How do we teach empathy to students?
Dear EQuipped Leaders,
Picture a school where teachers and students are EQuipped to feel their feelings and to self-regulate.
Now imagine the students at this school are so self-aware and self-regulated that they're actually able to empathize with each other: with their seat mate in math class, with their teammate on the soccer field, with their co-star in the school play.
What if empathy was the norm at school?
What would school feel like if empathy was everyone’s first reaction when someone was struggling?
How much conflict would be avoided?
How many more students would be engaged?
How much less burden would be on teachers if students could learn to offer empathy to each other?
I believe we all have a capacity for empathy. We have everything we need already within us. We just might need to cultivate our self-awareness and self-regulation in order to offer empathy more automatically.
Sympathy, not empathy, is the more common reaction when someone is struggling. And they do not feel or work the same for the person on the receiving end.
If you’ve ever disclosed something vulnerable to someone only to have them look down at you with a sympathetic face and a dismissive “Well, you poor thing” then you know what sympathy feels like.
The difference between empathy and sympathy reminds me of the difference between nice and kind. I think of someone who is nice as someone who is polite and placating but who also could be very fake. Where as kindness to me feels more like well-boundaried compassion. When someone offers me kindness, it feels like they’ve done their own emotional work, so they actually have something to offer me. Anyone can be nice, but one has to do a lot of inner work to be kind.
Like nice, sympathy can be confusing. It’s not cruel, but it’s also not really kind.
In our sixth grade curriculum, we set up a conversation about the difference between sympathy and empathy to help teach this distinction to students.
If you want to give it a whirl with your students, here is a copy of the student’s lesson:
I love the distinction in the student lesson of sympathy as feeling for someone and empathy as feeling with someone.
Those words ring true to me because sympathy often feels like someone feeling sorry for me, not with me. It creates distance. It’s almost as if the person offering sympathy is too afraid to feel something difficult or gets too overwhelmed by the feeling of the other person that they have to create distance. I can feel badly for you, but I’m not going over there with you. I’m going to stay safe over here. I can’t go there with you.
Empathy feels very different. Empathy requires so much self-awareness and self-regulation because when someone is struggling and reveals something vulnerable, it is very easy to get emotionally dysregulated and project our own fears onto this vulnerable person.
But when someone can be self-aware enough and self-regulated enough to stay present and stay with someone as they feel something hard, that’s powerful.
In the Teacher Guide that accompanies this empathy lesson (see downloadable below), we ask teachers to think of a time when someone offered them empathy and what it felt like. Here is an example of a teacher experiencing empathy from a student and the power we all have to offer each other empathy.
When were you last offered empathy?
Can you think of a time when you shared something vulnerable, and someone showed up and empathized with you instead of feeling badly for you?
When have you offered empathy to someone else?
What would school be like if we all made empathy a practice and made a conscious effort to grow this capacity?
Do you want to better EQuip students, teachers, and parents at your school? We would love to connect with you.
Better EQuipped Together, Elizabeth Eason Martin
Email me at elizabeth@appliedeqgroup.com with any questions about how we can support your personal and professional development. :)
