St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

In the 2012-13 school year, St. Peter’s 2nd Class were the first group in the school (and one of the first few schools in Ireland) to engage in the Roots of Empathy programme. We recently completed all of our modules in the programme and held a celebration of the work of those involved.

Roots of Empathy involves a parent and baby from the community coming into the school to work with the children.The child should be aged between two and four months at the start of the course and the children follow his or her development over the next nine months. From this, we hope the boys learn about empathy (the ability to understand how another person feels), emotions, crying, safety and diversity. The programme also promotes an anti-bullying message.

Everybody in the school would like to thank Catherine and Ellie McCormack for being our first volunteers for Roots of Empathy.It was a complete joy from start to finish working with the McCormacks – they were fully supportive of the class, Paddy and the school and couldn’t do enough to help us to make our Roots of Empathy programme a success. Activities such as this are only as strong as the support they receive, and without the bedrock of support from one of our parents, this programme wouldn’t have been possible. The whole class had a great time over the year and Mr Kinsella and Ms Brennan both agreed that it was a wonderful programme, with the children getting so much out of the sessions with Ellie and Catherine.

We are already planning for Roots of Empathy to take place in 2nd Class next year. It was great to see an all-boys class get so much out of it and we hope that in the future, all the boys and girls of St. Peter’s have the same fulfilling experience.