Overview:
A evidence based way to bring back empathy in the classroom starts with books, this teacher says.
Recently, after reading a troubling article in the New York Times detailing students’ alarming pranks against teachers, I found myself drawn to the comments section. While I shared in the outcry for discipline and action, I couldn’t help but cringe at the focus on the perceived lack of empathy displayed by the students. Research indicates that empathy is declining, and there are numerous research-based methods for teaching empathy in classrooms. I propose an additional method: utilizing books in English within our World Language classrooms.
Language educators have a unique opportunity to foster empathy by exploring topics such as immigration, diverse cultural practices, gender issues abroad, fair trade versus free trade, and environmental challenges in other nations in our classes. Just as literature teaches students perspective-taking and opens their eyes to other worlds and experiences, books can also be used in a similar way in the World Language classroom. Learning another language is not just an academic pursuit: students will hopefully be interacting with immigrants and need to have their hearts open and their minds enlightened so they understand better with whom they are communicating.
Empathy Through Reading
It’s widely acknowledged among language educators that maintaining 90% use of the target language in the classroom is optimal, a strategy supported by research. Utilizing comprehensible input through leveled readers has proven essential, engaging, and effective. My students have enthusiastically embraced novice and intermediate readers we’ve studied in class, reporting increased confidence in their language skills after experiencing a full book in Spanish. The benefits are clear: enhanced language proficiency and genuine enjoyment from engaging with compelling narratives through such readers.
However, during a recent discussion with graduating seniors about books that had shifted their perspectives, they overwhelmingly cited impactful works studied in English, science, and even those assigned in Spanish class by my colleague and me. Although students chuckled when asked about our readers, they consistently named the books we selected for our Spanish curriculum as transformative. This insight was heartening, demonstrating the significant impact of literature across languages.
While some colleagues may balk at the notion of requiring students to read in English within a language class, I strongly recommend a reconsideration.
A Case Study
My wonderful colleague, Sister Maria Francine Stacy, and I wrote our departmental essential skills to include building empathy and we decided that for the first three years, the students would read books in English, leading up to short stories in Spanish the fourth year when they have progressed comprehension substantially, allowing them to access more complex texts.
After a summer of heavy reading for us, we decided on the following books for each year: The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande for Spanish 1, Disappeared by Francisco X. Stork for Spanish 2, and Solito, Solita: Crossing Borders with Young Refugees from Central America edited by Steven Mayers and Jonathan Freedman for Spanish 3.
The first is an excellent memoir by the esteemed writer Reyna Grande that can also be purchased in a Young Adult format. It tells of her crossing as an undocumented teenager and her first experiences in the United States. It is an excellent introduction to the very real stories of immigrants’ harrowing journeys from the beginning: seeing the motivations behind undocumented crossings and the extraordinary challenges that come with those journeys. This book introduces our first-year language students the opportunity to think about immigration beyond headlines or political polarization and internalize one woman’s story of struggle and hope.
The Second Year
In the second year, we chose for our students to read fiction and it is always a very popular selection that our students often read ahead. This story focuses on several young adults who face extremely tough choices in the face of adversity and drug cartels. In addition, the novel deals with the topic of trafficking, asylum and threats to journalists which are issues some immigrants have to face. Although we hesitated to choose a book that focuses so much on these troubling themes, often misunderstood and exaggerated topics in Latin America, continuing the conversation about immigration is essential to building empathy.
The third selection students read in English is undoubtedly most students’ favorite. Solito, solita is a compilation of honest, direct translations from conversations with young refugees and each has moments of cruelty, often due to discrimination by American citizens. Our students love this book for its honesty and making them aware of subjects that are consistently being taken away from the curriculum in other subjects, such as racism. Adolescents want to talk about these topics, and they need to talk these things through. They are our future leaders: we also need them to experience these themes.
Bringing Back Empathy
This brings us back to the comments section of the New York Times article: in my over 15 years of experience in high school teaching, adolescents are naturally empathetic. They have huge hearts that want to understand, engage with the world around them no matter how challenging or uncomfortable it may be, and look for solutions. These books (we are also working to include poetry from The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo) have allowed us to have guest speakers from Venezuela and Mexico to speak to our students after they have a stronger understanding of the similarities of their immigrant stories. We have them do projects in Spanish about the books, and the possibilities of other creative instructional activities in the target language are endless.
All educators have the responsibility, better yet, the opportunity, to teach and inspire empathy. As curriculum creators and language teachers, perhaps adding a poem, short story, or full book in English in our World Language classes could add a supplementary element of fuller understanding for our students, thereby bridging a potential gap between their focus on the grammar and vocabulary in the target language and deeply grasping an immigrant’s story. I encourage language teachers to do the same; our department has had wonderful experiences, and we are happy to share and help you with this transition if you are interested.
Stacey Bill has taught for nearly twenty years at the university and high school levels in public and private schools teaching English as a second language in the United States and abroad, and all levels of Spanish including Dual Credit and AP Spanish Language and Literature. She has presented on using creative writing in the world language class, incorporating technology and infographics to get students more engaged, designing classes with integrated performance assessments, as well as how to create interactive lessons through the use of social media. Several awards include Cincinnati Magazine Best of the Best Teachers Award, University of Kentucky Teachers Who Make a Difference Award and Jefferson Awards Foundation for Outstanding Project based on a service learning initiative in her local community.
