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CHAPTER 3

SHOW EMPATHY

Many teachers struggle with providing students with what they need the most—someone who cares about their personal life as much as their school progress. As we know, bad things happen to everyone. However, students from poverty may not have the cognitive skills, emotional support, or coping skills necessary to deal with adversity. Use the survey in figure 3.1 to think about what you understand empathy to be and its importance to your teaching practices.

Figure 3.1: Consider how you value empathy.

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In figure 3.1, the reason I asked you to define empathy and what it means to you is that I’ve found that people define empathy differently. So, it’s important to understand what we mean here when we talk about empathy, because empathy and sympathy are not the same thing. Sympathy is the ability to understand another with feelings of sorrow for their misfortune. Empathy is a bit different; it is the ability to understand and share the same feelings. The key to this aspect of the relational mindset isn’t to be sympathetic but to show empathy and provide tools. The good news is, empathy is something you can learn (Schumann, Zaki, & Dweck, 2014). Knowing this, does it change how you answered any of the questions in figure 3.1?

This chapter offers strategies to help you understand the need for empathy, tools for offering students empathic responses, and three quick-connect tools for making empathic connections with students.

Understand the Need for Empathy

In Poor Students, Rich Teaching, Revised Edition (Jensen, 2019), I write in detail on the research that supports why your students need empathy. Students in poverty don’t need to be told their lives are tough; they often need a caring adult or a shoulder to lean on and an empathic teacher who listens. When students do not get support and empathy, they have more than just hurt feelings; they have stress, and students from poor families typically experience more stressors and have fewer skills to cope with that stress (Evans & Kim, 2007). Students of color are also more likely to experience chronic stress (Brody, Lei, Chen, & Miller, 2014). (Note that in addition to the empathy tools in this chapter, I offer some stress-management strategies to maintain student engagement in chapter 16, page 175.)

Now for some good news: positive relational experiences can mitigate the damaging effects chronic stress has on the brain. Our brain structures respond to empathic support by reducing stress hormones (like cortisol) and increasing the serotonin for well-being (Williams, Perrett, Waiter, & Pechey, 2007). When empathy is strong, emotional support fosters greater growth of the hippocampus, which enhances learning and memory. Plus, emotional support builds new mass in this structure, which is healthy (Luby et al., 2012, 2013).

If you are struggling to help students learn and behave, this is critical: foster quality, empathic relationships. Next, here are tools to accomplish this.

Use Empathy Tools

To keep coming to school, students need a caring adult, not a judge and an executioner. When a student shares something adverse that happened, avoid any impulsive or judgmental reaction, and instead start with empathy. There are many ways to show you care. Make your caring explicit. Not every student will read your face or body language, which might be your primary way of showing empathy. Take a moment to think about how you typically respond to students from poverty who come to you with a challenging personal matter, and answer the questions in figure 3.2.

When a student confronts you with issues like these, does your reaction demonstrate to him or her that you understand what they’re dealing with? Or, do you focus only on their responsibilities to you and your class without any consideration of what his or her life is like outside of school? If you need help forming more empathic responses, consider starting with one of the following five empathy-response tools instead.

1. “I am so sorry to hear that.” (Saying this with a sad face shows you care.)

2. “This makes me sick.” (Be sad, upset, or very concerned for the student.)

3. “We were worried about you.” (Say many others cared about the student; be worried.)

4. “Are you OK?” (Physically check on a student’s safety and well-being.)

5. “That’s awful. I don’t know if I could handle that as well as you are.” (This tells the student that the problem was a tough one and that you are showing empathy and admiration.)

Figure 3.2: Respond to student problems.

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Judging a student’s situation gets in the way. Stop telling him or her how to fix it. That comes later, much later. Even if you’re in a lousy mood (it happens), you’re likely to find that saying one of these triggers your own empathy, so start there. Likewise, regularly engaging counselors by telling them about students who need extra support is also a tremendous way to help students feel cared about. Counselors can build stronger relationships and help students navigate life and the system. When your school adds just one counselor, it increases college attendance by 10 percent (Bouffard, 2014).

This applies to less extreme situations as well. Remember the first of Stephen R. Covey’s (2013) seven habits: seek first to understand. Listen more, and talk less. The next time a student doesn’t complete an assignment, say, “I’m sorry it didn’t get done. Tell me what happened?” The next time a student is late for class, say, “Hey Eric, good to see you. Go ahead and join your teammates. They’ll get you caught up.” You can talk to him or her privately a bit later. When you do, and before anything else (like a reprimand for tardiness), check for safety. Ask the student, “Usually you’re good about being on time. What happened today? Are you OK?”

Knowing this, would you change your approach to any of the questions in figure 3.2? If so, visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction to access and print out a clean version of the figure. Keep refining your approach until you feel like you’ve got a toolbox of responses that show genuine empathy.

Use Quick-Connect Tools

On day one, students want to know who you are you and whether you care for and respect them, so don’t wait until you have friction in your classroom to begin showing empathy. As I detailed in chapter 1 (page 9), using student names is a great start to building the class. Many teachers fall short at this. Use the following quick, easy tools to fast-track your relationships with students in your classroom. These are as simple as 1–2–3.

• One and Done: In the first thirty days of school, do one favor, make one connection, or show empathy that is so powerful that an individual or whole class remembers it. For example, a student shares a hobby he or she has with you. Let’s say it is video games. You go home and search the internet for the nearest gaming convention dates and discuss with them what you found. Use figure 3.3 (page 30) to track your progress.

• Two for Ten: Identify one to two students who most need a connection early on. For ten consecutive days, invest two minutes a day in connecting time to talk about anything. This could be right before class, during seatwork time, or when the student comes up to you for something else. This gives you the relational foundation for the whole semester or year. Use figure 3.4 to track your progress.

• Three in Thirty: Ask just enough questions, through any conversation, to discover three things (other than a name) about every student you have in the first thirty days. For example, do you know who else is at home in the family? Do you know what interests the student has outside school? Do you know what the student wants to do when he or she gets older? Use figure 3.5 to track your progress.

Figure 3.3: One and Done tracking sheet.

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Figure 3.4: Two for Ten tracking sheet.

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Figure 3.5: Three in Thirty tracking sheet.

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Consider the three preceding strategies as a quick start. Additionally, use the following three quick strategies as add-ons to show you care: (1) connect early, (2) connect late, and (3) connect with students’ home lives.

Connect Early

During the first few minutes of class (or before it starts), make the rounds with students. Assess how students are doing on the opening activity, and take a moment to check in with them emotionally. You can build rapport, connect, and show empathy even with brief conversations. This is also a great way to complete your Three in Thirty worksheet (refer to figure 3.4). Use figure 3.6 as a list of common conversation starters; use the empty spaces in the reproducible version to add some of your own ideas based on what you know about your students individually and as a class.

Figure 3.6: Conversation starters.

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Some teachers will engage in friendly small talk with students (for example, about their favorite sports team and if that team lost or won). You may politely compliment a student on his or her new hair style or new shoes or ask about an upcoming community event or a family activity. Use the first three to seven minutes to see if anyone is struggling academically and needs extra help.

Connect Late

When students are leaving class, check their body language. Often their nonverbal signals will indicate their emotional state without you even needing to ask. See figure 3.7 (page 32) for a feelings poster for students. You can laminate the poster and have students circle the face that represents how they feel. Students can use this poster upon entering and exiting the class and during instruction.

Figure 3.7: Feelings poster.

For example, if a student is dragging himself out of class, maybe he or she does not want to go to his next class, maybe the student does not understand how to do homework, or maybe he or she is sorting out a big emotional issue. On his feelings poster, the teacher notices he circled frustrated all class period. This is the time to check in. Ask, as a student leaves, “Have you got a second?” Then say, “You know I’m always here for you, right? If something’s going on, maybe I can help things move along a little easier.” Your student will either talk or he or she won’t. At least you reached out, and you planted that seed. Maybe next time you say that, he or she will open up.

Many high-performing schools, especially secondary, use the last school period for an all-student homework hour. Although research on the value of homework is mixed, at the secondary level, the effect size is strong—0.64 (Hattie, 2009). You can use this time to show students empathy. Each day, select a different student to invest a few minutes with—to not just help with homework but to listen and let him or her know you care. See figure 3.8. If your school does not have this valuable option in place, use classroom seatwork time to connect.

Connect With Students’ Home Lives

There are many ways to widen your relationships with students outside the classroom. Because the time you invest to build relationships with your students is critical, do things early in the year or semester to show you care. On a deeper level, learn about your students’ lives (without any judgments) in ways that help foster insights and different ways of thinking, acting, and feeling, as well as an appreciation of where they’re coming from. This comes from quality time. Use the tool in figure 3.9 to keep track of the things you learn from your conversations with each of your students.

Figure 3.8: Invest in your students.

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Figure 3.9: Track your interactions with students.

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You might attend something that students do after school, such as go to a sporting event, the mall, a movie, a concert, a pick-up basketball game, a funeral, or an activity in the park. Understanding their home lives allows you to show that you really do care. This may seem like asking a lot, but remember, investing one to two hours early in the year (or semester) can have a bigtime payback the rest of the year and throughout students’ lives.

Quick Consolidation: Show Empathy

Something shifts when another gets you. We feel special, more important, and more connected when another gives us a moment of empathy. Remember, empathy does not mean letting a student off the hook for a bad behavior. It means you care about the student. It means you want to help him or her get better so that he or she knows better options for next time. It is about you being an ally for how your students feel as much as how they behave. When you can consistently demonstrate empathy toward your students, you’ve just added another good reason for them to come to school, especially to your class. Answer the following reflection questions as you consider your next steps on the journey to connecting with your students using empathy.

1. What did you learn about the importance of empathy that you didn’t know when you started this chapter? What differentiates empathy from sympathy?

2. What will you do or say the next time a student comes to you with a difficult problem to show that your first concern is for his or her safety?

3. Which of this chapter’s quick-connect tools will you use to build empathy with your students? How could you adapt the tool to work even better for your teaching style and classroom culture?

4. How could you change your beginning-of-class and end-of-class routines to make time to get to know your students better?

5. What can you do to get to know your students better outside the classroom?

Reflect on the Relational Mindset

All meaningful and lasting change starts with a mirror. Now that you understand the concept of the relational mindset and have strategies to foster its growth in your classroom, it’s time to self-assess and reflect on what comes next. Use the following questions to accomplish this.

1. What can you do to bring a stronger relational mindset into your class every day?

2. What evidence do you expect to see to let you know that you’re improving your students’ chances of succeeding academically?

3. What strategy could you use or adapt from part one in your very next class to start building a relational mindset with your students or with specific students in need?

4. What challenges do you expect to encounter as you adopt this strategy? How will you react to and overcome these challenges?

5. What benefits can you envision when you find success building stronger relationships with your students? How will you benefit? How will your students benefit?

Your decision to help students grow means that you generate a new narrative that includes the relational mindset. Begin with a fierce urgency, and choose one of the chapters’ strategies to get started with better relationships. Encourage colleagues to help, and set goals for progress. Once the message is in your heart, and you’ve built the activities into your lessons, the mindset will become automatic.

The Handbook for Poor Students, Rich Teaching © 2019 Solution Tree Press • SolutionTree.com

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction to download this free reproducible.