Can empathy be learned on a classroom stage? In spring 2024, an unprecedented experiment tried to answer this question at the lycées Turgot, ENCPB Pierre-Gilles-de-Gennes, Lamartine and Lavoisier in the Paris education authority (académie de Paris). Its name: the A3F, for Ateliers des Trois Figures (Three Figures Workshops)1, the upper-secondary version of the scheme devised by Serge Tisseron, already known in primary and lower secondary schools as the J3F (Jeu des Trois Figures, the Three Figures Game).
A first experiment within the Phare programme
The initiative is part of the national Phare scheme, dedicated to preventing bullying at school. The project originated in a request from Caroline Veltcheff, the academic head of the programme. Having just been certified as a J3F trainer for secondary education, I agreed to test this new protocol in the lycée. To do so, I trained, with Cyril Goulard, under the supervision of Delphine Ginelli and Geneviève Carteau-Beauvineau, the school management staff, school life advisers (CPE) and volunteer teachers. The following year, some of these people became trainers in turn, following the logic of in-house training within the education authority.
In parallel, alongside the deputy head of Turgot, Arnaud Chaunavel, who was training to become an A3F facilitator, I set up the experiment at Lycée Turgot. The classes were divided into half-groups; each facilitates one session. Beforehand, Serge Tisseron and his team put together a corpus of theatre extracts. A particular feature of the project: the protocol is refined in real time, as feedback comes in from the field.
Read, play, feel
The principle is simple in appearance. The pupils read an extract, and identify the emotions at stake and the actions that can go with them. A key principle of the activity is indeed that actions, words and emotions must always be linked. Then the volunteers to act are invited to play all the characters in turn. After the staging, a time for discussion allows them to explore the emotions actually felt.
On the programme, notably, Pinocchio by Joël Pommerat. By a coincidence of the calendar, his show Contes et légendes was then playing at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin, a detail picked up by a pupil from the second session. Later, the lycée pupils work on a scene from Juste la fin du monde (It’s Only the End of the World) by Jean-Luc Lagarce: the tense reunion of a son who has come to announce his imminent death to his family.
This is where unexpected emotions arise, such as sibling jealousy, revealed only after embodying the roles. Going through the body changes the understanding of the text. The pupils feel the different positions from the inside. This is the whole difference between so-called cognitive empathy, which invites us to form a representation of what others feel, and full empathy, which allows us to put ourselves in their place emotionally, and not just intellectually.
Debating to think together
Each session ends with a debate: How can we imagine an ending in which no one feels humiliated or misunderstood?
Around Pinocchio, the discussions are surprising in their depth. The pupils talk about hunger, poverty, the difficulty of “being born a teenager”, but also the wound of a father scorned by his own creation. Far from a mere theatre exercise, the workshop becomes a space where people try to hear “the other’s voice”.
For the French teacher Anne de Boissieu, who supports the project and attended a final session, the scheme nourishes literary reading as much as ethical reflection. For the deputy head, it is a way of understanding the pupils better and changing one’s stance with them. Empathy here begins with the bodily feeling of emotions. All the pupils are actors, even the silent ones. The framework set by the facilitator allows a gradual construction of “group empathy”. In the lycée, the final debate adds a reflective dimension: the pupils test their ability to think, while respecting what others say.
A collaborative tool serving the school climate
My commitment to collaborative teaching and my work in priority education — notably at Collège Hector Berlioz, then as deputy to the DAASEN for equal opportunities — allow me to affirm that the A3F is a structuring tool for the school climate and for building empathic skills in pupils. Unlike one-off actions, the scheme is also long-term and rests on an “action research” approach. Moreover, the future facilitators themselves experience group empathy during their training. A way of experiencing it before passing it on. And of helping to change teachers’ stance towards their pupils.
Marie-Dominique Liénard
- Details and training arrangements at https://3figures.org/ ↩︎
