Emotions

     Can you teach empathy; I feel that empathy can and cannot be taught to a person. Some can

debate that you are born with it and then other says you learn it while going through experiences in

life. I think that young adults who are sheltered in there upbringing have a hard time understanding

how a person feels and copes with certain situations. While adults that grew up in poverty can

understand how a person who loses a job and starts there journey into depression can relate to

them because of their life experiences. Even with websites Rootsofempathy.org you still not about

to learn how to have compassion towards others that you interact with.

     With all the different emotions that a human can have, empathy is one of the most important

traits an individual should have. I recently watched a video about a photographer in New York going

around taking pictures of random people and having them display themselves in different

encounters from family portraits, to relationships poses, even friends taking a group picture. I found

it interesting their response to how it felt after taking such photos with people they just met. One

person talked about how at first they were nervous then was about to calm down and truly enjoy

the photo, she said it was a feeling that was there. That emotion she was talking about was

empathy, without so would have been a cold statue, unemotional. I believe that without empathy

the world would become a cold desolate place of uncaring people.

How do you praise your students?

     The way we teach our students is one thing, but when it comes to praising our new generation

we shouldn’t tell them to how smart they are. After reading an article about “How Not to Talk to

Your Kids”, it made me begin to think where my life in elementary school and the progression of

school itself went. The major idea that circumference the whole topic was not to tell your child they

are “smart”, the reason being it lead to the child to pick easy questions or give up all together, so to

have the idea of being intelligent. When I was in middle school I was given an IQ test to see where I

stand among my peers in the Individualized Education Program (IEP), after the test I was told I had

an IQ of 121. Ever since then I can recall I never tried my hardest and seek the easier questions to

answers to have that ability to say I am smart. When I was in elementary school I was diagnosed

with a learning disability for writing and reading, at that young age I always had this stigma that I’m

a horrible writer or I read too slowly. I’ve had plenty of extra help along my school years, but the

most detrimental period was my freshmen English class. The teacher had told me that because of

my learning disability I can never get my ideas onto paper. It wasn’t until my junior year that I had

met Mrs. Schmidt, she began to work with me on the progress of writing an essay. She found that I

was able to learn visually, and taught me the structure of an essay, each key components that went

along with it. After which I started to write poems, she had taught me that with poems you write

the most direct way possible to get your idea across with each line. She always praised me in a way

to improve, to write more descriptive, motivated me to have a greater result within my writing.

More than ten years has passed, as I begin my journey through college and with it every day I can

recall the help Mrs. Schmidt had put into helping me.