A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. ~ Henry Brooks Adams

In the award-winning documentary Children Full of Life, a fourth-grade class in a primary school in Kanazawa, north-west of Tokyo, learn lessons about compassion from their home-room teacher, Toshiro Kanamori.

“What’s the most important thing this year?” Toshiro Kanamori asks his young students. “To be happy!” comes the joyous response. The class goal is to truly understand how to be happy and care for other people.

He instructs each to write their true inner feelings in a letter, and read it aloud in front of the class. By sharing their lives, the children begin to realize the importance of caring for their classmates…

“Empathy is the greatest thing. There’s an expression I love: ‘Let people live in your heart.'” ~ Toshiro Kanamori, 4th grade teacher