“Empathy is a respectful understanding of what others are experiencing. Instead of offering empathy, we often have a strong urge to give advice or reassurance and to explain our own position or feeling. Empathy, however, calls upon us to empty our mind and listen to others with our whole being."
- Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of the Center for Nonviolent Communication
Empathy Is a Powerful Tool for an Educator
As educators we are striving to educate our students, tutees, or athletes among others. As educators, it is also of course our task to teach our students. Now, the problem is that the pressure to teach certain content, in a certain time frame, can become overwhelming. This can lead educators to focusing so much on "getting through the content" that the individual learners in the classrooms are getting left behind. Educators need to hone in on the skill of empathy to better be able to not only relate to their students but also other teachers, and educators. Indeed, it is equally as important for administrators and staff to develop the skill of empathy, as teacher in the classroom. Daniel Pink discusses the importance of Empathy: "Empathy allows us to see the other side of an argument, comfort someone in distress, and bite our lip instead of muttering something snide" (160).
Empathy Short Story
I found online a short story about empathy. It basically is about a shepherd who shares all the milk from his sheep with the townsfolk. But when the shepherd would walk through the town, his sheep would leave droppings. This caused some people to dislike the shepherd. It was everyone's responsibility to clean the droppings on their plot of land. Some people stopped picking up the droppings, for they believed the shepherd should clean it up. Yet, the shepherd indiscriminately shared milk with all the townspeople. Here is the link to the whole short story: The Little Village Sheep.
"We are soft-wired to experience another's plight as if we are experiencing it ourselves"
- Jeremy Rifkin, The Empathic Civilization", TED
http://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_rifkin_on_the_empathic_civilization.html
Empathy Litany (Poem) By: Alexis Mendoza
Empathy is like putting yourself in someone else's shoes.
Empathy is seeing something from a different point of view than your own.
Empathy is not simply "feeling" for someone, but rather trying to understand how someone else feels and why they feel that way.
Empathy should be the a required component of any relationship.
Empathy should be utilized by teachers and students alike.
Empathy needs to employed as a two-way street.
Empathy should be taught as a life-skill that surfaces in the everyday happenings.
Empathy needs to be utilized as a way to diffuse volatile arguments into constructive discussions.
Empathy is not just the "touchy-feely" stuff, rather it is a key to human relationships.
Empathy is a key ingredient of fostering loving and caring relationships.
Empathy is seeing something from a different point of view than your own.
Empathy is not simply "feeling" for someone, but rather trying to understand how someone else feels and why they feel that way.
Empathy should be the a required component of any relationship.
Empathy should be utilized by teachers and students alike.
Empathy needs to employed as a two-way street.
Empathy should be taught as a life-skill that surfaces in the everyday happenings.
Empathy needs to be utilized as a way to diffuse volatile arguments into constructive discussions.
Empathy is not just the "touchy-feely" stuff, rather it is a key to human relationships.
Empathy is a key ingredient of fostering loving and caring relationships.
Blog Post on the Intersection of Empathy with Symphony
Read Alexis' blog post entitled: "A Whole New Mind Part II Reflection: Metaphor & Empathy."
Read Stephanie's blog post "The Empathetic Student"
Read Stephanie's blog post "The Empathetic Student"
Taking the Empathy Quiz
Daniel Pink suggested this quiz to get your "EQ". Empathy Quotient Quiz.
As a serial quiz taker, I had fun taking the quiz Daniel Pink suggests in A Whlole New Mind. I tried not to overthink it, as it was pretty simple to discern which empathetic answers were desired. Them again, maybe that's just because I am an empathetic person - at least according to this measure.
The variety of questions was interesting. Particularly the fact that some questions were looking for a positive answer and others for a negative one. I would be interested in learning more about how one scores empathy. A rubric illustrating the weights of the questions would be illuminating. Overall, I recommend taking a few minutes to participate in this quiz. It made me think about the characteristics of an empathetic person, and raised some interesting questions regarding what empathy is.
The variety of questions was interesting. Particularly the fact that some questions were looking for a positive answer and others for a negative one. I would be interested in learning more about how one scores empathy. A rubric illustrating the weights of the questions would be illuminating. Overall, I recommend taking a few minutes to participate in this quiz. It made me think about the characteristics of an empathetic person, and raised some interesting questions regarding what empathy is.
Can you spot the fake smile?
Daniel Pink described in the empathy chapter how he learned to spot fake smiles. He described how it was all in the surrounding areas of the eyes: "In other words, to detect a fake smile, look at the eyes. If the outer muscle of the orbicularis isn't contracting, the person beaming at you is a false friend" (167). He later encourages us as the readers to test if we can spot a fake smile through the BBC Quiz developed. It is a 20 question quiz.