This is an important week for me and my teaching. I am teaching my 7th and 8th-grade students how to be good citizens in this digital age they live in.
In light of a couple of instances in our community where students didn’t make good choices when it comes to using their social media and phones appropriately, I have asked myself many questions. Why?, What haven’t I taught these children in my care? and What am I missing?
Today I was getting more and more frustrated with my 7th-grade boys. I was talking to them about how photoshopping someone’s photo in a meme or on another body is cyberbullying. Many of the boys think that it is funny. They also said that it is funny if it is targeted at them. I told them that they have very good self-esteem although 80% of teens do not have good self-esteem with the increase of digital devices and social media.
It was heartbreaking to me that I could not break through these students about thinking of others and their feelings. I was spinning my wheels and thankful that the bell rang and they left my classroom.
I then had time to think about what just transpired. With an empty classroom, I racked my brain trying to come up with answers on how can I get this class to understand empathy and responsible use of devices and photos. Nope….nothing.
I do see glimpses of empathy in our school but trying to get all 500+ students to understand it is a tall order. The ones who do show empathy I know have parents who are “plugged in” at home.
So to answer my questions from earlier, all I can do as a teacher is give them the information to make responsible decisions when they are online and using social media. If they make mistakes, which will happen because we are all human, then life will have to be the teacher. Life lessons are much harder to learn.
What are the ways you teach empathy to your children or students? What has worked for you? Please keep the conversation going in the comments.
Empathy. That’s a tough one. I used my own experiences from when I was their age, and then I spoke about former students (no names or years) who had been through traumatic events with bullying. Then I told them about the students who had tragically passed, whether by illness or accident. You could hear a pin drop.
None of this would have had any effect if I hadn’t previously developed a relationship with my kids. I first established my classroom as a “safe zone”, where no student would ever be bullied in my presence, and if someone was, I shut it down immediately. Kids need to know that you are there for them, not empty words, but that you are truly “there for them.”
I also used literature to help establish a no-bullying zone. As all my stories and novels fit into the curriculum, I then found ones that placed emphasis on how kids feel when they are out of place. It worked miracles. Unfortunately, in this era of just assigning everything that’s found on the computer or teachers not bringing their work home with them, not a lot of ELA educators take the time to find pieces of lit that will, yes, follow the standards, but equally important, appeal to kids. A lot of time must be taken to find stories that will resonate with students, especially if said stories are completely out of their realm of existence. There has to be something, just one thing, with which they can identify. Through diligence and a lot of reading, I had them, and we could sympathize and even empathize with characters and, ultimately, their fellow classmates.
The whole process takes a considerable amount of time and work on the teacher’s part, but it’s extremely worth it in the end.
Those are some great ideas. With this group I had today, I did use personal stories and they laughed thinking the ideas were funny. I do have a bunch of boys in that class and they like to “one up” each other. It’s really hard to break through a group like that and hope you are making a difference.