Compassion

How could we more directly teach compassion in K-12 schools? It is one of those soft skills we speak about and likely model, but inconsistently directly address. I direct teach metacognition, communication, and collaboration skills – but I need to add compassion to my list. Compassion is someone’s emotional response to someone else’s pain that makes you want to do something to help them. Other than emulating someone else’s compassionate response – how could students practice this skill?

Side note: I recently learned that some organizations are moving away from the term ‘soft skills’. The word soft implies that the skills are easy, when these skills are some of the most difficult to teach, learn, and practice. A new terminology is “transferrable skills”, which is more reflective of these skills.

Compassion is identified as a necessary trait for teachers, but it could understandably look different to different people. I have not attended PD on teaching compassion. It just seems to be one of those traits that is inherent in teachers. If we are relying on emulating compassion from people when in a situation that requires a compassionate response – what happens when a student does not encounter a situation that requires an adult to demonstrate compassion for them to learn from?

In the Freakonomics Episode 444: How Do You Cure a Compassion Crises? (December 16, 2020) the host Steven Dubner learns that compassion is also not consistently directly taught to healthcare professionals – another profession that requires tremendous amounts of compassion. Some hospitals have started to systemically poll patients about how compassionate the care was that they received. They have also directly taught staff how to be more compassionate (they did not explain how they did this, which I am keen to know the details of). They determined that when healthcare providers were more compassionate, their hospitals demonstrated increased financial performance. They specifically trained staff on compassion, measured how compassionate staff were by surveying patients, and then correlated that being more compassionate influenced a financial benefit. Most interestingly, healthcare staff who were more compassionate suffered from less burnout (with the caveat that correlation does not equal causation on this data).

I would love to see this happen in education. Directly teaching teachers how to directly teach compassion in teacher’s college, PD while on the job, and then survey students to determine how compassionate they found their teachers to be. Would we find the same correlation between student success and teacher compassion?

Thoughts on Freakonomics Radio – “Episode 444: How Do You Cure a Compassion Crises?” – December 16, 2020 (By Steven Dubner)