Education Week - October 5, 2016 - 26

COMMENTARY

By Jessica Sager

Getty

The Empathy Gap
And How to Fill It

he empathy gap is a deficit that most of us
suffer from unconsciously. And in education, it is paralyzing the progress of many
students.
The empathy gap is an inability to recognize and respond to the feelings of others,
especially others we perceive as different
from us and, most perniciously, those whose
race is different from our own. This gap appears in multiple
contexts, from physicians' perception of their patients' suffering to the way in which juries perceive criminal defendants.
It mutes our reactions to atrocities in Aleppo and Baghdad,
even as we show fellow feeling to the victims of terror in
Brussels and Nice.
The recent tragedies across our own country-the bombings in New York and New Jersey; the mass murders in Orlando and Dallas; the police shootings of Keith Lamont Scott,
Terence Crutcher, Tyre King, Philando Castile, and Alton
Sterling, among others-widen this gap. The bias, prejudice,
misunderstanding, and hate that mark this presidential campaign widen it more.
The empathy gap is particularly acute for white people,
when they try to imagine the feelings of black people. In education, it stops administrators, teachers, staff, and students
from fully understanding, acknowledging, and addressing
issues that are critical to learning. As a result, the disparities
in achievement and preparation within our system are insidious and pervasive. And they are anathema to the American
vision of equality and justice.
We don't start out with an empathy gap.
A researcher at the University of Virginia in a 2014 study
examined a group of mostly white children's perceptions of
the pain experienced by other children.
At the age of 5, children exhibited no differences in their
empathic understanding of others' pain. By age 7, however,
the children in the study rated the pain of black children as
less severe than the pain felt by their white counterparts. And
the differences were even greater in the 10-year-old group.
Early-childhood education is critical to youth development.
In the earliest years, children are assembling the portfolio

Trust: The Missing Ingredient in School Improvement

By Dara Barlin
ne of the recent conversations in K-12 education has focused on
creating environments
of trust for students.
Classrooms that are
founded on trusting
relationships enable
students to take risks and make mistakes.
They also teach young people how to learn
from failure and develop the resilience they
need to succeed in school and life. What is
often missing from this conversation, however, is how a lack of trust among the adults
who run our schools-including teachers,
principals, and district personnel-can affect the success of the entire district.
Unfortunately, many teachers and school
leaders often experience a culture of blame
and the fear of failure. As a consultant who
has worked for more than 20 years with
teachers' unions, policymakers, and departments of education in large urban school
systems, I have seen firsthand why trust is
so critical to the management of a healthy
and successful school district.
When teachers make mistakes, they know
they are accountable to parents or face discipline by their principal. When principals
make mistakes, they know they might get

publicly chastised or tagged as ineffective
by their school system's leaders. When district leaders make mistakes, they know
they might draw criticism from local policymakers and the community, which can affect the district's reputation and, ultimately,
their job security.
There is an intense amount of pressure to
get everything exactly right-to make every
lesson plan perfect, every new initiative
flawless, and every interaction with a parent or student superb. And if the adults who
work in and operate our schools don't trust
one another, it can stifle their ability and
willingness to take risks or try new things.
It can also easily lead to scapegoating. Without trust, our schools are hampered from
making necessary progress.
A lack of trust also has a huge impact on
K-12's infamous revolving door. The average superintendent of a large urban school
district sticks around for about three years,
and it's no different for about 50 percent of
principals nationwide. And within their first
five years, 17 percent of all new teachers
leave the classroom, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. This
attrition does not model the perseverance
schools want to instill in their students.
A lack of trust among adults can affect
students. Research by the Consortium on
Chicago School Research shows that teachers in schools with flat or declining student

26 | EDUCATION WEEK | October 5, 2016 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary

test scores are more likely to say that they
do not trust one another, according to a report released in 2000 by the consortium's
co-founders Penny Bender Sebring and Anthony S. Bryk. In contrast, in schools where
teachers report strong trust and cooperation
among adults, students said they felt safe
and cared for, as well as more academically
challenged. And stronger student test scores
often bear this out.
This issue is not just specific to school contexts. It's also been well documented in the
corporate workplace. Douglas R. Conant, the
former CEO of Campbell Soup Co., found a
direct connection between employee trust
and financial performance. And Google,
which recently studied the conditions that
help its employees work well, found that
psychological safety-the ability to be vulnerable with others and feel comfortable
taking risks-was the most critical condition for creating effective employee teams.
Psychological safety for adults in any
profession is a relatively new concept. It
is unrealistic to think that anyone-especially educators who are juggling dozens of
demands in any given moment-would instinctively know how to create the necessary
conditions for trusting cultures. Many K-12
leaders themselves have been inculcated
into environments that overemphasize outcomes and de-emphasize school culture.
As the founder of DARE Consulting, an

organization that helps education communities improve school outcomes, I recently
created a professional-development program to help educators take the first steps
toward building greater trust. The goal
of the program is to help leaders develop
psychologically safe spaces for their employees by de-escalating potential conflicts
and building trust in the fast-paced school
environment. It brings educators together
to discuss underlying issues; offers ways
to foster a growth mindset across teams;
and provides tools for addressing conflicts
in ways that can promote mutual support,
intellectual curiosity, and positive change.
The following conditions set the tone for
building trust:
* Using empathy as the starting point for
change;
* Celebrating individual and team progress, even when incremental;
* Inspiring people to take action, rather
than mandating it;
* Using a team-oriented approach to
problem-solving; and
* Prioritizing time for regular feedback
and effective communication.
But talking about trust is not enough. A
healthy school environment where educators and schools can flourish requires time,
focus, an emphasis on empathy, and a good
deal of practice before behaviors begin to
shift. But when schools make the shift suc-

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Education Week - October 5, 2016

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