You cannot walk a mile in their shoes, at best your past experiences and growth of things can make you better understand things but in the end you cannot walk in their shoes. It’s exactly what I want.” The mid-fifties woman smiles, thanks the younger woman for the compliment and then wishes her success with her dreams. When that face isn’t there or it seems out of synch with our world, we don’t always take the time to wonder what it’s like to walk in their shoes. The culminating activity I give my students in order to introduce the theme of empathy and compassion is, “Walking in My Shoes.”  I introduce the infamous Atticus quotation from To Kill a Mockingbird, “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.”  Here, I teach “Perspective-Taking Empathy”, which is the ability to put oneself into a person’s “shoes” and see things from his/her perspective. In order to use RunSignup, your browser must accept cookies. You can’t understand someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. Relationships of Life , ”You never truly know someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes. Music: Timezone LaFontaine, You can win a free Vimeo Plus membership by stretching your filmmaking muscles in one of our Weekend Challenges. Could I make it a whole mile in those shoes? Post jobs, find pros, and collaborate commission-free in our professional marketplace. We are practiced at putting on a good front. It's not necessary for us to know a life story before we offer a warm smile and a kind word or gesture. That way, when you criticize them, you'll be a mile away and you'll have their shoes." Try to understand where they are coming from with your internal critic and judge shut down for the time being. The students love coloring in the shoe, and they are usually very creative with them. This is a great introduction into the theme, and it helps my students understand the different types of empathy and what category they fall into as a maturing, young adult. Surely, they could be doing something more constructive than begging." Get your team aligned with all the tools you need on one secure, reliable video platform. On the back of the shoe, I have my students choose a line from a song that best represents him/her (I assign this as a homework assignment, and students are instructed to bring in the song lyrics to school, so they are able to write.) We can’t imagine that anything could intrude on seeming perfection. The saying is actually, “Don’t judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.” Its purpose is to remind us that we can’t know what’s it’s like to live in someone else’s reality. We assume things are situational, so whatever problem we may be experiencing we say there’s something in the environment that caused it and as such the situation can always change. You can grab this activity below! By using this site, you agree to this use. Except, we live in a fast-paced world that requires quick decisions and rapid-fire judgment all the time. You are so successful. There is an old saying: “You can’t really understand another person’s experience until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.” Walk a Mile in Their Shoes to End Teen Dating Violence asks participants to literally walk one mile in someone else’s shoes! This ranges from sports, passions, interests, favorite movies, broken bones, hardships, obstacles, successes, and other interesting facts. After I grade the shoes, I hang them up in my room in a “walking” pattern. Empathy and compassion are two of the most important character qualities I try to instill in my students during the school year. On the front side of the shoe, my student write down ten things that people would not know about them unless they told you or could get into their mind. We heard it as children, we use it as parents. Still others may fear they are dirty and maybe even germy. We assume the opposite of ourselves. How often do we wonder what set them on the road to homelessness? There was a time when if it wasn't for the blessings of God or for someone who reached out to help us, we would be in a totally different position in life. We’ve heard the phrase a thousand times. The saying points out that no matter what you believe you have come to “know” about a person, if you haven’t heard their story directly from them you can’t begin to know what they may be struggling with, perhaps problems we’ve never even guessed at. You would be amazed at the lyrics the students use to represent themselves. You have a really great life. That's not how it works. When we don’t like someone or aren’t comfortable with them we tend to blame them for how they act. For the final presentation of the two-part activity, the students get to choose their shoe template on which they want to complete their final piece.