Wellbeing, inclusion & diversity
Teacher resources & training
Empathy
and Emotional Intelligence
what is empathy
Empathy. There are probably as many definitions of empathy as there are people, because each individual has a way of identifying him or herself with the other person and his or her emotions.
This is often coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be feeling, or thinking about their feelings.
In empathy we could identify three types or faces that define the level of your empathy. You start with the cognitive way – you want to know what is the other person feeling.
The physical aspects of that, How do you feel and how contagious…
…these things are.
Then this has to lead into an emotional aspect of empathy in which you are feeling what the other person is feeling. You’re actually physically…
…sensing that emotion in the other person, but then to become empathetic, you also require a third stage, meaning you have to be compassionate. You have to actually act on the feelings of the other person and not simply…
…know what that person is feeling. You have to in as many people term you have to become vulnerable in terms of their emotions.
Often people confuse sympathy with empathy and sympathy, it’s important to define it because so many of us stop at just simply feeling what other people…
…are experiencing, but there must be that step beyond that in which you have to act and do something to make that person feel better about how she or he feels. So that’s an important differentiation…
…of the two.
what is emotional intelligence
So what is emotional intelligence?
There are so many definitions, but the one that I like to use is how well we can handle our emotions in ourselves and our relationships with others.
We can define four different domains or faces. Self-awareness. Self management.
Empathy and social intelligence or…
…how we put it all together.
If we start with with self-awareness, this of course deals with your intuition. It’s your inner compass and how we understand…
…What we feel.
Then we need to manage that self management. The ability to handle this situation is an important aspect and face. We don’t want to get the feelings to get in the way and we need to be attuned to these…
And know what to do when.
Empathy as we all know is being in tune with what other people feel and…
Finally, putting all the skills together, having the social skills to…
…relate properly with others. Now, why is emotional intelligence so important in education? We know that the prefrontal cortex doesn’t develop until you fully mature in your 20s.
That means that these first years in education are emotional, emotionally important. They have to do with a term called neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity has to do with the changes in the brain…
…due to your previous experiences and…
…how you change.
Changes according to those experiences.
So we need to make emotional intelligence an essential and systematic subject in our schools. And so in essence, we could define emotional intelligence in our way of controlling…
our inner ability, self-control, self management as well as the control of others and your emotions of others, empathy and social skills.
Why is it important to become emotionally intelligent? Well, science has clearly defined us that.
It has been scientifically proven that…
…teaching emotional intelligence in school in a systematic way, will have clear positive effects in reducing anti social behaviour, improving…
…Pro social behaviours such as liking school and solidarity and increased attention as well as academic achievement.
why is empathy important
Why empathy is important?
Just think about this, as adults, we do not have any experience of being kids, children, teenagers in the year of 2022.
We do not have any experience of what it means to take that role now, the same as our kids and children and teenagers…
…do not have any experience of being adults and they do not know what that means.
So this is the same, we do not have any experience, none of us, of being a different gender, being of a different origin, a different race, just to name it.
This is why…
..One can’t tell how one never needs to feel or needs to behave.
Then we ask questions and then we talk to each other. We always need to think about things, not from our perspective, not from, I and I know, but from him or her perspective, and to try to understand how…
…does she or he feel.
Just this can create the emotion, the relationship and safe environment for us to communicate.
And our role and our main mission is to understand not our feelings, but his or her feelings.
And this is how we can start to share our real emotions, our realities, as all of us, we are different and unique.
So I really invite you to create the safe environment and to understand how each of us feels.
Emotional Intelligence as a skill
OK, let’s talk about the emotional intelligence. I trust that everyone understands what it is, but there are different angles. Emotional intelligence is about the ability to recognise what emotions arise inside us, and many books actually…
…say that part of emotional intelligence is the ability to control emotions. Actually this is the biggest trap.
We do not control emotions. We integrate them through body sensations and I really want to repeat that we do not control our emotions.
We integrate them and as an example, a lot of people feel uncomfortable when we are around people who are very angry…
…Worried, grieving, crying and we don’t know how to act and how to be with them. We try to be positive and to change that emotional state and inspire them…
To cheer them up and we don’t need to do that actually. Tip number one is that you need to understand.
We are not trying to change anything. The only thing you need to do is to be there for them, for the people who are around you and just breathe if you start to feel uncomfortable with them.
Tip number 2: When you have face to face meetings or you are running a group workshop, please ask often – How do you feel now?
How do you feel with what is happening now? How do you feel about the person who says something? Especially if you see body language is changing and someone is…
…Feeling uncomfortable.
Tip number 3 is to never pretend that you understand everything and if you really feel that you don’t know of that experience, that you’ve never experienced this, just be open and say that this is something new for you, but…
…I want to be there for you, and I think the most important thing is to show that you really, really care. You are ready to listen.
And you will try to understand. Let everyone be OK with feeling the way they do at that moment.
Thank you.
Further insight into empathy
My name is Andrea. I’m from Spain. This video is going to be about exploring empathy or describing empathy to students.
In my experience as a teacher…
…some students struggle to understand the real effects that their actions have on other people.
For students, especially those who have lived in the same place their whole lives and have not been exposed to different cultures…
…or different types of people, it is harder for them to understand the difficulties that others can face.
That is where empathy comes in, and the easiest way that I explain this to my students is that the very famous quote that is translatable to almost any language…
…which is put yourself in someone else’s shoes, or putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. There are many different activities that can help develop empathy in students…
…That can help give them an understanding of what is empathy. One of them that I use very often is writing the quote that I mentioned before on the…
…board and creating a safe space for them where we can discuss this quote and why it’s important to be empathetic.
What it means to be empathetic and how we can do that in our day-to-day lives. I truly believe that the sooner students start learning about empathy, the better it is for everyone.
How to Represent Emotions
Morning everybody, my name is Maria Pia from Italy. Today I’d like to share with you one of my best practises.
The area of my practise that I wanted to improve was the use of image, colour, sound, as another means of communication.
A question I wanted to answer is – can the use of digital storytelling promote the integration of new technologies in open, authentic collaborative learning context?
Why is the question very important to me?
The question is important to develop significant intervention…
…for young people who experience social and emotional difficulties in secondary school.
To develop a deeper sensitiveness to let students get awareness of what communication is.
What was the context of my study? The target of this actual research is a fourth year class of the Asaba course, a B1 level French class in a language secondary school…
…in Palermo, in the South of Italy.
Students are aged 16-18. They have a different social, economic and cultural background and at this age students are generally more comfortable in the virtual world.
They don’t like face to face interaction and are not able to decode symbols or use them to express their inner thoughts and emotions.
As regards methodology, I focused on different tools, different symbols in order to let them use their senses to decode reality or represent ideas.
I wanted to motivate students…
…to explain in an explicit way their thoughts and to let them express their emotions.
I use different tools such as cameras with recorders, software and some other things. They also use the video application to make a video, but the creation of the digital story…
…has been preceded by education of images, sounds, colours.
In order to represent a story it is important to be able to use image, sounds, words, without making some previous activities and using techniques for the analysis of images…
…And photos.
I use different activities such as some Ice Breakers for example with some questions, like what does the image suggest to you? What does the sound suggest to you? What does colour suggest to you?
Or represent an emotion with an image.
Associate the colour to a literary test, to a poem, for example.
Create a living history from the sounds of the house.
What are the results of my actual research?
As digital stories are multimedia creations, which involve voiceover, images, music, as well other elements…
…which integrates different skills, this action enabled me as a teacher to pay more attention to maintain students motivation.
And create the right mood to let them…
…explain their thoughts and also evaluate other people’s thoughts.
I believe this could also improve their critical thinking and let them create their digital story, integrating different skills.
What I have learned from doing this study.
The result of this study…
…are some benefits for me..
…as a person, for me as a teacher, but also for my students and my school.
For my school because…
…I could share my best practise with other colleagues.
For me to…
…to create new strategies of teaching my students to motivate them.
Students will understand that using technology does not…
…necessarily mean less human involvement and they will use a computer as a tool for learning, but also for communication.
