I have found an awesome education website: Edutopia. It has articles by teachers covering a variety of topics and contents. I found an awesome article at the beginning of last school year titled "Empathy: The Most Important Back-to-School Supply." It focuses on empathy as a tool to help students learn better.
Teaching to me, as well as many others, means more than reading Shakespeare, learning mathematic formulas, or memorizing historical dates. I feel that this is especially the case in Middle and High School when students are going through so many changes and are trying to figure out who they are. I have seen so many teenagers who are stuck in their own heads worried about how they look, how they act, and what others think of them. Empathy is a skill that can help these kids bloom.
Teaching is about helping students to become the best people that they can be. This includes teaching important skills like empathy, or the ability to see the world through another person's eyes. The article relies heavily on the Start Empathy initiative which strives to develop schools where students learn to develop empathy. They have created a program which has three steps.
Step #1: Prepare-To begin create a foundation for students by creating a safe space in the classroom where students feel they can step outside their bubbles and think about new points of view. This includes modelling empathy in your actions and emotions.
Step #2: Engage-Next, help students to put themselves into someone else's shoes, challenge stereotypes, and to solve problems together.
Step #3: Reflect and Act-Now comes the part where students put what they have learned into action and come to find similarities and appreciate differences.
How do I apply this in my own classroom? I feel that I have many opportunities teaching English and History to teach empathy. I can use stories and historical events to provide a variety of perspectives to help students to make connections and find the beauty in difference. I can also use writing, an important skill in both contents, to allow students to communicate with their peers and others. Another awesome way to develop empathy is through service. I want to develop service learning projects to help students to place their focus on others rather than themselves.
What an amazing way to broaden the classroom and helps students to become caring and productive adults.
