I remember the exact moment I realized something had shifted. I was teaching my World History class, and we were discussing primary-source accounts of the Rwandan genocide. A student raised her hand and asked, completely matter-of-fact, “Why didn’t they just move to a different country?” No malice. No coldness. Just a genuine question that revealed a complete inability to step into that person’s experience. This student couldn’t imagine being trapped, terrified, and without options. The perspective of others wasn’t even on her radar.
…and this was in 2015.
That was the moment I stopped assuming empathy came naturally. I realized the importance of empathy wasn’t something my students were absorbing through osmosis. I needed to teach it directly. They needed to be able to answer the question “What is empathy and why is it important?”
I’m not saying kids today are heartless. Far from it. But there’s a difference between caring about people in theory and actually feeling what someone else might be going through, and that gap is getting harder to bridge.
We’re living through a time when the news throws tragedy at us like confetti. When I started teaching in 2007, I could still remember how the United States basically shut down after Columbine. Days of mourning, of processing, of collective grief. Now? A school shooting makes the headlines for a few hours, then we scroll past it to the next disaster. The numbness is real, and it’s spreading.
That lack of empathy isn’t just a philosophical problem. It shows up in our classrooms every day. Students who can’t read tone of voice or facial expressions. Kids who genuinely don’t understand why their joke hurt someone. Young adults who have no idea how to comfort a peer going through a difficult time. They aren’t bad kids…they just haven’t had enough practice recognizing others’ feelings.
Over the years, working with more than 1,700 students in my own classroom across a nationally ranked academic school and a Title I CTE school, I learned that this isn’t about intelligence or background. Kids in both environments struggled with empathy, just in different ways. Some lacked practice. Some lacked models. Some had been so focused on survival that considering others’ emotions felt like a luxury they couldn’t afford….and none of that changes the fact that emotional intelligence is a teachable skill, one we’re neglecting at our students’ peril.
Since 2018, I’ve been training K-12 teachers across all grade levels and school types, and the question I hear most is: “How do I actually teach empathy when I’m already drowning in content?” That’s the real challenge. Not whether empathy matters, but how to make room for it.
What Empathy Actually Is (and Why It’s Not the Same as Sympathy)
Before I share what works, let’s be clear about what we’re talking about. Empathy is the ability to understand and share another person’s feelings. It’s not feeling sorry for someone. Sympathy is “I feel bad for you.” Empathy is “I feel with you.” Different types of empathy exist. There’s cognitive empathy (understanding someone’s perspective intellectually), affective empathy (actually feeling what they’re feeling), and empathic concern (the motivation to help). All three matter.
Research from Monash University shows that the anterior cingulate cortex and other brain areas are involved in processing others’ pain. Mirror neurons fire whether we experience something ourselves or watch someone else go through it. That’s why watching someone fall makes you wince. Our brains are wired for connection…we just don’t always use that wiring effectively.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines empathy as “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.” That’s the academic definition. Here’s the teacher translation: empathy means I can look at a student slouched in the corner, arms crossed, and recognize that their slumped posture and avoidance of appropriate eye contact probably mean they’re having a hard time, not that they’re just being defiant.
Teaching Empathy by Showing It
The good news is that the power of empathy can be cultivated, and the most effective tool is the simplest: model it.
When students come to you with a problem, don’t just solve it. Help them find a solution themselves. Ask questions. “What do you think would help here?” “How are you feeling about this?” “What would you want if you were in their position?” This isn’t about letting kids off the hook. It’s about teaching them to process situations by considering the person’s perspective.
Get to know your students as human beings. What are their interests? What makes them anxious? What’s going on at home? The better you understand their own experiences, the better you can model understanding of others. I had a student who never turned in homework during the second semester of her freshman year. Eventually, I learned her mom was in the hospital, and she was caring for her younger siblings. That knowledge changed everything. I still held her to high standards, but we worked out a plan together. She needed someone to see her situation, not just her missing assignments.
Feedback matters, too. When you give constructive criticism, focus on what they can do better, not what they did wrong. “Your thesis is strong. Let’s work on finding more evidence to support it.” works better than “You don’t have enough evidence.” The emotional impact of how we phrase things is real. Kids absorb our tone and mirror it.
Here’s the hard part: I’ve had to ask myself, “Am I doing this because it matters or because I’m checking a box?” My students can spot a phoned-in lesson from across the room. If I’m bored, they’re bored. If I’m dismissive, they’re dismissive. It’s human nature to match the energy you’re given. If I want empathetic kids, I have to be an empathetic person first. Those uncomfortable moments where I’ve had to apologize to a class for being short-tempered or impatient? Those have been some of the most powerful lessons I’ve ever taught. They’ve seen me own my own emotions, take responsibility, and try again. That’s where the real teaching happens.
Giving Empathy a Face
I find the easiest way to build empathy is to give students a real person to connect with. Our world is so digitally mediated that kids don’t always see the impact of their actions.
One of the best activities I ever did was a card-making campaign with my students. We found a military medical hospital accepting holiday cards and sundry donations. We brought in arts-and-crafts supplies and spent a class period making cards with personalized messages inside, combined with small items the families donated. We talked about what would and wouldn’t be appropriate. Students had the option to opt out if the concept made them uncomfortable.
The first year, some kids rolled their eyes, but then we heard back. You should have seen their faces when they read thank-you notes from people they’d never met. It put a face to a concept. It taught the benefits of empathy, that small actions matter, and that prosocial behaviors have ripple effects. One student said, “I didn’t realize something this small could actually make a difference.”
That’s the point. That’s the importance of empathy in action.
This isn’t a military-specific thing. From a curriculum standpoint, I did a project with my World History students where we teamed up with a class in Germany to discuss the impact of World War II on their families. Hearing about the perspectives of those on the western lines that were ravaged by the Russian army was eye-opening. It changed our understanding of the war entirely, and it changed theirs, too. They were floored that we cared about Pearl Harbor as much as we did.
The local newspaper even came to interview us!
I tried to have a class of high school students address an envelope once, and they had no idea how to do that. They said they’d always sent everything via email. That was eye-opening. These are students who have incredible digital literacy but limited practice with old-fashioned, tangible acts of connection. Sometimes, we take things for granted that our younger generations simply haven’t had to experience.
There’s a reason Maya Angelou’s words about people remembering how you made them feel resonate so much. We can teach content until we’re blue in the face, but the emotional connection is what sticks.
You can also make this a regular practice with smaller gestures. Role-play different scenarios. Have students guess how someone might be feeling in a news story. Teach them to look for body language clues that signal discomfort or distress. Help them practice empathic listening, really hearing someone without planning what to say next. A soothing tone and more open posture can change the entire dynamic of a conversation.
How to Make it Happen in Any Class
If you’re a teacher feeling overwhelmed by content and wondering how to squeeze in empathy instruction, here’s my honest opinion: don’t treat it as separate. Weave it into what you’re already teaching.
When you cover the transatlantic slave trade, don’t just focus on the numbers and dates. Spend time on abolitionist narratives and first-hand slave accounts. Ask students to imagine the emotional response of someone being torn from their family. When you study the Holocaust, don’t skip the human stories. Share diaries, letters, and recordings from people who lived through it. Help students consider others’ perspectives in those moments.
You don’t have to add a special “empathy unit” to an already packed curriculum. You just have to teach your existing content with intentionality. Here’s what that looked like for me during the second semester of my third year of teaching, when I finally figured out this approach wasn’t optional.
During our unit on the Armenian Genocide, I shifted our focus from just the “what” and “when” to the “what would you have done?” We read survivor testimonies. We looked at photographs. I divided students into small groups and gave each group a different primary source with a different perspective. One source from an Armenian survivor. One from a Turkish bystander. One from an American missionary. I asked them to explain their source’s perspective to the class.
The results were remarkable. Students who couldn’t have told you the date of the genocide three weeks prior were staying after class to ask me questions about Turkey’s modern-day stance. They were debating the nature of the Ottoman millet system and whether collective guilt could be assigned to a modern state for historical actions. That’s not just history…that’s engaged, empathetic citizenship.
This shift took me the better part of a semester to feel natural. Some students pushed back before they came around. My period-four class in particular was resistant. They wanted “the facts” and felt like I was assigning moral judgments instead of teaching history. I had to slow down and explain the difference between understanding why people made choices, even terrible ones, and endorsing those choices. Once they understood that this was about historical thinking skills rather than making them “feel guilty” about things they’d never done, the classroom culture shifted significantly.
By the third quarter, when I asked students to analyze the Treaty of Versailles from the perspective of a German citizen who had lived through the war, their empathy for the Weimar Republic’s economic struggles was palpable. We’d built the neural pathways through practice. It was now a habit of mind, not just an assignment.
You’ll know it’s working when you hear students start asking better questions. Not “Why did this happen?” but “What would I have done if I were them?” That’s the shift. That’s the power of empathy in practice.
My Take on Empathy Education, What is Empathy, and Why is it Important
Here’s where I get off the fence. I’ve been in this long enough, since 2007 in the classroom, and since 2018 training teachers across the country, to know that empathy isn’t a “soft skill.” It’s the skill. I’ve seen teachers try to treat empathy as a one-off lesson or a poster on the wall. It doesn’t work.
Effective communication, healthy relationships, leadership skills, even customer service and health care outcomes, all of these rely on the power of empathy. Recent research in social neuroscience shows that when students practice empathy, they strengthen neural pathways associated with the theory of mind and empathic accuracy. These aren’t soft skills. They’re hardwired capacities that either develop or don’t, depending on whether we provide the right environment.
There’s a reason professionals across fields, from mental health professionals to empathetic business leaders, prioritize understanding others’ feelings. Empathy isn’t a luxury in this decade…it’s a survival skill. People who can read others’ emotions, understand the perspectives of colleagues and family members, and regulate their own feelings in tough times have better professional relationships, stronger social connections, and deeper emotional bonds.
Is teaching empathy hard? Yes. Does it require patience? Absolutely. Does it always work? Not immediately. Some students will resist. Some will roll their eyes and mutter about how you’re being “soft” or “too sensitive.” Some will try to game the system and tell you what they think you want to hear.
Do it anyway. The long-term importance of empathy in all aspects of our lives is too critical to ignore. It’s not about being nice, but about being human.
Empathy isn’t about agreeing with someone or abandoning your own values. It’s about trying to see through their eyes. When I teach conflict resolution, I emphasize that empathic communication doesn’t mean you surrender your own position. It just means you can articulate the other person’s perspective accurately before you argue against it. That’s a crucial skill for citizens in a democracy. You can disagree without dehumanizing. You can hold high standards while still extending grace.
I’ve seen too many classrooms where teachers mistake emotional distance for professionalism, or treat empathy as a disciplinary crutch to reward good behavior instead of as the core social-emotional learning competence it really is. But the research on teacher empathy underscores that when students perceive their teachers as empathetic, they’re more willing to take academic risks and persist through challenges. That’s not about being “nice.” That’s about academic achievement.
What’s one small yet powerful act you can do this week to make the people in your class feel seen? Could you ask them how they’re really doing? Could you share something vulnerable about your own experiences? Could you pause a lecture to say, “I know this content is hard, and I’m proud of you for sticking with it”? It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture. It just has to be real.
Why is empathy important in the classroom?
Empathy creates an environment where students feel safe enough to take academic risks. It improves student-teacher relationships, reduces behavioral issues, and prepares kids for the professional relationships and social connections they’ll need in adulthood. Research shows students learn better when they feel understood. Beyond that, teaching the importance of empathy equips students to navigate difficult situations and build healthy relationships that last a lifetime.
How do you teach empathy if your students don’t seem to care?
Start small. Look for genuine moments of connection: ask about their weekend, notice when they seem off, and follow up on something they mentioned in passing. Also, don’t lecture about empathy. Model it. Show them what an empathetic response looks like in real time. I’ve also found that giving students a chance to actually help someone, through a service project or letter-writing campaign, creates buy-in that no lecture ever could. Sometimes students who seem to lack empathy are actually just afraid of being vulnerable.
Can empathy be taught, or is it something you either have or don’t?
You can absolutely teach empathy. The brain is plastic. New research shows that empathy training changes brain activity in regions like the anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insula. It’s not a fixed trait. Different types of empathy can be practiced and strengthened over time. Think of it like a muscle. If it’s weak, that means you haven’t used it enough, not that it’s broken. I’ve seen students transform over the course of a single semester, from eye-rolling cynics to kids who check in on struggling peers without prompting. It’s never too late to start.
What’s the difference between teaching empathy and teaching sympathy?
Sympathy is feeling bad for someone. Empathy is understanding what someone is feeling. In the classroom, sympathy can create emotional distance. “I feel sorry for you.” Empathy creates connection. “I see you, I get it, and you’re not alone.” Sympathy says, “That must be hard.” Empathy says, “I’ve been there too, and it’s painful.” Both have value, but only empathy builds the social relationships and effective communication skills students need to thrive. In my experience, empathy also leads to more action than sympathy alone.
This article was originally published on January 28, 2020.
This idea of empathy is such an important one! I think you are right on the money when you say that it’s because students’ lives are so tech-centered nowadays, they need to be taught empathy. Text messages, DMs, whatever you want to call it has replaced actual human contact. I LOVE the idea of sending cards to our heroes in the hospital. How sweet! And you even leveraged technology to connect with people in Germany to show the benefits of having these types of things at our fingertips.
Thank you, Julia! I think it’s so important that we do as many of the “little” things as we can. When many of us were growing up, this was natural. We live in a very different world today and we need to make an effort to do those things.