In recent years there has been much information that has come out about how our brains learn. While this is great for educators, what does this tell leaders of all organizations? Promote just a little more EMPATHY. (Empathy for the purposes of this article is identification with or understand of another's situations, feelings, motives.)
When you learn about the brain and how the neural networks work, you can't avoid the discussion of hooking new information into the experiences that people have already had (Estes, 2009). As a leader of an organization, this hold true as well.
As an administrator at a high school, the conversation of empathy would occur quite often. If teachers could only be a bit more empathetic of the current student situations. If only they could empathize about family situations and what families were going through. Maybe they wouldn't be quite so rigid. Maybe this could revolutionize the success of American schools.
Many schools have used the Gallup Teacher Perceiver when hiring. Empathy is one of the categories that this instrument tries to measure. Perspective employees supply answers to questions that fit into several categories including empathy. Studies have shown that empathy is a category that high school teachers do not score well in. A common saying about teachers is...elemenatary teachers teach children, high school teachers teach subjects.
Knowing this information, the leaders of the school then need to ask this important question. Can empathy be taught? This is where learning about the brain fits in. As we learn more and more about our thinking and how we understand the world, it builds our neural pathways to understand more and more about others perspectives as well.
Debbie Estes (2009) gives an example for us to consider. Read the following statements.
Mary hear the ice-cream truck coming down the street. She remembered her birthday money, and ran into the house.
Now let's follow up with a few questions...
What is an ice-cream truck? What do they look like? What do they sound like? What are they for? With is birthday money? Why would she go into the house for it? Was she going to stay in the house?
Even this short little statement assumes that we understand a large amount of background knowledge in order to make sense of what is written. According to our experiences with ice-cream trucks, we interpret the information in that statement differently. My nephew is currently visiting, he is 6. Just as a test, the statement was read to him to see how he would respond. It was part of the 99% of information that gets dumped everyday (Estes, 2009; Wolfe, 2009). He did not even respond or try to ask questions. His lack of background knowledge or experience left those words empty to him.
Learning about the brain can build powerful networks about empathy. Simply reading the short passage and considering the information above can help all of us to take a step back and imagine what it would be like to be in another's situation if they had never seen an ice-cream truck.
Empathy is an essential quality that resides in many successful leaders. I believe it is an essential quality that needs to exist in every teacher in every school. It can be taught. If we purposely take the time to build the neural networks of our teachers so that they have the background to understand why their brains create preconceived notions build on experiences and neural networks and why students may act in certain ways because of theirs.
Estes, D. (2009, June) Brain power. Lecture delivered at the Summer Institute at Cardinal Stritch University, Milwaukee, WI.
Wolfe, P. (2009, June) Brain research and education: The vital connection. Lecture delivered at the Summer Institute at Cardinal Stritch University, Milwaukee, WI.
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