Why teach empathy?
The explicit mention of empathy in the Welsh curriculum (35 times!) recognises the critical role empathy plays in the classroom and society.
There are both practical, day-to-day implications and long-lasting rewards of empathy teaching which will benefit teachers and their students. And empathy is more important now then ever, following the disruption to learning from school closures and isolation.
Cloudaloud Education partners with EmpathyLab, the founders of Empathy Day
EmpathyLab is an organisation dedicated to embedding empathy teaching practices and resources into school settings with the goal of mainstreaming empathy education. Its strategy is based on a range of research that shows empathy is a learnt lifeskill that has a profound impact on a child's future.
For example, not only is empathy a more significant indicator of academic achievement than a student’s IQ (Public Health England 2014), it’s also a predictor of future professional success, with 94% of employers claiming that well-developed social and emotional skills are more important than academic achievements (Sutton Trust, Life Lessons 2017).
However, empathy is about so much more than achievement, attainment, and box-ticking. Empathy teaching achieves many things: better listening skills, improved student behaviour, broadened imagination, and wider vocabulary building for better communication and connection.
And it can be TAUGHT!
Just 10% of empathetic ability is genetic, while 90% relies on social factors, such as upbringing and development (Warrier, "Genome-wide analyses" 2018).
“Empathetic people are made, not born” - EmpathyLab
Find out moreHow to teach empathy
EmpathyLab focuses their outreach on how stories build empathy. Their annual primary and secondary reading lists, along with their toolkits and training sessions, provide educators with what they need to offer effective empathy education in a classroom setting.
The EmpathyLab team is comprised of true visionaries, former educators and researchers who believe passionately in the power of empathy and how empathy education benefits everyone, especially children with autism, children with behavioural issues, and children struggling with their emotional and social development.
Our partnership with EmpathyLab
Cloudaloud is working to bring as many current and previous EmpathyLab reading list titles to audio as possible to ensure accessibility in different formats. We believe that audio is key to supporting the development of listening comprehension and stronger empathetic communication skills.
For Empathy Day 2022, all subscribing settings will receive a selection of age-approriate physical books, from current and past reading lists, to complement the audio, ensure student accessibility to the stories, and encourage immersive empathy teaching in the classroom.
We support EmpathyLab’s vision and mission, we believe in the power of stories, and we’re so proud to be their partner on this journey!
Subscribers receive:
Cloudaloud Education subscribers receive:
• A licence to access 1000s of audiobooks that can be used as a classroom and school digital library
• A Literacy Bundle of physical books: a collection of titles that correspond to audiobooks on the Cloudaloud app as a literacy support tool
• Access to additional resources, teachers’ notes, activities, and information mapped to the curriculum by Key Stage to help educators use audio in the classroom
• The first month free!