Empathy Does So Complicate Things

 As I was looking at photos of my grand-daughters during their recent visit to Hawaii and thinking of Friday when Susan and I begin a week of spoiling them, I got a ding of an incoming e-mail. It was from a professor at a western university. She accused me of complicating the classroom. I could only answer with a plea of guilty. Well, I’m really not guilty. It’s empathy, not me, that complicates what so many of us academics want to be so perfect and simple. Empathy takes issue with the academic culture we academics have created, perpetuate, and which has taken on a life of its own. I don’t believe that there’s any kind of virtue in giving a false picture of serenity or simplicity or even perfection of the classroom. To do otherwise would distort the classroom’s reality more than it already is. Unless it’s void of all human life, the classroom is not simple. It’s not static. It’s not pristine. It’s not serene. And, it sure isn’t perfect. It’s messy. It’s dynamic. It’s complex. It’s complicated. It’s fraught with human imperfection. It’s as intellectually and ethically challenging as anything. Empathy demands we do something other than just stand up there and talk, test, and grade. It asks whether there is more to teaching and learning than transmitting, receiving, and testing information. It requires that we see students as a “gathering of sacred ‘ones.’” It requires us to learn to pay attention to each student, see each student differently and in a different light, learn to love each one of them, acquire a strong and focused kind of love. Yes, empathy does so complicate the classroom.

 Empathy does so complicate the classroom: That classroom is not so neatly divided into two primary abstract categories, the single professor and a horde of students, as many would have us believe. If we accept a student, and ourselves, as fixed and categorized, already shaped, labeled, then we’ll do what we can to confirm this shallow, limited, and limiting presumption. But, if we see a student as a process of becoming, as living potential, then we’ll do what we can to confirm his or her potential. The truth is that students are human beings. They, each of them–not some indifferent, undifferentiating, theoretical, mechanical grouping–are the real stuff of the classroom. Without them, the classroom is a hollow, echoing, meaningless, darkened, empty box. With them, the classroom is a vibrant, sacred place lit up with promise and hope. The way to overcome artificial divisions, the distorting stereotypes, the false assumptions, and oversimplified presumptions is to find ways to welcome and embrace individuals unconditionally each day on a human level, listen to people, one at a time, who is not unlike us. Do that and you’ll blow the whole dividing “us and them” concept of professor and student to smithereens.

 Empathy does so complicate the classroom: Empathy is not just a concept. It’s not just a feeling. It’s a concern for the moral development of each student, that is, a consideration for each student. It’s an experience, a way to go beyond your usual boundaries and explore a different way of being. It is a deep, intelligent, respectful exploration of what lies beneath the surface of appearance; it helps us maintain our balance in the constant tidal ebb and flow and swirling eddies of the classroom.

 Empathy does so complicate the classroom: It requires that you care for each and every student each and every day. And, I find that inherent in it is the principle of caring, and it is much more powerful than most imagine. I was just reading Carl Rogers’ On Becoming a Person. In it he talks about the healing power of unconditional “positive regard from others” and “positive self-regard.” In fact, he said they were essential for striving for your potential. He said it feels incredibly good to be listened to and to be understood and to be respected and to be valued by someone who sees only the good in us. With acceptance by others comes acceptance of us by ourselves. Without it, most feel small and helpless, and few will strive to become all they can become much less thrive. We academics know that from personal experience. What makes us think we’re any different from students. So, what’s good for the professorial goose is certainly good for the student gander.

 Empathy does so complicate the classroom: Rogers talked of “client centered” or “person centered.” He emphasized being fully present with the client, removing obstacles, and giving control to the client so that the client can move forward. I use the term “student centered.” I mean being fully present with each student, relinquishing control over the student so that the student can strive to become the person he or she is capable of becoming. You know up until 1991 I was asking the question “How can I teach this student.” Now I ask, “How can I provide a relationship which this student may use for his or her own growth.” To put it another way, I no longer am the “person who knows.” I am now there to facilitate a student’s growth, to become something of a companion, to offer warmth and safety for what can only be described as a fearful search by the student for who he or she can become.

 Empathy does so complicate the classroom: When you have that true sense of otherness, when you step into a student’s heart, spirit, and mind, control is too heavy a load to bring along. You have to travel light with something of an exquisite risky, innocent, letting go “let’s see.” Empathy, then, requires that you free yourself up from addictive controlling feelings and manipulating behaviors

 Empathy does so complicate the classroom: The classroom is like the ocean. Everything is in motion. Everything is in constant change. It is so easy to look its surface and be lulled into thinking you know and understand its depths. It’s so easy to think that we know students from the inside out. Then, we’re surprised or disappointed by a currents and whirlpools of emotion and action that appear. The truth is that we academics with all of our accolades don’t know enough to make judgments about ourselves much less others. We academics are so educated about some things and so uneducated about other things. We are so informed. And yet, we can be so uninformed and misinformed. Because a student is silent doesn’t mean he or she is unprepared or unable or even incompetent. So, we have to ask questions, slow down, mindfully listen, deeply see, and avoid snap judgments. We have to be strong enough to let things flow.

 Empathy does so complicate the classroom: It’s not the students that cause problems for us academics. It’s our thinking about students that are the cause of our difficulties. And, those thoughts are too often unexamined thoughts. The acceptance of and attachment to and investment in those thoughts are the problem. Too often we do not project ourselves as trustworthy, liking, respectful, valuing, So, maybe before we struggle to understand students, we have to first have to struggle understand ourselves.

 Empathy does so complicate the classroom: It requires a strong sense of self, especially that you recognize the impact of your own feelings on your actions. It demands that you have to motivate and inspire yourself, understand yourself, and manage yourself. Between an occurring circumstance and your response to that circumstance is a space for self-control. In other words, we academics have to handle our own emotions, attitudes, and actions so that we can encourage and support rather than interfere and hinder.

 Empathy does so complicate the classroom: When we say “students should……” aren’t we really saying “I am upset with the students because they don’t…….?” So many of us define ourselves by our difficulties with students rather than as someone who is experiencing some difficult challenges and creating value out of such situations. What matters most is not what is sent to us and what we find in the classroom. What truly matters, and what speaks volumes about our character, is what we do with it all. The more we accept a student and like him or her, the more we respect him or her, the more we value him or her, the more we prize a student, the more he or she feels warm and safe, the more we are willing to do what will help him or her grow. By this, I mean accepting a student no matter what, no matter how much you’ve been burnt by another student in the past and no matter how negative and rejecting a student may be. It is what Martin Buber called “confirming the other.”

 Empathy does so complicate the classroom: I love that complexity. I think so many academics get frustrated, tense, stressed, disappointed, depressed, resigned, angry, or upset when their thinking in stereotypical, simplified, distorting terms argues with the reality of the classroom’s complexity. They get themselves into a “students should” tizzy. Wanting that classroom to be other than it is, playing what I call “the perfection game,” wanting things and people to go their way, is hopeless. Again, it’s not perfect; it’s not neat; it’s not simple. Think and act as if it is all you want won’t make it happen, and you’ll lose the game all the time. Those joyless feelings will boomerang back to scorch your heart. All the stress that you feel is caused by arguing with what is. It’s like trying to spend your entire career trying to teach a dog to moo. It called burn out.

 Empathy does so complicate the classroom: No one can sharply divide and separate the academic from the moral and ethical, the academic and public from the private and personal, the outside from the inside. No one, neither student nor teacher, can leave their “trash” at the classroom’s door. Wherever anyone goes, as Jon-Kabbat Zinn says, there he or she is. Empathy is not a teaching technique. It’s not a formal practice to be used only in the classroom. It can’t be separated from the other aspects of our daily lives. Empathy is a state of naturalness and freedom which need what might be called a “natural heart and mind.”

 Empathy does so complicate the classroom: You can’t stay at a distance, avoiding being vulnerable, and be involved at the same time. There is no weakness in being vulnerable, only authenticity. The more genuine you are with a student, the more helpful you can be. This means you have to be aware of your own feelings rather than presenting an outward façade and hiding another attitude. It’s extremely important to be real. Maybe we have to take what’s called the “exquisite risk” in order to experience true teaching and learning rather than merely managing the classroom.

 Empathy does so complicate the classroom: None of these students is a “mini us.” There is such a strong tendency to write off large parts of the student body as “poor,” “mediocre,” or even “losers” because they’re not what we now imagine they should be and how we were. Those who do that are corrupted by knowledge, title, experience, authority, and an often selected memory. A lesser grade doesn’t translate into a lesser person; a failed test doesn’t mean the student is a failure; a screwed up assignment doesn’t mean there is a screw-up before us. We should be insistent upon the dignity of the younger, inexperienced, and uninformed. We must be committed. We must pay attention must be paid to and assistance must be given to such persons.

 Empathy does so complicate the classroom: You find that the playing field is never level. Students come to us traveling different roads, having different experiences, entering through different doors, carrying different types and amount of baggage. We sacrifice empathy, we close ourselves off, when we are upset, angry, anxious, disappointed with students. These negative emotions interfere with out capacity to understand and offer whatever support and encouragement is needed.

 Empathy does so complicate the classroom: And, we academics are one of the added complications. Our thoughts in and of themselves are harmless. It’s when we believe them and think they’re real that we make them powerful. Our attitude, feelings, beliefs, theories, and actions–our story–spring from our thoughts. So, when the Native American medicine men ask you to tell your story, they are really asking if your thoughts are truly true and who would you be without your thoughts?

 Empathy does so complicate the classroom: It you have empathy on purpose, you have energy, purpose, direction. You can maintain your balance in the ebb and flow of tidal forces. I have found that empathy is a ticket to flying to a higher consciousness of deeper otherness. You know, there are so many access codes to so many of the wild possibilities. When you accept that reality, when you teach deeply and mindfully, your teaching becomes fluid, balanced, natural, kind, encouraging, supporting, hopeful, faithful, loving, dynamic, and fearless. You will magnify the “good stuff” a lot more than the “bad stuff” and be a lot happier and more satisfied and more fulfilled. You will have the most noble and uplifting experiences in life. You reveal people barely known, people who live stifled beneath the stereotypical language, let them break the surface, and breathe their unique potential. Then, you’ll dance from one exciting moment to the next.

Make it a good day.

      –Louis–

More on Empathy

After ten years of apprenticeship, a student achieved
the rank of Zen teacher. One rainy day, he went to visit
a famous Zen master in another city. When he entered the
house, the master greeted him with a question, “Did you
leave your wooden clogs and umbrella on the porch?” “Yes,
master,” he replied. “Tell me,” the master said, “Did you
place your umbrella to the left of your shoes, or to the
right?” The visitor didn’t know the answer, which made him
realize that his awareness was not fully developed. So he
stayed with the master and studied Zen another ten years.
 
 You know, I’m not sure you have study another ten years. Just get cancer. I find that cancer is a curious word, if “curious” is the right word. It has a funny way, if “funny” is the right word, of never escaping your mind once you hear it was inside your body. It has a funnier way of affecting your soul. Your outlook on life, it’s meaning, and your sense of purpose is never the same. That one single change in your vocabulary, in your entire sense of being, like any single change, changes everything. You identify all those non-essentials that you have made essential and all those non-realities that you have made into reality. And, you see how they all take a backseat to life. Yeah, cancer, while life threatening, can also be life enhancing if you choose to let it be. It’s an opportunity to open your eyes and see a transcending “big picture” approach to life. It can be a whetstone that hones what you see, taste, smell, listen to, and feel. It’s a chance to enliven your soul with a sharpened sense of otherness. The paradox is that while cancer is scary, to say the least, if you have that transcendent “big picture”, if you have that keen sense of “otherness,” if you have that honed sense of self, you’re happier, calmer, far less fearful, far less covetous, and far more satisfied that those who are self-centered.

 Some people have responded to my previous message and said I couldn’t have it both ways, that there is a contradiction between a transcendental sense “otherness” on one hand and a focused sense on yourself on the other. I don’t see it that way. To me it an inseparable I and thou, if I can steal Martin Buber’s title. First, it is true that in the self-proclaimed, mythical objective world of academia, “awareness” or “observant” infers being distant and detached. You step back and observe. You’re not connected and involved. You’re not emotional. You’re spiritless. I think of “awareness” and “observant,” however, as close up, intimate, involved, spirit full, and infused with the person or thing of which you’re aware. Awareness or mindfulness or understanding of other people, empathy, is a merging of someone else and yourself: thou and I. Second, the questions we ask, the things we notice, the perceptions we have, and the things we do are us. They’re reflections of, insights to, commentaries on, and extensions of who we are at that moment. Let me put it another way, the glue that binds the apparently opposing “otherness” and “self” together is found in Scripture: “Love thy neighbor as you would love thyself” and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Thou and I. To be understanding of others, you must understand and be understanding of yourself; to manage others you must manage yourself; to connect with others, you must be connected to yourself; to be aware of others, you must be aware of yourself; to develop the abilities of others, you first have to develop your own abilities.

 I know that I attempt consciously to use empathy to guide all aspects of my work, influencing not only what I say, but how I say things. It is, as I’ve said, one of my most important teaching tools. I’m always sensitive of my demeanor, the tone of my voice, the movements of my body, and the expressions on my face. There’s always a method to my madness and a madness in my method. I’m always asking myself if I am saying or doing something in a way that will encourage others to listen to me. That’s not giving in or being unassertive. That’s connecting. That’s supporting and encouraging. That’s offering promise and hope. That’s understanding. That’s fostering empathy in others. It’s keeping in mind that if I want others to appreciate what I am communicating, if I want others to respond to and work cooperatively with me and each other, then I must consider their perspective and how they perceive me. It’s in empathy where you’ll find the extra mile both in yourself and others. Understand, I can see the world through a student’s eyes and not like what I see. I can stand in a student’s shoes, and still disagree. I can be empathetic and validate what another person is saying, but have an entirely different view of the situation. It’s like I’ve said to my youngest son many a time during his troubled years, “I don’t love what you’re doing, and I don’t have to, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”

 There’s the difficulty with being or becoming empathetic. There’s no magic wand, incantation, or elixir. It requires deep, honest, and intense self-reflection. It takes work. It demands that we acknowledge that if—and that is a big “if”—we want to change anything we feel, think, or do, we have to change ourselves. As I look back, that is what my epiphany almost fourteen years ago was all about. However painful and reluctant it was, I had to admit to myself that my own feelings, attitudes, and actions had been the real cause of my discomfort, disillusion, and pain. I had to assume responsibility rather than level blame. I came to see over the subsequent years that real honesty means a consistency between what I feel, think, say, and do. Real honesty means questioning for the purpose of understanding rather than judging. Did I have barriers to overcome to become empathetic? I think so. No, you bet I did. It was hard to be empathetic because I really didn’t have any such models growing up. It was hard to be empathetic as long as I was blaming. It was hard to be empathetic as long as I talked and did not listen. It was hard to be empathetic as long as I wanted to be understood rather than understanding. It was hard to be empathetic as long as I let myself get angry, frustrated, disappointed, fearful, and resigned. There are other barriers. It’s hard to be empathetic if you’re judgmental. It’s hard to be empathetic if you can’t accept a difference of opinion. It’s hard to be empathetic if you can’t accept being questioned. It’s hard to be empathetic is you have trouble with criticism. It’s hard to be empathetic if, in general, you worry how others will react to your real honesty.

 What we let stand in our empathetic way are those surface markers of our lives, the things we allow to keep us apart from each other and ourselves, that we use to elevate ourselves over others or degrade ourselves to others, that we use to wall ourselves off from others and ourselves, that we use to sort and categorize each other into proverbial separate cubbyholes: the positions we hold, our type of work, the houses we live in, the age we’ve reached, the perks we have at work, our gender, our sexual preference, the cars we drive, the titles and positions we have, the renown we’ve achieved, the wealth we’ve amassed, the schooling we’ve had, the music we like, the language we speak, the way we look, the ethnic memories we hold; the number of and types of publications we read—or display on our shelves and coffee tables, the political views we hold, the places we vacation, the clothes we wear, the ways we play, the income we have, the foods we eat, the places where we worship, our physical talents, our physique, our physical appearance, our weight and clothing size, our religious training, our social upbringing, how we like to be addressed. Naming who we are sets the course of our life, brings a way of seeing and responding to others and circumstances, determines how we shall walk through our lives. Our vocabulary, the word or words we use when we speak of ourselves, reveal what we most deeply feel about ourselves and others. All of these are a constant filming over of who we truly all are and who we are capable of becoming. It is a covering that deadens the spirit. It hollows out of our heart. It eats at our gut. It vacates our dreams. It fogs over our eyes. It severs connections among us so that some feel they matter while others are convinced they do not. It emphasizes everything that is wrong with us and focuses on everything we don’t have.

 It’s not planned; it’s not an insidious conspiracy. Nevertheless, it is a hurtful journey of suffering disconnection, fragility, haughtiness, ridicule, snickering, arrogance, rumor, inadequacy, worthlessness, superiority, and inferiority nevertheless. It teaches us to live with a shrug or an anxiety, to hoard or covet, as a smoldering ember rather than as a blazing fire. And so, so many of us live and die that proverbial unlived life.

 I’ve got something for you to do to see what I mean. List ten things that you think are important about who you are. For example, “I am a wife…. I am a father…I am a son…I am a professor….I am a Dean….I am a New Yorker….I am a PhD….I am an author….I am a noted authority….” etc. Then, one by one, blacken out each item on the list and try to imagine what you would be without that aspect of yourself. When all items are crossed off, what’s left? Who or what are you when all these self-described aspects of yourself are gone?

 So, let’s go full circle back to that umbrella. Maybe, just maybe, an education, at its core, for both teacher and student, is a stripping away and an undoing of attachments, an unlearning back to ourselves, to each other, and to the wholeness in ourselves and among us. Maybe, at its essence it is a learning to be unthinkingly empathetic to ourselves and others. To get there, to overcome the barriers I faced, I’ve found that I had to accept the simple truth that empathy is essential if I’m going to be in community with students, colleagues, staff, administrators, or anyone. I have to abide by those two simple but difficult rules about being neighborly and doing to other. I have to be honest with myself. And above all, I have to practice, practice, and practice all this each day. This is why, when it comes to the classroom, I take student comments and evaluations so serious, why I have students evaluate the class operation and comment upon me at every turn. Formally, I ask for their reflections after we’ve completed the class community building “Getting To Know Ya” exercises, at mid-term with a “so what do you think so far,” after each hands-on project with a “what’s going on,” at the end of the term. Even their daily journaling, though most don’t realize it, is an informal and constant commentary and evaluation. Why do I do all this? It’s because I value their reactions. It’s because I accept their feelings as real. It’s because if I am there to serve their needs, to help them help themselves to become the person each is capable of becoming, I have to connect with each of them. It’s because I want to know if the words I use to describe myself as a person and teacher are the same as the words these particular students use to describe me. If not, I have to think about what changes I would have to make to bring mine words closer to theirs.

 It’s tough. I know. It has been a journey of years for me and will continue to be a journey of many more years. But, trust me, the time and effort are well worth it.

Make it a good day.

      –Louis–

Empathy, Another word for My Dictionary of Good Teaching

Winter and Spring are engaged in interplay. The nights, getting imperceptibly shorter, are still a chilly mid to low forties, with an occasional nippy dip into the 30s. The ever lengthening days are climbing into the balmy 60s and summery high 70s. The co-eds are grasping every daylight moment to bask in dutiful worship of the sun as they prepare for our Spring Break. It’s as if by laying prone on the quad, just lying there, inert, revealing as much flesh as they publicly dare, they believe they possess such presumptive force that they can nudge closer the arrival of spring’s “nectarian” times, lengthen the days, increase the sun’s tanning strength, warm up the nights, lower the convertible tops, heat up the coastal sands, and bring on the blossoms of the snowy dogwoods and showy azaleas.

In the midst of this intramural sport between the seasons, there I was, again on the cool front stoop where I’ll probably be grounded from power walking or any other exercise, according to my doctor, for another four and a half months. The sounds from a CD medley of Broadway hit songs floated out the front door. I had been in such deep reflection. Aside from mourning the loss of my beloved Tarheels in the ACC tournament, I was thinking about another word for Kenny. Kenny had been breathing down my neck for another entry into our DICTIONARY OF GOOD TEACHING. “Okay, you’re recovering. Think you can get back to work and come up with another word to guide my teaching? Not just a word, or something off-the-wall, but something that gets to the meat of teaching,” he said.

Something meaty. I thought the meat was somewhere in a long e-mail I had just opened from an eighteen year old student whom I’ll call Dotie. Her father, with whom she was very close, had died six years ago of colon cancer. She couldn’t let go of her memories. She hadn’t talked with her father during that dark year as he withered away. She was angry with him for dying and being left alone, more so for not fighting, and especially for becoming reclusive. Every day, in earlier e-mails during my convalescence at home she had been engaging me in conversation, asking about my health, talking about attitude, and urging me not to give up on life. Though I had constantly reassured her, I thought at times I had detected an underlying anxiety. It was more than anxiety. I didn’t know at the time she was reliving the horrors of losing her father. When I had come into the class that first day of the semester and had announced soberly that I had cancer and was going to have an operation, “a shiver ran up my spine and I turned ice cold and paralyzed as if I was frozen in a block of ice.” She was nearly consumed by a strong, dark, and paralyzing fear as she involuntarily evoked deeply buried images of her father. “I couldn’t think of anything else. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t study. I was so scared for you that you would die like my father did.” Yet, my cancer, and especially my open discussion of the cancer with her, somehow built a bridge between me and her, and gave her permission now to talk eventually about something “I never want to think about, but always do even if it’s still so painful after all these years.”

Now that I’m back in class and “cured,” she was sharing her feelings. And, for the first time she wanted to talk. And, talk she did. She talked about her loneliness, sense of abandonment, sadness, and anger. She had kept them inside her all this time. When it had been addressed by her family, school councilors, and friends, it was usually as, in her words, “no one gave a real damn….They just gave me a bunch of going through the motions and cold ‘get over it and get on with it.'” As the years passed, her feelings, by her own admission, had become an increasing load to bear. They were corrosives that had been hollowing her out. They were chains that had tethered her. They had been conquering her. They were distracting pulls on her soul affecting her school work. She had become distant from her mother for reasons I won’t go into. She suffered abusive and “pimping loser boyfriends.” She got into alcohol and drugs “although I’ve cleaned that part of me up.” She finished this anguishing message with: “I didn’t and still don’t need sympathy. What I really needed and still need is understanding. No one thinks my feelings are real. They are. I need someone to just listen and value what I have to say. I wrote this so you and I could better understand me and what makes up a large part of my life….I sometimes don’t do things I’m supposed to do because I drift off thinking about what might have been with my father here….Thanks for being someone who can understand and just listen to me without judging me and brushing me off,” she wrote. Her last sentence read, “I feel better. I really do, like I just had a spiritual vomit that got rid of something bad I ate. Maybe I can be okay.”

As I read this last e-mail with a tear in my eye, I thought once again of Kenny’s request. Something with meat on the bones. Then I heard a tune from that CD. I perked up. Anna, from THE KING AND I, was singing, the delightful song, “Getting to Know You.” Know the lyrics? “Getting to know you. Getting to know all about you. Getting to like you….Getting to know you, getting to feel free and easy when I am with you….Getting to know what to say…. Haven’t you noticed, suddenly I’m bright and breezy? Because of all the beautiful and new things I’m learning about you day…by…day.”

And it hit me. A word that Dotie had used: understanding. I came into the house, went to the land fill that is my computer desk, and plowed through the scattered notes written on pieces of anything I could get my hands on at any particular time. Finally, by some miracle, I found what I was looking for. Now, I’ve got it, another word for Kenny. He wanted something meaty. I’ll serve him up a filet mignon!

Several months ago, I had been “remoting” through the channels one Sunday afternoon during the halftime of the football game I was watching. For reasons unknown to me, I stopped on PBS and started watching a show I never watch: “Business in Georgia.” There was this brief conversation between Simon Cooper, President and CEO of Ritz-Carleton, and the moderator. I wasn’t really paying all that much attention. I was wiling away the time waiting for the start of the game’s second half.

“What is the most important element in Ritz-Carleton’s success?” I vaguely heard the moderator ask.

Cooper answered without missing a beat, “Empathy. If you don’t have empathy, you don’t belong in the service industry.”

I nearly fell off the couch. I felt I had been jolted awake by a proverbial bolt of lightning. Luckily I had my trusty ever-present “thought” pad and pencil at hand. I started scribbling so intensely that I forgot about the game. The biggest challenge, Cooper warned, is not just to say “we’re there for the customers.” It’s easy to say those words, he explained. “It’s another thing for everyone in the organization to live those words with constant sincerity.” So, the biggest challenge, he concluded, is actually to be always there for the customer with your heart and soul. Without empathy of executives for employees and employees for customers, execution of Ritz-Carleton’s mission would be impossible. He went on to say that by empathy he meant “listening and understanding so intently that you hear beyond the other person’s words; you walk in his or her shoes; you truly are understanding and accepting of the other person’s situation and feelings, and identifying with that person to the extent you feel like he/she does.” Empathy, he continued, is “essential for serving the customer; it’s essential for recognizing problems; it’s essential for the development of solutions; it’s essential for handling complaints and retaining customers, getting repeat business, and building a reputation.”

There it was. My new dictionary word for Kenny. All I had to do was change a word here and there in Cooper’s statement and he’d have it: “Empathy. We’re there for the students….Empathy is essential for serving the student…If you don’t have empathy, you don’t belong in education.”

Why should I have been surprised. Empathy is one of Stephen Covey’s seven habits of successful people. He asserts that the absence of empathy, or listening without true understanding, is the root cause of all people problems. In the recent March 2nd issue of JAMA, Eric Larson, the Director of the Center of Health Studies, and his colleagues contend that physicians are more effective healers-and enjoy more professional satisfaction-when they have an empathy for their patients. Don’t I know that! Empathy is known to be critical in all health and social service fields. Any top-notch salesman can tell you about empathy. It’s been well-researched in organizational management. It is one of the main components of emotional intelligence listed by Daniel Goleman. In fact, Goleman calls empathy the foundation skill for all social competencies. All the research in all fields say anyone who has an empathetic demeanor has a more effective impact on others.

So why should so many educators who are in the communication business feel they’re exempted? How many of us, as students and professionals and employees, no less than anyone else, have felt the occasional therapeutic, enveloping, warm, and supportive understanding of a friend or mentor or colleague or family member? How many of us been struck by what seems to be the more frequent pathological stinging, insensitive, cold, distant, gaze, unfeeling comment, gesture, or action? Yet, what I would declare to be one of the most potent teaching tools, is so often missing in the academia. That is especially true, pronouncements to the contrary, in those very uneducational large and huge herding classes where it is needed the most. It decreases and class size increases. Put it simply, academics are not expected, by themselves or others, to be empathetic caregivers. Most academics do not see themselves in a service capacity. Most academics don’t think of academia as a people business.

Yet, the absence of empathy is so often the reason for distance and disconnection and miscommunication and misunderstanding between teacher and student, between and among colleagues, between teacher and administrator. It is so often so poorly understood by those who need it the most. It is so often met with cynicism. So many academics think, when they think about it, it’s “touchy-feely.” So many think it’s not very important. It seems to them to be so subjectively unacademic, an emotion so out of place in the mythological objective, detached intellectual world of the Ivory Tower. So many of us academics are almost totally focused on being understood by the students while we so often do not make much of an effort to understand the students; so many of us are more interested in getting attention than in giving attention; so many of us are more interested in being on stage and maneuvering the spotlight onto ourselves than we are in stepping out of the spotlight and listening deeply to another person. In the classroom, when difficulties arise, its little wonder so many of us so often misread a student. We’ll prance around with and flaunt our resumes, analytical skills, supposed objectivity, information banks, reasoning powers, titles, publications, positions, recognitions, grants, research projects, and authorities, and then wonder why students don’t “get it” and why others can’t see things their way.

It’s amazing that so few of us, in this people-oriented, service industry we call education, can say to a student or each other, “I understand why you do what you do and why you feel the way you feel.” Instead, the majority of academics lapse into negative stereotypes, fall back on depreciating preconceptions and presumptions while, unlike Anna, they don’t make much of an effort to get to know each student in the flesh.

Empathy is an emotion. It is an attitude. It is a communication skill. Empathy is the material that breaks down barriers, builds bridges, and forges community. It’s a social behavior. It affects how the professor thinks, feels, and acts towards him/herself, his/her job, the student and others. It’s instrumental in whether a professor thinks teaching is a job or a mission, a matter of transmitting information or transforming a person. It’s the fuel that keep the fires blazing and prevents burn out.

If I was to define empathy, like Cooper, I’d say it’s simply hearing the beat of your heart and someone else’s heart. It’s a literacy that gives you the ability to read people. It means being a people person. It means having a real curiosity and a desire to know people. It means having a genuine interest in what others say and feel and do. It means, as Dotie said, truly listening, savoring the words of others, valuing what they say, and attending to the needs and wants of others. It means building respectful and reverent relationships. It’s an awareness. It’s an otherness. It’s a transcendence. It means paying close attention to the people around you, to understand there are others in the classroom and on campus with you, and to serving them. It means being as highly sensitive as a Seti radio antennae capable and able to pick up faint signals of others’ cues.

Empathy transforms relationships. It makes strangers less strange, isolated people less isolated, alone people less alone, lonely people less lonely, depreciated people less devalued.

I’ll finish with this for now. I’ve learned that I must teach not with just with subject smarts and rational intelligence, not with just technological and pedagogical know-how, but with people smarts and emotional intelligence as well. You have to be not only in your head and discipline, but in your heart and soul as well–and in the heads and hearts of others.

So, thinking of Dotie, “empathy” is another word for My Dictionary of Good Teaching that I am going to send to Kenny! For like Simon Cooper, one of the most salient characteristics of a successful teacher is the ability to be empathic. It’s the power in each of us that comes straight from our heart to connect with and enter another’s heart.

“Getting to know you. Getting to know all about
you. Getting to like you….Getting to know you,
getting to feel free and easy when I am with you
….Getting to know what to say…. Haven’t you
noticed, suddenly I’m bright and breezy? Because
of all the beautiful and new things I’m learning
about you day…by…day.”

Empathy: Neat word; neater attitude; neatest behavior. More later.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

What Really Matters

 The dark was beginning to loosen its grip on the eastern sky. There was a brisk high ’30s chill in the air. Birds were stirring. And, I am grounded for at least another month from power walking the pre-dawn streets. So, this morning, I was sitting on the cool front stoop, leaning against the brick wall, aimlessly listening to a soft jazz CD, thinking of my beloved Tarheel win over Duke yesterday, engaged in immobile meditation, thinking what a very special moment this nevertheless was. It is amazing how the ease of sitting in this darkened quiet brings such clarity and calm, and puts me in touch with what we of the Jewish faith call “the still, small voice.” It’s at times like this, before being battered by the stormy demands of every day life, when I feel empty of every last bit of anger, fear, resentment, worry, expectation, embarrassment, regret, frustration, sorrow, and all of the other of every day life’s encumberances; when I feel that spot of inwardness filled with hope, love, believe, beauty and joy; when I feel an appreciation of how truly precious life is; when I feel exactly the way I know I should feel and be the person I truly am.

 For me, facing so intensely the untarnished truth that I had cancer has been a time of greater awakening. It has touched my basic understanding of who I am, what I love, how I live, what is my meaning and purpose in life, and what gift I leave behind. I now understand more clearly the tradition of Native American medicine man of asking three questions of the sick: when was the last time you sang? When was the last time you danced? When was the last time you told your story? I always add a fourth question, “Have you loved enough?” These questions are for me questions that I ask if I’ve become quiet enough and open enough to listen to what truly matters—my own heart, my dearest friends, my wife and sons. These questions usher me below society’s and my profession’s surface markers into a gratitude for living, that guide me to a living of an authentic life, that lead me to a life of what really matters, that dare me to risk, as Mark Nepo says, having the life I want by living the life I have.

 When I discovered I had prostate cancer, every professional thing I had didn’t seem to matter at all. My degrees, resume, reputation, title, publications, tenure, grants were all worthless. None of them, with their intellectuality, sophistication, “specialness,” achievement, and success, helped me cope. None of them cuddled me tightly with me in the night. None of them lovingly comforted me with a soft embrace. None of them softly assured me with a kiss. None of them quietly put me at ease with a whispered word. None of them were there with well wishes and prayers. None of them urged me on to stay vital. None of them kept me in love with teaching and life, no matter the challenge before me. None of them.

 Now, I am on the way to full recovery from my operation. Now, the doctors have pronounced me “cured and cancer free.” I still write; I still teach; I still offer conference sessions; I still give workshops on other campuses. Yet the fuel that keeps my inner fire burning is a greater compulsion to use me to make by credo work– to help others help themselves became the people they were capable of becoming– to make faith, hope, belief, and love in each student thrive in academia, to help generosity and passion and compassion to flourish, to nurture empathy, to listen to and affirm each student.

 Everything I read in student journals say that students need more than class schedules, grades, GPAs, diplomas, and recognitions. They need something below these surface markers.. They need to feel connected, appreciated, important, valued, sacred, respected, noticed, and in control of their lives. These are needs we academics seldom fulfill. I know so many colleagues who see only the imperfect cracks in students. Instead of cracks, I will see more clearly openings. Instead of judging, criticizing, rejecting, pushing away, I will welcome and embrace as I have never welcomed and embrace before. I will be able to listen without judgment or agenda and to speak so others can hear. I will create community as I have never created it before. I will help them practice the art of belonging. I will help them see that nothing but moral will power is needed to help them make themselves better. I will help students grow a strong, nurturing and supportive relationship with themselves and those around them. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do. It’s the thing that needs to be done. Why? Because no one has lain on his or her death bed wishing they had spent more time at the office or in the lab or in the archive. Why? Because for students to become true life-long learners, they must value the lifelong potential for growth that comes with the power of reflection and choice to always become more honest, more respectful, more responsible, more caring, more loving, kinder. Why? Because students need to learn how to deal with the two constants in life: change and choice. Why? Because I don’t want to risk squandering my chances to help students understand that it’s the habits of the heart and mind that drive conduct, not grades and degrees. Why? Because I want to help students transform into better persons, not mere one-dimensional grade-getting ghosts of the human spirit.

Make it a good day.

      –Louis–