Compassion

1. Compassion A profound concern for students that springs from the heart as well as from the head

2. Compassion • Literally: to suffer with • Teachers share with students a sense of frustration, regret, and pain at the difficulties and struggles they must undergo to learn • Teachers have to remember the difficulties • Without this sense of common experience, there is no successful practice of the art of teaching

3. Compassion • “Compassion requires first that teachers know who their students are.” • Learn the names of students (see Highet) • Use questionnaires • Discover how they differ from one another • Discover how their minds work • Discover what their views are • Discover their strengths and weaknesses

4. Compassion • Con’t • Not charity • Teachers show regard for their students by setting high, though always reasonable, standards • Teachers show regard by holding students responsible for meeting them • Teacher show regard by exhibiting compassion toward them as they struggle to meet those standards • Making work easier is not compassionate but negligent condescencion

5. Compassion • “Compassion requires that teachers put themselves in their students’ places.” • This imaginative act enables students to anticipate the difficulties and reactions of their students • Helps teachers anticipate questions and misunderstandings • Helps teachers be honest and fair in their evaluations of student performance

6. Compassion • “Compassion makes approvable enjoyable and correction palatable.” • Good teachers correct their students, but always in such a way as to protect the students’ dignity and self-respect

7. Compassion • “Compassion moves teachers to acknowledge their students’ struggles.” • Good teachers are not dismissive of student difficulties • Good teachers do not dismiss student accomplishment • Good teachers do not allow their natural superiority to dominate their attitudes toward those who struggle

8. Compassion • “Compassion means acting as a whole person.” • Compassionate teachers bring their whole personalities to class • Because they are professionals sufficiently mature to have emotional lives that embrace, undergird, and strengthen professional engagement • Teachers with no obvious signs of human feeling cannot establish that sense of comfort and security so necessary to creating a right teaching environment

9. Compassion • Anyone contemplating teaching as a profession should consider compassion as a measure of suitability.