November 5, 2013 Roots of Empathy's mission is to build caring, peaceful, and civil societies through the development of empathy in children and adults. The focus of Roots of Empathy in the long term is to build capacity of the next generation for responsible citizenship and responsive parenting. In the short term, Roots of Empathy focuses on raising levels of empathy, resulting in more respectful and caring relationships and reduced levels of bullying and aggression. Part of our success is the universal nature of the program; all students are positively engaged instead of targeting bullies or aggressive children. http://www.rootsofempathy.org/en/who-we-are/mission.html* Our class is extremely fortunate to be participating in this program this year. Our Roots of Empathy baby is Gracie Hosford. Her mother is third grade teacher Dianna Hosford who is presently on maternity leave from Ian Baillie Primary.  The public Health Nurse who will be facilitating this program is Susan McLenagan. Her first visit to our class will be Thursday November 14th. She will visit us monthly over the course of the school year. We will see her develop and meet her milestones (sitting up, rolling over, crawling, solid foods etc.)!