The Importance of Teaching Empathy

Gerame S. Roque

February is almost upon us and it reminded me of the song “What the world needs now is love”. Yes, it’s true. But as we face a very challenging time, I believe we need empathy as much as we need love.

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Empathy has the capacity to transform individual lives for the better while helping to bring about positive social change. In psychology, there are currently two common approaches to empathy: shared emotional response and perspective taking.

Shared emotional response, or affective empathy, occurs when an individual shares another person’s emotions. Meanwhile, perspective taking, also known as cognitive empathy, occurs when a person is able to imagine herself in the situation of another.

Empathy can be a tough concept to teach kids. But as teachers, we have the responsibility to teach them this real-life skill. Indeed, a class (even when students are remotely learning) is a house of knowledge, but it is also a place for students to develop a strong moral character, including empathy.

There are many ways our students can learn empathy. One great way is by using books to teach different perspectives. Literature can be used to help students see a situation differently. We can tell them stories where they will learn to emphatize with the characters. Characters and conflicts in books can expose children to a range of social situations that they may or may not have experienced themselves.

By exposing young learners to these resources, we can prompt and guide discussions related to characters’ emotions, as well as our students’ personal feelings about characters or conflicts in the story. The use of literature is a step that can be taken at any level of education. Elementary school students often interact with literature to understand how to make friends and form early relationships.

Another significant way we can promote empathy is by being strongly against bullying. As educators have a great understanding that bullying often occurs in our class and we understand that there is no single solution to the problems, but if we begin to engage students in empathy in the classroom, perhaps we can promote understanding, sensitivity, and awareness of those around us so that students may carry these skills into the world around them.

Moreover, children learn empathy both from watching us and from experiencing our empathy for them. When we empathize with our young learners, they develop trusting, secure attachments with us. Those attachments are key to their wanting to adopt our values and to model our behavior, and therefore to building their empathy for others.

Empathizing with our students takes many forms, including tuning in to their physical and emotional needs, understanding and respecting their individual personalities, taking a genuine interest in their lives, and guiding them toward activities that reflect an understanding of the kind of people they are and the things they enjoy.

Children are born with the capacity for empathy, but it needs to be nurtured throughout their lives. Learning empathy is in certain respects like learning a language or a sport. It requires practice and guidance. Regularly considering other people’s perspectives and circumstances helps make empathy a natural reflex and, through trial and error, helps children get better at tuning into others’ feelings and perspectives.

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The author is Teacher II at Cabetican Elementary School Proper