For children taking part in Roots of Empathy, learning about emotions begins with an unlikely teacher: a baby.

Throughout the school year, a local parent and infant visit a classroom, giving students an opportunity to watch the baby grow and develop. They see the baby learning to recognize emotions, understand perspectives and consider how their words and actions affect others.

The international program has been offered in Slave Lake since 2011, when it was introduced following the wildfire event. Local coordinator Darcy Comeau has been involved with Roots of Empathy since 2006 and became a Slave Lake instructor in 2015.

Comeau has now spent 11 years delivering the program locally. She also served as the Roots of Empathy Alberta provincial coordinator from 2017 to 2021.

The program is offered locally through Family and Community Support Services (FCSS).

Roots of Empathy is an evidence-based classroom program designed for children ages five to 13, the program’s website says.

It operates in Canada as well as the United States, New Zealand, Ireland, the United Kingdom and Norway.

At the heart of the program is the relationship between a baby and their parent.

Students are coached by a trained Roots of Empathy instructor to observe the baby and identify what the child might be feeling or intending.

By watching the parent respond to the baby’s needs, students also see an example of a secure and caring relationship.

The goal is to help children develop both emotional empathy — recognizing and responding to feelings — and cognitive empathy, or the ability to understand another person’s perspective.

“Emotional literacy develops as children begin to identify and label the baby’s feelings, reflect on and understand their own feelings, then bridge to understand the feelings of others,” according to Roots of Empathy.

The program’s curriculum is divided into nine themes. Each theme includes a classroom visit before the baby’s visit, the family visit itself and a follow-up visit, for a total of 27 classes.

The lessons go beyond simply watching a baby grow.

Students have opportunities to talk about their own feelings and listen to the feelings of their classmates. They can also use other areas of the curriculum, including mathematics to chart the baby’s growth and measurements, literature to explore feelings and perspective-taking, and art to express emotions that can sometimes be difficult to put into words.

For Comeau, one of the most noticeable changes is how students relate to one another.

“The students become more respectful with each other,” she said. “They take the time to listen to each other and understand the way their classmates are feeling.”

Students have also told her they notice a positive difference in their classmates by the end of the program.

One of Comeau’s memorable experiences came last year, when the first Roots of Empathy baby she had worked with eventually became a participant in one of her Grade 5 classrooms.

The program depends on families willing to bring their babies into the classroom.

Roots of Empathy generally looks for babies who are two to four months old when the program begins, with families visiting approximately once every three weeks.

The organization encourages families from the community to participate so the baby and family reflect the community in which the children live.

That need is once again being felt in Slave Lake.

A recent local recruitment post is seeking families with babies born in June, July or August 2026 who would be interested in volunteering in a classroom once a month and sharing their baby’s growth and development with students.

The program has already been part of the local school experience for several years. In December 2025, E.G. Wahlstrom School shared that it was hosting Roots of Empathy, with a parent and baby participating in nine family visits throughout the school year.

For children, the visits can be an engaging way to learn about something that is not always easy to teach from a textbook: what it means to understand another person.

And for Comeau, the hope is that those lessons carry beyond the classroom.

By helping children recognize emotions, listen to others and understand how their behaviour can affect the people around them, Roots of Empathy aims to help students build stronger relationships, greater inclusion and a deeper sense of connection with their classmates.

The program was founded by Mary Gordon, a Canadian social entrepreneur and educator who developed Roots of Empathy in 1996 out of a belief that developing empathy in children could help break cycles of violence.

Her work has since grown into an international program, now delivered in classrooms across several countries.

In Slave Lake, however, the program’s impact is measured one classroom — and one baby — at a time.

William Hetherington
Lakeside Leader