Embodied Thinking

One of the best ways to understand history and other subjects in Social Studies is through embodied thinking.  It is a vital way to understand new ideas and concepts at a deeper level.  It can involve kinesthetic thinking and emphasizing.  Kinesthetic thinking is thinking with your body.  It can range from thinking and explaining through movement (such as a dance) to tapping into sensations associated with something (how something feels, smells, etc) to connecting to the feelings (like tension or stress) one has with an experience.  Empathizing on the other hand is the act of thinking through and understanding what it would be like to be in someone else's position or perhaps to imagine yourself as the thing you are studying.

Empathizing is critical to many subjects in social science.  It can help historians understand the reasoning behind critical decisions made by leaders.  It can also help them to understand what it would have been like to live in a certain time period and understand what the social climate was like at that time.  Empathizing is also critical in terms of government and civics.  When politicians make decisions, they must be able to empathize with those who will be directly affected by those decisions.  The same concept goes for voters.  For example, take the upcoming election.  Many communities are voting on millages and tax increases to keep services like police and fire.  As they weigh their decision, they will first think about the affect on their budget.  Next they will think about what would happen if they themselves might have an emergency.  They might also consider how their neighbors would be affected.  They might even consider the jobs of the officers and firefighters.  Voters who empathize have a better understanding of their role in the larger community.

In the classroom, it can be very advantageous to have students do kinesthetic thinking and empathizing.  When teaching concepts like rights and freedom, there are many ways to get students into this line of thinking. On a field trip to the Henry Ford Museum, my students used kinesthetic thinking and empathizing to relate to Rosa Parks and develop a deeper understanding of the civil rights movement.  On display at the museum is the actual bus from the incident that sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott.  It is open for visitors to climb on board and get a feel for what it was like to ride the bus. Once on the bus, many of my students asked to seat in the very seat Rosa Parks had sat in.  We even took pictures to recreate the famous editorial picture of the event.

While on the bus, a larger group came on, forcing those students who were not already in the back to have to move to the back.  Here they moved out of social etiquette to give others the chance to experience the bus.  But the physical act of moving to accommodate someone else, sparked an understanding in students.  They went from having the misconception that Rosa Parks had remained seated out of laziness to having an understanding of why refusing to move not only made a statement but might also have given her some personal satisfaction.  Now, I should note that we reviewed the event prior to the field trip.  But when we returned to school and I prompted a discussion, the first thing my students were quick to say was how they did not want to have to move to the back and how they related to Ms. Parks in that very instant.  I also used this field trip for a digital storytelling project in CEP800, as you can see in the video below:

Students were able to feel the seat on the bus.  They could get a sense of their proximity to the front and to the back.  They were able to see how she actually was already in the "colored section".  When the new group of students arrived, they were then able to experience the physical movement.  I asked them later to imagine themselves back on the bus as I described the scene again to them, having them think about the heat, the long work day, the history of discrimination that came before it as they sat in that seat on the bus.  This was all kinesthetic thinking.  Then in the discussion that followed, they were able to empathize with Rosa Parks all on their own.  The discussion we were having quickly went from praising Rosa Parks to students sharing "If that was me" statements.  I was surprised how even my toughest kids with the big egos, admitted that they would be nervous to do what she did, explaining that the fear of retaliation from whites would have overpowered them. 

After we left the bus we continued to explore the civil rights exhibit.  My camera died just as we made it to the "White Waiting Room" and the drinking fountains for Whites Only and Colored Only.  I was able to get on picture of the waiting room.  We staged this of course, talking about the irony of it.  My students were so disappointed that I could not take pictures of them drinking out of the "Whites Only" drinking fountain.

My students, who were primarily African American, had much to say and the comments were free flowing at this point. I knew the trip was a success even before we held our discussions back at school.  They were empathizing with those who had lived during that time period and thinking about how they would have felt to have been in their shoes.


That field trip was more powerful than any lesson I could have given on the subject and I hope I get to experience that true depth of learning with my students at least one more time in my career.   I say that not because I don't feel I teach well or that my students aren't learning.  But to accurately describe how incredible that experience was for both me and my students is just not possible.  In fact, if I could edit that digital storytelling project (other than the corrections I would make on the explanation of the pedagogy and as well as many other edits), I would add a slide at the end saying:  "This lesson brought to you by embodiment and empathizing" like the end of an episode of Sesame Street.