Empathy in Learning

Empathy cannot be a possible side effect of our teaching, it must be intricately planned into our lessons to make sure that students have deep "understandings" that will matter in their lives forever.

Perspective and empathy are two ways students learn. Perspective is looking over someone's shoulder and seeing something from their angle.  Empathy is being in their shoes.  Gaining perspective is critically important. Realizing that others see things different can help us realize there are multiple points of view and possibly (and almost always) more than one right answer.  Empathy requires a deeper view.  When you learn using empathy, you understanding feelings.  Empathy is very challenging, for example, how can a person who has been rich their entire life understand what it means to be truly poor? To create lessons which develop this empathy, one must use more than mere fact recall.  Instead, lessons have to be designed carefully.  It requires simulations and role-playing.  Even then, it is easy to fall short.  It takes many iterations using reflection, writings, conversations, and prompts.

Concepts like race are very difficult to develop a deep, empathetic understanding because it is impossible to actually live in another person's shoes. However, to have a meaningful race discussion, empathy has to be planned.  I can never know, specifically, which things in my life have come through white privilege and which have been earned solely on the merits of my hard work.  Structuring thought around deep questions can be scary.  It is easier for me, as a teacher, to teach the Civil Rights Movement through the memorization of facts such as dates and names of historical figures. It becomes slightly more difficult to create lessons to encourage a student to look at a different point of view. However, the breakthrough for students will be much more powerful when the lessons go to the next step of incorporating empathy. Exploring big questions like "what role has race played in my own life," leads to more meaningful and deep understanding.  Avoiding the deep thoughts only delays the debates or allows students to avoid ever grappling with these issues.  Not having these debates while in the safe confines of your classroom is a disservice to students.