Developing Empathy by Rob Durham

My research was for methods to improve attendance in my first hour class.  I had 24 seniors the first semester and honestly, I didn’t use all that many of the interventions that my research suggested.  However, it did affect grades more this semester than previous.  If their work was late, they served academic detentions, and their work was late when they missed work days that I gave them in class (i.e. bringing the laptops to the room).

This semester I effectively used one of my interventions by emailing the entire roster several weeks before the semester began.  I explained that my creative writing class was not a blow off class and that their attendance was necessary to be successful.  I got 8 students to drop the class (and one more tried on day one, but it was too late).  This seems to have thinned the herd.  

Late-start (because of PLC meetings) Mondays are every other week, and they pose the biggest problem because traffic is terrible.  The entire student body must arrive between 9:15 and 9:45 and the stop light’s left arrow is on a different cycle.  My students who make it in on time receive a coupon that lets them out of 1 academic detention.  Last week 16 out of 18 made it.

The biggest change I’ve made is weekly “adulting” lessons.  We’ve covered things like why it looks bad when you arrive late with a Starbucks, why it’s rude to pack your backpack while someone is sharing their writing, and the biggest lesson of all, how it hurts Mr. Durham’s feelings when he’s made 21 pots off coffee since the last time a student thanked him.  I taught thank you cards on “Fun Friday” 2 weeks ago and the coffee pot stayed empty.

A bigger issue I’ve had to deal with with this class, and last semester’s, is the lack of participation/talking/looking like you have a pulse.  I get it, they’re sleepy at 8:16 because of teenage hormones (not the sleep cycle hormones, but instead the raging sexual hormones that keep them up on Instagram until 2 a.m. every night), but when Mr. Durham reads one of his heart and soul essays and no one so much as even thinks of nodding let alone clapping, there’s a problem.  By the way, that’s author’s chair most Fridays.  Me.  Just me.

So here’s what I did…

I put them in charge of creating one freewriting prompt just like we did.  They then have to lead the discussion about it for 3 minutes (I have a small hourglass for 3 minutes).  They’re assessed on the creativity of the prompt, the Google slide they create for it, and the discussion leading.  Most days only 1 or 2 kids say anything and it’s like pulling teeth.  One of my favorite students took his turn the other day and vented to me later in the day how frustrating it was that no one spoke, or had any deep answers.  He put “so much effort into that prompt” and they didn’t even care.

I hugged him.  As a teacher, there are few better feelings than watching your students experience the exact same frustrations that you face.  He admitted he was guilty of doing that as well and he felt awful for it.  It was honestly a dream moment for me.  

So to tie all this up, I guess I’m developing empathy, one of the ultimate adulting skills, in my students and by constantly showing them that I’m human, and it hurts when they don’t say thank you, appreciate my lessons with bells and whistles, or show up on time, they think about it as a human to human interaction instead of a student to teacher interaction.