Empathy and Teaching

 

In this post I will explore the connection between one of Carl Roger’s core conditions, that being empathy, and how it connects to teaching. Education is a critical portion in any person’s upbringing and the ability of teachers to help in fostering a positive experience for many students can relate to whether they are empathetic or not.

              It is often easier for a teacher to take a negative view on a student who is troublesome and takes away time from others and address the situation in a manner that will make the student who may be lashing out feel unheard or unseen by the teacher. In turn a student is likely to have future positive reciprocation with that teacher and unlikely to change the troublesome behavior. An example of this would be a teacher saying something along the lines of “If these outbursts keep occurring, I’m going to have to send you to detention”. This kind of response will leave students less apt to change as it only looks to punish and not understand.

              However, with empathy, the student can still be held to a high standard while the teacher works to understand and help the student or provide support for the situation. A more empathetic response from a teacher would be “I know that we discussed a few times that we can’t have anymore outbursts in class. But it is still going on. Is there something else happening I may not know about to help the situation?”. You still hold the student to the standard of stopping the outbursts, but instead of only delivering a punishment or negative view onto them, you offer an opportunity to change and support in creating it. Approaching such issues as a teacher and being able to view what is happening from an angle outside of oneself allows for greater empathetic connections and possibilities for positive change outcomes.

              While empathy allows us to create these opportunities, we must be careful not to slide into sympathy for students. If we fall into the trap of being sympathetic, we will only look down on students’ situations. Sympathy entails sharing of a common grief. This can cross a teacher to student personal barrier as it may not always appropriate to relate in such a way. It may also make a student feel that their circumstances have been invalidated. To do such can have negative implications even if intentions and clear and the teacher meant good by it. This is why the working toward empathy is important. Trying to understand and help a student’s situation while holding emotional distance allows a teacher to act more effectively in assisting a student’s hardships.

              This is all good in theory, but ultimately takes time and effort in a concerted attempt to accomplish. Any person is going to make mistakes and fall into a sympathetic state instead of a empathetic state. Even at times reacting more brashly due to how the negative behaviors may be affecting oneself and the class. But working toward empathy in teaching will have be fruitful for students and the teacher in the long run.