HOW TO USE THIS LESSON: The webpage below is intended to be projected for students to follow along. It includes basic instructions, definitions, etc. to guide students. Depending on your technology, you can have a student in charge of scrolling through the site, on your cues. Just have them try not to scroll past the thin purple dividers or thick colored banners until you are ready to start that next section!

You will also need to download and/or print this facilitator's guide. This document contains extra instructions, facilitator's notes, and other behind-the-scenes content necessary for the lesson.

Empathy is the ability to feel the emotions of others, like the expression “putting yourself in their shoes.” We are all born with empathy circuits in the brain, but much like anything, empathy is a skill that needs to be cultivated and practiced over time. Empathy is a very important emotion and skill, as it can help us understand and connect with others in a manner like nothing else. It is essential in effective communication, teamwork, cooperation, and many other life skills. 

Most people conflate empathy with sympathy. Although they are like cousins, empathy goes beyond a sympathetic response of understanding someone’s pain or elation by having the recipient of the encounter feel, or emotionally connect with, the pain or elation of the other person. This is done by a process in the brain called mirror neurons. This process elicits a physiological response, usually induced from a past experience that the recipient has also experienced themselves.