.S3.09.01 Compare forms of community across cultures, including chosen families and mutual-aid networks.
• D02.S3.09.02 Analyze how nationalism, exclusion, and in-group loyalty can both build and limit community.
• D02.S4.09.01 Evaluate how economic and social systems shape cooperation, competition, and inequality.
• D02.S4.09.02 Design a cooperative project that meets a real need in their community.

Essential questions

• How do I communicate across real difference and practice healthy relationships built on consent, trust, and honest talk about feelings?
• How do I understand another's feelings and needs before responding, and how is empathy limited or expanded by distance, media, and technology?
• How are communities built and limited across cultures, and how do systems shape cooperation, competition, and inequality?

Big ideas

• Respectful communication across difference and healthy relationship skills — consent, trust, and honest talk — are how I live well with others.
• Empathic inquiry seeks to understand before responding, and empathy can be narrowed or widened by distance, media, and technology.
• Communities take many forms across cultures, in-group loyalty both builds and limits belonging, and systems shape cooperation, competition, and inequality.

Lessons

1. 1 Communicating Across Difference 55 minutes
2. 2 Consent: Yes, No, and Changing Your Mind 50 minutes
3. 3 Trust and Honest Talk About Feelings 55 minutes
4. 4 Empathic Inquiry: Understanding Before Responding 55 minutes
5. 5 Empathy Across Distance, Media, and Technology 55 minutes
6. 6 Forms of Community Across Cultures 55 minutes
7. 7 Nationalism, Exclusion, and In-Group Loyalty 55 minutes
8. 8 How Systems Shape Cooperation, Competition, and Inequality 55 minutes
9. 9 Designing a Cooperative Project: Finding a Real Need 55 minutes
10. 10 Capstone: Launching Our Cooperative Project 55 minutes

Assessment plan

Observation of a learner communicating across difference and using empathic inquiry; a healthy-relationship-skills reflection, a distance-and-media empathy analysis, a forms-of-community comparison, a nationalism-and-belonging analysis, a systems-and-inequality analysis, and a designed cooperative community project as portfolio artifacts.