Empathy in Language Teaching

Welcome to the Empathy in Language Teaching course at The School for Training!

Presentation

Hello colleague,

I’m Kieran Donaghy, your tutor who will accompany you all the way through the course, offering help and individual assessment to each one of you.

Before we start the course, I’d like you to read the brief guide to the course below.

Welcome to the Empathy in Language Teaching course at The School for Training!

Hello colleague,

I’m Kieran Donaghy, your tutor who will accompany you all the way through the course, offering help and individual assessment to each one of you.

Before we start the course, I’d like you to read the brief guide to the course below.

Why are you here?

Each of you will have your own personal and professional reasons for wanting to do this course, but from my experience of tutoring on previous editions of the course and having read your individual responses to the pre-course questionnaire, I would say that your reasons may well be among the following:

  • you’d like to know more about empathy and its role in language education;
  • you’d like to know how to foster empathy more effectively in your classes;
  • you’d like to know how to use film and video to foster empathy more effectively in your classes;
  • you’d like to know how to use paintings and photos to foster empathy more effectively in your classes;
  • you’d like to know how to use literature to foster empathy more effectively in your classes;
  • you’d like to gain a greater understanding of how empathy can be used to promote diversity and social justice in language teaching;
  • you’d like to know how to foster empathy more effectively in your online classes.

Whatever, your reasons for doing the course, we’ll do whatever we can to adapt the course to your needs.

 

What are you going to learn?

You’re going to learn a lot of things but essentially you’re going to learn how to use foster empathy more effectively language classroom.

 

What are the objectives of the course?

  • to reflect on what empathy is and why it’s important in society.
  • to reflect on why empathy is important in education.
  • to reflect on why empathy is particularly important in language education.
  • to reflect on how short films and videos can be used to foster empathy and raise awareness of values in language education.
  • to reflect on how paintings and photos can be used to foster empathy and raise awareness of values in language education.
  • to reflect on how literature can be used to foster empathy and raise awareness of values in language education.
  • to reflect on how “active listening” can be used to foster empathy and raise awareness of values in language education.
  • to reflect on how empathy can be used to promote diversity and social justice in language teaching.
  • to examine factors which may hinder embedding a culture of empathy in language education.
  • to examine how we can foster empathy in online classes.

 

Who is your tutor?

Kieran Donaghy is a freelance award-winning writer, international conference speaker and trainer. He is the author of books for students and teachers of English as a foreign language. His publications include Film in Action (Delta Publishing), Writing Activities for Film (ELT Teacher2Writer) and VideoThe Image in ELT (ELT Council) and Language Hub (Macmillan). He trains teachers at his specialist teacher development institute, in Barcelona and online at The School for Training. His website Film English has won a British Council ELTons Award.  Kieran is the founder of The Image Conference and co-founder of the Visual Arts Circle. In addition to the use of film and video in language education, Kieran’s other main area of interest is the role of empathy in language teaching and learning. He has written and lectured extensively on empathy in language education. He will be giving a plenary session titled Embedding a Culture of Empathy at the IATEFL Annual Conference at Harrogate in June 2021. You can find out more about Kieran at his author website or you can follow him on Twitter

 

How are we going to work?

The course is structured in four Lessons – 1. What is empathy and why is it important? 2. How can we foster empathy in the language classroom? 3. Is it possible to foster empathy in online classes? 4. How to foster empathy in order to promote diversity and social justice in language education? In addition, there is a Final project – a practical activity in which you apply the ideas, concepts, frameworks or activities you have learned during the course to your own professional context.

Each Lesson will be divided into Topics. Each Topic will have a presentation of the key concepts and examples of the concepts in use, downloadable articles and practical materials to use with your students in the classroom.

We recommend that you read and do each week’s activities within the established time limit in order to keep up with the course, share your experiences with your colleagues, and to make the most of this learning experience. While online learning does offer greater flexibility, try not putting things off until the last minute. Rather, work on your Lesson as soon as it opens. However, you will have access to the previous Lessons in order to go over previous ideas and concepts, or to do an outstanding task.

As you already know, the tutor on the course is Kieran Donaghy. He will accompany you through the three weeks of the course, reading your input , and giving you the necessary feedback to help you progress. If you have any queries or doubts you can also contact him by email.

The Empathy in Language Teaching course is a course which requires a considerable amount of reflection and personal work, but at your own pace and tailored to your own needs. However, there is also a social part which we think is essential to making the most of this learning experience. This social place takes place on the forum thread of each lesson and on the Twitter page of The School for Training.

 

What do you need?

– A connection to internet.

– A notebook. This will serve as a diary of the lessons, and be used to do some of the activities, to take notes and help you remember the ideas, concepts, frameworks and activities you want to highlight. Research shows that while you are watching a webinar a video or reading an online article, it’s best to make notes with pen and paper. Pam Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel Oppenheimer of Carnegie Mellon University found when people took notes using a computer, they often just transcribed the content. When they took notes by hand, they paraphrased what they heard. This meant they had to process what they learnt more deeply, making it more likely they would remember it. The other advantage of using pen and paper is that you are less likely to get distracted!

– Lots of enthusiasm and curiosity!

 

Activity

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the School for Training. I’m Kieran, your tutor on the Empathy in Language Teaching course. I’d like to know a little about you and I’m sure your colleagues would too. Could you introduce yourself by answering these questions, please?

  • What’s your name?
  • What do you do?
  • Where do you work (city, country, institution/s)?
  • What do you hope to get from this course?

Please write your answers in the Presentation forum thread.

I’m sure we’re going to learn a lot together on this course.

All the best,

Kieran

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