The notion of empathy has become the central value of our school in the month of November. Given that in the last week of October we talked about charity and did some charity events, the idea of empathy follows logically continues to improve our school's standards and interpersonal relationships. 

There are three benefits of empathy in education that need to be emphasized:

Empathy builds positive classroom culture.

With the diversity of pupils entering our CIS every day, and paralleled by an increase in globalization, it's more necessary than ever for our community, teachers and parents in particular, to actively construct a positive school community culture. Through empathy students learn to understand each other, which helps them to build friendships based on positive relationships of trust. On a more academic note, school programmes that intentionally incorporate empathy into curriculum have also seen better test results, which we expect to be manifested in the spring's Checkpoint and Progression tests scores.

Empathy strengthens community.

Given that the definition of empathy involves understanding another's feelings without having experience, empathy sets our students up to deepen relationships with their current classmates and people that they know outside of school. In our increasingly globalized world, people may be coming from different cultures and different socioeconomic backgrounds, thereby necessitating better developed empathy skills. As children learn empathy skills by communicating cross-culturally with their classmates, those skills will transfer to their lives in their community. The deeper relationships that result from strong empathy skills have the potential to strengthen a community and build trust. The effects of community extend far beyond the four walls of the classroom or flat.

Empathy prepares our children to be leaders in the community.

Leaders must understand the people that they lead and show that they care. Leadership articles emphasize human development as an essential leadership quality. Our students must be able to empathize with those whom they lead in order to make them feel valued. This validation will strengthen trust between the leader and followers. As their trusted adults, we must equip our students to be the future leaders of our communities and beyond.