Practicing Empathy Through Writing

By Autumn Pedersen and Andrea Sprowls

A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feeling through words . . .Almost
anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be
taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you're a
lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.

-- E.E. Cummings, A Miscellany Revised, 1965

The middle school classroom is a place where students truly begin to think for themselves
and grow their own unique sense of self. Because of this, we feel it is incredibly important to not
only teach content, but to incorporate socio-emotional learning within lessons. We can do this in
many ways, but in the language and literature classroom, one way is to have students write from
different perspectives. Writing from another perspective, and imagining what someone else is
experiencing can help students to grow empathy and compassion in their lives- in and out of
school. We believe that this will give students the tools to be caring, reflective, and balanced
individuals— traits that we strive to embody within our school community.

In our language and literature classrooms, we were able to embed this concept within our
writing assignments. For one assignment, students were asked to compare/contrast themselves to
a character from the book we had been reading. Students needed to find evidence that showed
different sides of the character, and explain what these meant for the character’s overall identity.
During the writing process, some students discovered pieces of their own identity that they had
not yet been able to recognize. Many students also noticed that they had more in common with
the character than they had originally thought. In another assignment, students had to re-write
greek myths, such as “Pandora’s box”, “Perseus and Medusa's head” and “Icaro’s flight”. The
students questioned how the Greek gods punished humankind and how jealous they were of
humankind's capacity and beauty. One student commented, “because Medusa was beautiful...
more beautiful than Athena, she was transformed into a beastly creature? That’s so sad and
makes no sense.” Another student wrote how Icaro felt when flying, he felt as a free teen spirit,
conquering the skies and clouds and how as he was falling down he had no regret in his heart.

In both of these writing activities, students must imagine how the character views
themself, and the motivations behind their actions. The writing assignments gave students the
opportunity to practice self-awareness, and empathy. We cannot teach students how to feel, but
we can teach them how to connect with others, value themselves, and identify their own
emotions. As E.E. Cummings wrote, “...the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.”

Autumn Pedersen  & Andrea Sprowls