Six ways to build a school culture that prioritizes understanding the experiences and perspectives of others.
Empathetic leadership, born from an authentic understanding of teachers’ needs, is an essential component of expert school leadership. It’s a mindset that principals and teachers say should inform decision-making and help establish a schoolwide culture of purpose and respect.
When Darcy Bakkegard’s assistant principal delivered especially insightful feedback during a mid-year class evaluation, “it was a transformative moment. I had no idea I was especially good at something as a teacher,” Bakkegard recalls. “She not only forced me to reflect on what I had done, but also helped me become even more strategic about what I’d always done on instinct. She helped me to believe in myself as an educator.”
#EmpathyCircles: The best #Empathy building practice. http://www.EmpathyCircle.com #EmpathyTraining: https://j.mp/ECCOURSE
Being able to empathize with others and care for the people around you allows for true collaboration. We put students into groups, demand them to work together, and then punish them for not doing it “the right way.”
There is this strange glass barrier between life in school and outside of school for students, but by nurturing the connection between the two, we can help them learn how to extend community into the classroom and show them how to build empathy and care for others.
How can we show empathy in the classroom? How can we create safe spaces for students and faculty to feel supported as they go through challenges? Why is understanding pain such an important part of empathy?
We discuss these questions and more with speaker and empathy consultant Liesel Mindrebo Mertez. Click here to read more about Leisel's life and work.
Student Behavior and Empathy What you see your students do and hear them say influences your perception of them. With a classroom full of students, it’s natural to react to students based on those outward behaviors—but what’s happening below the surface?
It’s human nature to focus on how a student’s negative behavior takes time away from teaching and affects your classroom. When you are charged with managing behavior in addition to teaching content, it’s easy to overlook what’s happening with the student and focus on what’s happening to you as the teacher.
After a difficult year, it is important to prioritise empathy - Matt Seddon explains how his school plans to do this
Coronavirus: Prioritising empathy in schools The challenges of the past year have prompted us to focus on empathy over the coming months. Not just in the classroom, but across the whole school
1. Supporting staff
Listen and follow up
2. Supporting parents
3. Supporting students
Teach empathy
If we want to create empathetic leaders of the future, then we need to teach our children how to be empathetic. Can you create space to teach it explicitly or are you able to identify places in the curriculum for empathetic character analysis in literature or history?
In Denmark, they place a lot of importance on cultivating empathy in their children. Believe it or not, people do not actually care about others' well-being. It is something we are socialized into and something that is necessary for us to survive. While math and science are important in life, Denmark knows that empathy is much more important a life lesson that will take people further than numbers and formulas ever will. This is why Danish schools decided to introduce mandatory empathy classes in 1993. In these classes, children aged 6-16 are taught how to be kind, according to My Modern Met.
This book explores the construct of empathy and its connection with education. Charting literature on the origins and evolution of the concept of empathy, the author examines the multifaceted nature of empathy and the external and internal influences behind this concept.
The relationship between empathy and education is examined through the impact they have on each other for the development of social and emotional understanding, positive social behaviours and effective teaching and learning. In doing so, the author emphasises that empathy apparent in the early years of life is invaluable for enhancing the quality of teaching and learning in future, and should be elicited from pupils and teachers alike
. This book will be of interest to practitioners, educational psychologists, and researchers in empathy and its effect on education.
Here's how to cultivate an empathetic brand... The pandemic has shown us that brands and leaders acting with empathy, authenticity and transparency have an edge..
According to a recent poll, Americans believe it is now more critical than ever that brands "demonstrate empathetic qualities and take action to maintain customer loyalty and support."
Empathetic leaders, cultures and brands enjoy higher levels of innovation, collaboration, loyalty, positive word of mouth and, per my experience and research, profitability and market valuation. The results prove that empathy is not just good for society; it's great for business.
James Doty is Stanford Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery and founding director of the Center for the Study of Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE). CCARE is striving to create a community of scholars and researchers, including neuroscientists, psychologists, educators and philosophical and contemplative thinkers around the study of compassion.
Edwin Rutsch is director of the Center for Building a Culture of Empathy. The center has many projects to help raise the level of empathy in our global society and culture.
A discussion about the current state of the empathy and compassion movements and where they might be headed. We discuss the Empathy Circle process as a way to hold constructive dialogues. CCARE becomes a cosponsor of the project to hold Empathy Circles between Congressional Representatives from the political left, right and center.
Teaching children in a way that encourages them to empathise with others measurably improves their creativity, and could potentially lead to several other beneficial learning outcomes, new research suggests.
The findings are from a year-long University of Cambridge study with Design and Technology (D&T) year 9 pupils (ages 13 to 14) at two inner London schools. Pupils at one school spent the year following curriculum-prescribed lessons, while the other group's D&T lessons used a set of engineering design thinking tools which aim to foster students' ability to think creatively and to engender empathy, while solving real-world problems.
Both sets of pupils were assessed for creativity at both the start and end of the school year using the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking: a well-established psychometric test.
The results showed a statistically significant increase in creativity among pupils at the intervention school, where the thinking tools were used. At the start of the year, the creativity scores of pupils in the control school, which followed the standard curriculum, were 11% higher than those at the intervention school. By the end, however, the situation had completely changed: creativity scores among the intervention group were 78% higher than the control group
First, the good news. Anyone — literally anyone — can get better at any skill(as long as you have a long term mindset and approach). The bad news — developing any skill takes time, consistency and effort — something that is harder to encourage now in our time-poor, instant-gratification world.
Developing any skill can be daunting but I urge you to treat it like brushing your teeth. Brush your teeth for 2 minutes and you see nothing. Brush your teeth for 2 minutes twice a day, every day of your life and we know that we will have healthier teeth that will last our lifetime (hopefully).
Empathy is the same. Small incremental moments of understanding, respect and curiosity that over time can shape the health and wellbeing of not only the individual but also those around you.
Better listening requires a shift from a reactive frame of mind to one which is more receptive. For school leaders, daily conversations can often be something that requires immediate action. But when moments allow, shifting thinking from, “what is the solution?” to “what is this person saying to me?” or “what emotions is this person displaying?” can provide powerful results.
la empatía es fundamental en las relaciones sociales interpersonales, pues ponerse en el lugar del otro, el observar y escuchar no solo las palabras si no los acentos y los movimientos involuntarios es un lenguaje poco conocido
Megan Collins, "Atención a los lideres escolares: Escuchar es esencial, aquí le mostramos cómo mejorar", 3 de marzo del 2021
1. Teach empathy as an intention. Empathy is defined as the ability to understand or feel what another person is experiencing, thinking, or feeling. Educator David Levine ’84 describes it differently.
“Empathy is an intention,” he says. “People always think it’s walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. That's the common definition. For me, it’s an intention of being present with someone, stopping everything and absorbing where they are. And that leads to the skill of compassion, which is about listening.”
Helen Demetriou obtained her PhD in developmental psychology from the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London in 1998, where she also worked at the Centre for Social, Genetic and Developmental Research. Since then, she has worked at the Faculty of Education of the University of Cambridge as Research and Teaching Associate. Helen is the author of, Empathy, Emotion and Education. She has performed many studies about empathy, creativity and education, including the recent study, Empathy is the mother of invention: emotion and cognition for creativity in the classroom.
"we argue that a very important aspect that influences invention and creativity is the empathy factor... Such exploration and immersion through perceptual openness, role-taking and flexible ego-control characteristic of empathy correlate and lead to creativity and thence to constructive evaluative reflection: explore, create, evaluate.
Empathy and open-mindedness in the real world: all these form the vital ingredients for the creative process to thrive and for encouraging the designers of tomorrow."
As indicated above, empathy relates to perspective-taking. It is not about feeling for, but rather with another person or group. Empathy has obvious implications in the context of social interaction and connectedness throughout the lifespan. Additionally, research has indicated that emotional intelligence and conscientiousness are significant determinants of academic and professional achievement. Empathy is complex, can be weaponized, and can be detrimental to those most inclined to experience it (e.g., helpers). Yet, social and emotional instruction, promoting empathy, can foster community and progress.
Demetriou and Nicholl highlight many schools that have integrated empathy-promoting programming have done so in the context of literature and humanities curricula. In early education, distinctions between subjects may be less explicit, whereas opportunities to explore perspective-taking as school advances may be more obvious in reading, writing, and social studies than in science and math.
In Denmark, they place a lot of importance on cultivating empathy in their children. Believe it or not, people do not actually care about others' well-being. It is something we are socialized into and something that is necessary for us to survive. While math and science are important in life, Denmark knows that empathy is much more important a life lesson that will take people further than numbers and formulas ever will. This is why Danish schools decided to introduce mandatory empathy classes in 1993. In these classes, children aged 6-16 are taught how to be kind, according to My Modern Met.
No workplace is immune to trauma, from claims of harassment or bias to large-scale impacts like the pandemic. When we respond well to those in trauma, we build trust that yields increased productivity, engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty.
Katharine Manning, author of The Empathetic
Workplace and an attorney with more than 25 years’ experience on issues of trauma and victimization, provides an understanding of the prevalence of trauma and its effect on both the person in trauma and those interacting with him or her, then gives practical advice on how to support those in trauma in the workplace while protecting yourself from compassion fatigue and not running afoul of legal obligations.
As Solve for Tomorrow embarks upon a new decade, equity and empathy are top-of-mind. This has sparked a heightened focus on “STEMpathy” – embedding human compassion and empathy into STEM education to further evolve both emotional intelligence and cognitive development.
Empathetic understanding leads to human-centered ways of solving problems and that conscious view also frames critical thinking, creativity, curiosity, decision making, leadership, entrepreneurship, and more.
Mimi Nicklin is a globally recognised millennial thought-leader, specialising in the power of empathy. She is host of the Empathy for Breakfast show, Secrets of The Gap podcast and author of new book Softening the Edge.
Empathising with those around us won’t only deepen the quality of our relationships but, after the pressures of being locked at home, it will improve our ability to heal and move forward with those we care for. So, perhaps we should ask ourselves dear reader, do we have any other choice
In this short video, listen to Dr. Gordon describe the origins of Active Listening. Working with Dr. Carl Rogers, Dr. Gordon and other graduate students learned that the most successful counselors listened more than they talked.
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