Light & Dark Side
For this weeks podcast, I listened to You 2.0 : The Empathy Gym. This was a particularly interesting podcast, because it centers around an actual scenario that a man placed on society. It was interesting and a bit shocking to hear how some people responded to this empathy experiment.
During this podcast, some points really stuck out to me. At one point, one of the speakers was talking about his parents going through a divorce. He said that at first it was a struggle to understand each person and their different rules, but then he realized that his parents were hurting too. Once he realized that his parents were having a hard time with the divorce as well, it made it easier for him to understand them and connect with them. He realized what they were all going through wasn't that different. This stood out to me because I think a lot of time people, myself included, tend to get stuck on what is going on in our lives without realizing all of the other things happening in the lives of people around us. This connects to my problem that I'm solving because it reiterates how important it is to make sure you fully understand the other person. If I am going to try and problem solve for my students, I need to know what their personal struggles are. I've decided to interview each of my students. Because my class size is so small, it isn't a huge undertaking, but essential in the problem solving solution.
This podcast also mentioned that you're really empathetic to those in your own group, but can focus on your own group so much that you fail to recognize other groups. This also connects to my problem because before I narrowed it down to focus on the students, I was also focusing on teachers. I decided to shift my focus to students to get out of my own group. I was easily empathizing with other teachers because I am going though the same situations as them. I am not a student in a physical classroom right now, so I need more information on what it is like for them to better understand how I can help them.
Overall, this podcast gave me the insight needed to narrow down and finalize my problem statement and then helped me decided what my next steps needed to be.
And that is why I'm hopeful you folks are finding these listenings helpful! For just the reasons you discussed here.
ReplyDeleteEmpathy is challenging and there are a lot of ways to do it "wrong" and there are fewer ways to exercise empathy in ways that feel both authentic and practical -- it's easy to feel like we are doing empathy light. And still, if we own that and recognize that limitation then we are already thinking with more of a designers mindset than if we just hoped no one noticed.