Supporting Empathy: Secondary School Learners
For secondary school learners, the ways in which you support empathy skills starts to grow in complexity. Read on to learn more about how you can incorporate empathy-related activities with your learners.
Thinking About Empathy (‘I’)
Novels
Click through the slides below to learn about some of our favourite novels that focus on themes of empathy, kindness, compassion, and understanding.
Journaling
Empathy journaling can be a great way to carve out time and space inside your classroom. For example, provide learners with journals and prompts to reflect on their own emotions and experiences. Encourage them to write, draw, or sketch about challenging situations and how they felt during those times. This activity helps build self-awareness and empathy towards oneself, which can translate into empathy for others. Examples of prompts include:
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- Think about the last time you felt sad or upset. How did it make you feel? How did you work through these feelings?
- Write, sketch, or draw a time where you demonstrated kindness to another person. How did it make you feel? How do you think it made the other person feel?
- Practicing gratitude can help you become more empathetic. Write, draw, or sketch three things that you are grateful for. Why are these things important to you?
Catching Empathy
Reinforce to learners that not only is empathy contagious, but that it can lead to positive social change. Use the following video from Noah Couser (2014) as a springboard for this conversation.
Kari Kampakis’ TedTalk, The Power of Empathy – and How it Changes Lives, is another great teaching tool. Take a look!
Feeling Empathy (‘We’)
Empathy Interviews
You might also help learners explore empathy through the use of empathy interviews. In this activity, pair up learners and have them interview each other about their personal experiences and feelings. Encourage them to ask open-ended questions and actively listen to their partner’s responses. You might also consider using the following video to introduce the activity.
Empathy interviews helps to develop listening skills and understanding others’ perspectives.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is an incredible tool to help teach empathy. For example, consider conducting a mindful listening circle where learners practice active and empathetic listening skills. In the circle, one person shares their thoughts or experiences while others attentively listen without interrupting or judging. Afterward, learners can reflect on their listening experience and how it contributed to empathy and understanding.
Mindful self-acceptance can also help learners explore and develop greater empathy. In this activity from Greater Good in Education (2024), called “‘The Guest House’ Poem and Body Scan for Teens,” you can use a poem as a launching point for a mindful body scan. Another mindfulness practice similar to the mindful listening circle invites learners to listen to music mindfully while observing their thoughts and feelings.
Walk The Line – Learning About Power and Privilege (Teachers Guild, n.d.)
Walk the line is an activity that you can use to support empathy and understanding through movement and reflection. Follow the steps below.
- Begin by placing a line of masking tape on the floor in the middle of the classroom.
- Divide the class into two groups about 5 steps off each side of the line.
- Tell both groups to silently face each other.
- Read a series of prompts (e.g., I ate breakfast today; I’ve had an overnight stay in a hospital; I have experienced a family member’s death; I’ve been bullied at school). If someone answers yes to the statement, they take one step closer to the line and stop. After about 5 seconds of reflection, everyone returns to their position, and you continue with the next statement.
- After all statements are read, learners return to their seats and reflect on what they have learned.
Practicing Empathy (‘Us’)
Current Events
Don’t be afraid to use world events as a springboard for discussion. For example, discuss current events with your learners and ask them how they think the people in the story might be feeling. Pose questions like:
- How might the people involved in this situation be feeling?
- How would you feel in a similar situation?
- Is there anything we can do to help?
Learners can also research current events or social issues they are passionate about. Encourage them to extend and share their learning using a campaign to raise awareness, meeting with a community member to learn more, or writing a letter to support their cause.
Community Engagement
Encouraging learners to see themselves as changemakers capable of enacting social change can happen right inside your classroom. Community empathy campaigns (Teachers Guild, n.d.) guide learners to plan and execute an empathy-focused campaign within the school or local community. It could involve organizing awareness events, fundraisers, or volunteer opportunities that highlight empathy and encourage acts of kindness. This activity enables learners to make a positive impact and inspire empathy in others.
