[Music] how do we make our spaces and our educational institutions welcoming how do we make them a place where students want to continuously come to class how do we make it so that they feel like they matter and so empathy means can we see them for who they are can we listen to where they're coming from and journey them through teaching with empathy to me is an extension of holistic education the idea that the entire student matters remembering that really teachers are at the service of students we are there to help them get where they need to go most faculty will tell you that students are experiencing anxiety and other emotional anguish just from the pressure of getting into college being successful in college going on to graduate school students are dealing with real so let's sit down let's come up with a strategy for how you can succeed in this class for me that's what teaching with empathy means I want my students and know that I care about their learning I want them to understand that I was once a student for a very long time and I've had the experience of having courses that were super fun to go to and some courses that were daunting teach with empathy to means trying to understand I guess what's important to my students what do they want to get out of the course and what examples material would be relevant to them I'm really tapping into the difference the diversity the positive aspects of difference and diversity not just oh we're so different we can't understand each other I'm saying no we're so different that we can actually learn a lot from each other what I love about top hat is that it serves the needs of all different kinds of students so whether you're the student who gets bored in a lecture or whether you're the student who just needs to have some activity to get them involved or or you're the student who has really interesting ideas but you're maybe a little too shy to say something this provides you with a platform that works for all of our students by creating a discussion board in the background a simple thing without that you are able to let their questions be heard I go read their questions they now feel confident oh the professor chose my question and then you find that the next time there's an opportunity for them to perhaps raise their hand to engage with me they are gonna feel a little bit more likely to do so I really like the online discussions so I require in a lot of my classes students to post a few questions or responses every week I really encourage them to post articles or videos or memes or Twitter posts or whatever they think is related to the course whatever they find interesting it creates an opportunity for everyone to belong to the conversation everyone's contributing something important and if I'm not creating opportunities for those connections then I think I'm really missing a chance to make the material meaningful to them as opposed to a traditional model of just standing behind a podium teaching the students and you might to ask questions but you're really not understanding how engaged they are with not only the material being taught but how that's going that's fitting into their career goals their overall experiences and I know the more I connect with students the more successful I am and the better outcomes I have and the more successful I feel that students are [Music] you