Heidrun Mayer’s PAPILIO program teaches kindergarten children how to recognize and express emotions using a series of simple toys and lessons, greatly enhancing their resiliency, improving the pre-school environment and preparing them to become active learners and successful students. This emotional literacy program is spreading quickly through a social franchise model which trains educators and is transforming early childhood education practices throughout Germany.
Heidrun is changing the face of early childhood development in the education system through her newly developed, comprehensive approach to teach empathetic ethics and emotional literacy in German kindergartens. The program grew out of initial research from an international study on resilience factors for drug addiction and violence conducted at the beta Institut, an Institute for Research and Development. Heidrun, who worked at the institute, recognized the broader potential of the research. Drawing from it, she developed the PAPILIO program to focus on building resilience factors in young children. She skillfully brought together a broad coalition, including scientists, 100 kindergarten teachers, over 700 children, 1,200 parents, as well as the world-famous puppetry of Augsburger Puppenkiste (i.e. Germany’s most famous puppet theater), to develop the 2005 pilot program.
„The children learn to communicate their feelings, to overcome irritations about the behavior of other children and grown ups, and to empathize with others.“
One of the central elements of the PAPILIO program is the use of storytelling to reach young children. Four puppets representing the emotions of anger, sadness, fear, and happiness are introduced to the children without any judgment that one is better than the others. To teach emotional literacy, Heidrun’s model incorporates these figures, as well as other pedagogical tools in the form of a children’s game, into the daily routine of the kindergarten classroom. The children learn to communicate their feelings, to overcome irritations about the behavior of other children and grown ups, and to empathize with others. These simple instruments have measurable long-term impact, such as reducing aggressive and violent behavior, improving the working environment of kindergarten teachers, as well as facilitating children’s transition from kindergarten to school.
Today there are 137 PAPILIO trainers who have trained over 3,200 kindergarten teachers, reaching 58,000 children across Germany. To date, the Augsburger Puppenkiste has performed the PAPILIO story Paula and the trunk pixies in 122 cities, reaching nearly 30,000 children.
Heidrun comes from a caring family. When her father had an accident when she was a teenager, the entire family had to stick even closer together and allocate duties in a new way. Through this experience, Heidrun had to take on responsibilities at a young age. Visiting her mother at her job in a daycare unit, Heidrun observed her work with small children early on. Even though her godmother wanted her to work in the pharmaceutical industry, Heidrun opted for an apprenticeship as a kindergarten teacher. Realizing that this apprenticeship did not equip her with enough knowledge to work with children the way she wanted, she studied social work with a focus on preschool and kindergarten.
One of Heidrun’s first and crucial challenges was her work as a social worker in the city of Augsburg in the 1990s. Augsburg built homes for asylum-seekers, but had no strategy or plan to integrate them into the community. She established meeting places for asylum-seekers and the community, founded a job center, and even new kindergartens.
Searching for a new challenge, Heidrun opted to work for an academy, training kindergarten teachers. Through this work her entire perspective of kindergarten work changed, as she saw teachers overwhelmed by their work, without the means to cope with increasingly diverse groups of children, and increasing behavioral problems.
As an expert of skill-enhancement for adults, the Betapharm Research Institute recruited her to set up programs for its employees. This is where she found the “fruit basket” of PAPILIO, a basket of good ideas for kindergarten teachers developed by the local Rotary community. These ideas, however, were not suitable for implementation and not up to date with the latest standards of pedagogic insights. This is when Heidrun started to work with scientists to set out the new PAPILIO concept, and in the end, has successfully implemented it in several regions throughout Germany.