deeper and more interesting questions, or sharing what they know and need to learn. Once students finish the activity, they raise their hands. When all students have finished, ask them to thank their partners, using their first names, and head back to their seats. To further engage students, you can use music as a cue to end the activity and move forward. Use figure 2.7 to brainstorm and plan your temporary-partnership activities.
Figure 2.7: Activity planning for temporary partners.
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Quick Consolidation: Connect Everyone for Success
As we’ve seen, many forms of interdependency can work to allow students to connect everyone for success. I have found interdependency to be one of the best tools for classroom success. Whatever strategies you adopt, no one method is perfect, because ultimately, students will crave a bit of novelty when they get tired of a social structure. The idea is to develop multiple sources that allow students to work with others in which the stakes are high for the common goals. Answer the following reflection questions as you consider your next steps on the journey to making learning more collaborative in your classroom.
1. What did you learn about the importance of collaborative-learning activities that you didn’t know when you started this chapter? How is your outlook on group work changing?
2. Given the importance of splitting classroom time (over the course of a week) between individual and collaborative study time, what changes do you need to make to get closer to an even split between the two?
3. How will you approach using collaborative time with your class that ensures it creates effective (and not wasted) time?
4. If conflict arises between group members, study buddies, or temporary partners, what strategies will you use to achieve a productive outcome that allows the group or partnership to function better in the future?
5. What is your plan for observing the benefits of student collaboration? What will you look for to know these collaborative activities are benefitting students?
The Handbook for Poor Students, Rich Teaching © 2019 Solution Tree Press • SolutionTree.com
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CHAPTER 3
SHOW EMPATHY
Many teachers struggle with providing students with what they need the most—someone who cares about their personal life as much as their school progress. As we know, bad things happen to everyone. However, students from poverty may not have the cognitive skills, emotional support, or coping skills necessary to deal with adversity. Use the survey in figure 3.1 to think about what you understand empathy to be and its importance to your teaching practices.
Figure 3.1: Consider how you value empathy.
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In figure 3.1, the reason I asked you to define empathy and what it means to you is that I’ve found that people define empathy differently. So, it’s important to understand what we mean here when we talk about empathy, because empathy and sympathy are not the same thing. Sympathy is the ability to understand another with feelings of sorrow for their misfortune. Empathy is a bit different; it is the ability to understand and share the same feelings. The key to this aspect of the relational mindset isn’t to be sympathetic but to show empathy and provide tools. The good news is, empathy is something you can learn (Schumann, Zaki, & Dweck, 2014). Knowing this, does it change how you answered any of the questions in figure 3.1?
This chapter offers strategies to help you understand the need for empathy, tools for offering students empathic responses, and three quick-connect tools for making empathic connections with students.
Understand the Need for Empathy
In Poor Students, Rich Teaching, Revised Edition (Jensen, 2019), I write in detail on the research that supports why your students need empathy. Students in poverty don’t need to be told their lives are tough; they often need a caring adult or a shoulder to lean on and an empathic teacher who listens. When students do not get support and empathy, they have more than just hurt feelings; they have stress, and students from poor families typically experience more stressors and have fewer skills to cope with that stress (Evans & Kim, 2007). Students of color are also more likely to experience chronic stress (Brody, Lei, Chen, & Miller, 2014). (Note that in addition to the empathy tools in this chapter, I offer some stress-management strategies to maintain student engagement in chapter 16, page 175.)
Now for some good news: positive relational experiences can mitigate the damaging effects chronic stress has on the brain. Our brain structures respond to empathic support by reducing stress hormones (like cortisol) and increasing the serotonin for well-being (Williams, Perrett, Waiter, & Pechey, 2007). When empathy is strong, emotional support fosters greater growth of the hippocampus, which enhances learning and memory. Plus, emotional support builds new mass in this structure, which is healthy (Luby et al., 2012, 2013).
If you are struggling to help students learn and behave, this is critical: foster quality, empathic relationships. Next, here are tools to accomplish this.
Use Empathy Tools
To keep coming to school, students need a caring adult, not a judge and an executioner. When a student shares something adverse that happened, avoid any impulsive or judgmental reaction, and instead start with empathy. There are many ways to show you care. Make your caring explicit. Not every student will read your face or body language, which might be your primary way of showing empathy. Take a moment to think about how you typically respond to students from poverty who come to you with a challenging personal matter, and answer the questions in figure 3.2.
When a student confronts you with issues like these, does your reaction demonstrate to him or her that you understand what they’re dealing with? Or, do you focus only on their responsibilities to you and your class without any consideration of what his or her life is like outside of school? If you need help forming more empathic responses, consider starting with one of the following five empathy-response tools instead.
1. “I am so sorry to hear that.” (Saying this with a sad face shows you care.)
2. “This makes me sick.” (Be sad, upset, or very concerned for the student.)
3. “We were worried about you.” (Say many others cared about the student; be worried.)
4. “Are you OK?” (Physically check on a student’s safety and well-being.)
5. “That’s awful. I
