Centering Student Stories
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is essential to extend a great deal of empathy to students. Researchers who studied empathy and student performance with feedback from mathematics tutors found “significant correlations between students who received more empathic messages and those who were more confident, more patient, exhibited higher levels of interest, and valued math knowledge more” (Karumbaiah et al., 2017, p. 96). Conversely, “students who received more success/failure [rather than empathic] messages tended to make more mistakes, to be less learning oriented, and stated that they were more confused” (Karumbaiah et al., 2017, p. 96). Teachers need to respond with empathy for both actual student learning and interest in learning.
I once emailed a struggling student not to discuss academics but because her teacher happened to mention that she was a brilliant musician. I passed along the compliment her classroom teacher had given her and asked her, if she was comfortable, to send me a recording of her musical work. Such small connections can make a tremendous impact on students’ desire and motivation to learn as well as bolster their ability to connect with others. Empathy is what makes us human. It is what connects us to our students in a way that helps them feel heard, seen, and understood. When I talk with other adults about their high school years, more often than not, they emphatically state that they would not like to go back and relive those years. High school is a difficult time, and when our students are adults, they may also state that they would not like to go back and relive high school. However, may we be the empathic, impactful teachers about whom our students might later say, “I would not want to go back and relive my high school years, but there was this one teacher . . .” (Jill Clingan, personal communication, October 7, 2020)
©️2022 by Solution Tree Press
The online environment in which I work is unique in that, while classroom teachers in Brazil instruct students, a group of teachers here in the United States grade the students’ work. This format could be challenging because those grading work in the United States do not get to know their students in the intimate way that the classroom teachers do. Still, these students are eager to connect, and teachers have the challenge and the opportunity to practice empathy in the way that they grade their assignments.
